The Trouble with Theists

The holiday season can be a trying time for atheists. Jesus is in your face constantly. Even in my little town the one and only billboard proudly displays the message that we should, “Keep Christ in Christmas.” That nonsense is paid for by our local catholic church and partners.

Some of the local businesses proudly display on their signs, “God Bless,” like the thought is in some way comforting. Going inside the local merchants’ place of business can exhaust one’s patience with all the references to the ugly dreams of men. I’m sure most of us have wondered how such good cheer can come from such badly written horror stories.

But we go our ways, smiling. It is the season. It is hard to ignore the goodwill that is expressed during this time of year, especially if you close your eyes to the commercial aspects of the holiday. As long as you can ignore that part of the holiday, and stay out of stores where patrons are pepper spraying each other, (in a loving Christian way), the goodwill of the season is hard to ignore.

Year after year though, I join the throngs of humanity that smile; socializing and eating our way through the end of the year. The visits with family and friends where that frozen smile is the only usable armor against the foolishness. It does get rather tedious. I, like probably many atheists, get so sick of the hypocrisy that I yearn to become the local hermit.

Then it happens. A phone call from young acquaintance who says she’s coming over. She knows that Jo and I are getting ready to entertain and wants to come over and help. Doesn’t take no for an answer and in minutes she shows up with another of our newly made friends from our small town. Now in all honesty, they had been indulging in a little holiday cheer, so were slightly happy. We all live within walking distance of each other so not much of a threat to the streets. So now I have two energetic cute young ladies in my house cleaning; cool.

One of the young ones is a smoker. She goes out for one, and I keep her company on the porch. She’s talking about how she has been resisting her urges to misbehave for the last couple of weeks and says “amen.” Not once but several times while urging me to join her. She is aware that I’m not religious in any manner, and I gently remind her again. But she is so happy to have been behaving that she keeps it up. Her loveliness even gets an “A” out of me before I catch myself. It does make me chuckle.

The evening goes along, we clean and decorate and they leave without any more talk that stinks of religion, so I can’t really complain that much. It was fun.

The next day is the party, one of three that I’m having in my home this year. This one is with the neighbors. It is a fun event, everyone behaving. After dinner, and after the empty wine bottles start piling up, the conversation turns to what some of my neighbors still have to accomplish before the holiday. One starts talking about a toy that she had picked up for her granddaughter. She talks about how hard it was to find, but thank god that she did finally get her hands on the Chinese made crap she wanted and thank god it was the right color; on and on. I can feel my eyes glaze over and my friendly wine buzz turning into more of a roadhouse ass kicking emotion, when the nice lady gives me three packages of goodies for the road when I head south. Damn her.

That is the trouble with theists. Most of them are nice people, making their way through life as best they can. It is how religion is still able to maintain a grip on the world. The people that have been brainwashed are in so many ways just plain good. That goodness does not come from the religion; it comes from humans being human.

So, for a few weeks, I will try to remember that theists are not the problem as much as the institution is the problem. That I need to stay focused on those whose goal is to spread the disease so they can retain or gain power. Weeks of not berating the foolish for being foolish.

Well, at least for a short time, then all bets are off.

Meaning

I am always bewildered by a theist's desire for ultimate meaning. I know the topic surfaces with every atheist, and every atheist tries to explain the thought in a manner that would satisfy other atheists. 

I think that question is personal, and can only be answered by the individual. I think the simplest reason for the search for meaning comes from those who have personal tragedies looking for the good in that tragedy. That would be a theist. A hundred plus people die in recent tornadoes; yet a child may be saved, a relic of a destroyed home found intact; a theist would say it's a plan and has meaning. 

Bullshit.

Pretty lame plan in my mind. Shit happens, get over it. If meaning is a construct of those who are believers, do atheists need concern themselves with the discussion?

For most of us, I think meaning ends up often being pleasure. That pleasure might be a simplistic as reading a book or watching a sunset; not sure if that devolves into meaning, or life. 

Does meaning have anything to do with anything except personal experience?

I don't think there is meaning for me in the fact that someone accomplishes some deed, even if amazing because of said person's background. It is life. I don't feel meaning in my life to be as important as self worth or pleasure, and even self worth could be thrown off the cliff as well, it is really just another form of pleasure.

I guess I am struggling with the thought of meaning. Yes, there could be meaning in relationships and experience, there could be meaning in someone's accomplishments that may help others; or it could be a useless word that cloaks personal pleasure.

Some would think that pleasure in itself is not a goal, but meaning is. I think pleasure is the meaning. 

Kant said, Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.

Is awe and hope, or pleasure and experience, all there is to the word?

Is Rational Thought a Bias?

Well, no. Rational thought is what everyone ought to partake in. Reason is a drink that instead of weakening cognitive processes like alcohol, promotes clarity of thought.

Is that the same to a theist?

No, it is not. Theists maintain their beliefs by repeating this mantra over and over. Smart people suck. It's just that easy! Smart people take away from supernatural imagination, from fictional thoughts of joy.

Well, I wouldn't go as far as saying they think smart people suck at all times, just when it suits their needs. There is a continual pattern of denial theists display when taken to task. Usually it comes in the form of dismissal. Say what you want, but when a theist sees the road of reason ahead, he backs out. He has to. It is the fear of being led astray.

Yet, a theist could make the claim that you are biased. You are biased because of your lack of faith. If you had faith, you would not question certain parts of life. The answers are there, written in their favorite book.

At this and many other life happenings, atheists really do hold the high ground. The tables turn. The theist is the person of bias. He is the one that will not, or cannot, open his mind to the world that he lives in. The bias is centuries old and has been instilled with pain and suffering.

There are times when I think this is the only problem; no matter how many different ways you may state the thought, the bias is the problem. The bible is never very fair when it comes to unbelievers, in fact all writers despise those who lack faith.

I would think that if you could get the imagination, the wonder, the joy of discovery that you may feel when a new idea plants itself in your world, that bias can be changed.

The religious can of course be in awe of the universe, but most only in a superstitious manner. There's always the exception, but your run of the mill theist just doesn't look at the reasoned world in wonder, he saves that awe for ideas that have no base in reality.

I think it's as simple as this. If you can express a scientific or reasoned thought with the same intensity that a priest or pastor can whip up, you will get their attention. If, by inflection and purpose and intensity you can explain a simple scientific thought and excite someone's imagination of where that thought may lead, you've basically set them on a path that gives them the same wonder that religion's slight of hand conjuring does.

Go for it.