Holy Toledo Batman!
Feb. 27th, 2007 06:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
botiasI discovered recently that I am part of America's most distrusted and generally reviled minority and I did not even know it. It seems, that out of 2000 households polled, most would rather have their child marry someone who was gay, a racial minority or a recent immigrant than an atheist.
And apparently I am among only 3% of my countrymen/women/prefer not to state. Makes me wonder how I ever managed to find another such person and marry and reproduce. But yup, I is an atheist. It would be more socially acceptable to call myself agnostic, I think. And truly I don't believe that humans know or are even capable of knowing the nature of the universe; I have not supplanted a faith in God with a faith in Science. Maybe this IS just a big ant farm for some unknowable being; I don't see how anyone could possibly know one way or the other.
But I feel pretty confident as to whether there is an all-powerful deity or deities who is making a list and checking it twice, who has a great unknowable plan which just happens to render every injustice meaningful, in whose benevolent presence we will someday be with Grandma and Grandpa and Sparky again. It just seems obvious to me that deities are made by people to meet their own needs since that is the only thing they seem to have in common with one another from culture to culture and from church to church.
I've made a good faith effort to be open-minded. I read The Life of Pi. Argument: believing in deities makes the story of life more colorful and splendid. Well, alright, but I can't force myself to feel a hunger for more color and splendiferousness in my life. Further, it is not in my nature to believe something only because it makes me feel better. I'm inclined to believe that such a practice is irresponsible as it may lead me to inadvertently harm people that are not living in my personal reality. An extreme example of this being parents who have withheld life-saving medications from their children because, in their more splendid reality, their children had been cured by their deity.
I've read C.S. Lewis. Argument: there is no other explanation for the ability of humans to feel awe (he uses another word actually, which means awe+babillionty, further he fits in the splendiferousness argument as well) I can't buy that; I've seen the way golden retrievers look at their alphas, a equally likely explanation is that it's a social animal thing.
If anyone out there has better and different arguments, I'm happy to entertain them.
And apparently I am among only 3% of my countrymen/women/prefer not to state. Makes me wonder how I ever managed to find another such person and marry and reproduce. But yup, I is an atheist. It would be more socially acceptable to call myself agnostic, I think. And truly I don't believe that humans know or are even capable of knowing the nature of the universe; I have not supplanted a faith in God with a faith in Science. Maybe this IS just a big ant farm for some unknowable being; I don't see how anyone could possibly know one way or the other.
But I feel pretty confident as to whether there is an all-powerful deity or deities who is making a list and checking it twice, who has a great unknowable plan which just happens to render every injustice meaningful, in whose benevolent presence we will someday be with Grandma and Grandpa and Sparky again. It just seems obvious to me that deities are made by people to meet their own needs since that is the only thing they seem to have in common with one another from culture to culture and from church to church.
I've made a good faith effort to be open-minded. I read The Life of Pi. Argument: believing in deities makes the story of life more colorful and splendid. Well, alright, but I can't force myself to feel a hunger for more color and splendiferousness in my life. Further, it is not in my nature to believe something only because it makes me feel better. I'm inclined to believe that such a practice is irresponsible as it may lead me to inadvertently harm people that are not living in my personal reality. An extreme example of this being parents who have withheld life-saving medications from their children because, in their more splendid reality, their children had been cured by their deity.
I've read C.S. Lewis. Argument: there is no other explanation for the ability of humans to feel awe (he uses another word actually, which means awe+babillionty, further he fits in the splendiferousness argument as well) I can't buy that; I've seen the way golden retrievers look at their alphas, a equally likely explanation is that it's a social animal thing.
If anyone out there has better and different arguments, I'm happy to entertain them.
