If you’re new here, you may not know this about me: I’m an atheist.
Yep. And here’s where you find out why.
A reader on another blog I frequent, Unscrewing the Inscrutable, posted a comment that got me thinking about it:
It does seem to me that most of the people here have some problem with christians and christianity beyond that toward other religions and superstitions. And I am willing to hear if or even why this may be true. […] I’d really like to hear. And it’s ok to be blunt.
My answer was:
.
.
The apparent problem with Christians and Christianity is an observational artifact … on both sides. It looks to you like Christians take more heat because you’re a Christian and you’re here, but the a-religious here in the U.S. DO criticize Christians more, and for the same reason — proximity.
Whatever religion the people of Borneo have is every bit as silly, but there’s no need to say anything about it most of the time because Borneans aren’t on the local radio and TV 24/7, or trying to pack school boards with Bornean Creationists.
But some other things occurred to me while I was writing that:
One thing you may not have heard said, though, something you MIGHT be able to hear and understand, is … well, I’ll start in a roundabout way:
The right wingers in the U.S. typically see anyone who objects to whatever it is they’re doing today as anti-American. The people Rush Limbaugh calls “librools” obviously hate America and everything it stands for, and want to destroy it. Why else would the librools be so angry all the time, and protest against everything our wise, benevolent leader wants to do?
But I know a lot of people whom Rush would brand librools, including myself, and I don’t know anyone even remotely like the stereotype. The people I know are instead caring, concerned, involved, generous, compassionate AND patriotic.
They protest what the White House has done, they get angry, BECAUSE they’re caring, concerned, involved, generous, compassionate and patriotic.
If we’re talking American ideals, the man who protests the official sanctioning of torture is a thousand times the better American than former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez. And it’s worse for people like me because Gonzalez, the greasy traitor to American ideals, was actually IN the government. My country’s government, MY government.
Hear the anger in what I’m writing? Yeah, I’m obviously royally pissed off. Is it because I’m a bad person? I’m hateful? I’m evil, and want to hurt somebody? I’m a little malcontent who needs to attack somebody to salve the hurt of his own personal failings and finds it safe to yap at distant government officials?
No, it’s because I CARE. And because I can see people like Gonzalez bring misery and death to people, other human beings like me, for no good reason. As a result of those people’s actions, sometime this week or this month or this year, somebody’s little girl died in Iraq. Seven years old, eight years old, a cute little kid with big eyes and a winning smile, a kid who loved and was loved, and today she’s buried in the sand somewhere, after being shot to death or bombed to death. By people who claim they’re doing it on my behalf.
And yet to Rush and company, the one who hates America is me. The people who gather in the streets to protest the war hate America. The Dixie Chicks are traitors because one of them used her Freedom of Speech, won on the blood of patriots, to toss off one short sentence expressing her own personal shame at President Bush.
I think Rush is describing a situation that’s about 180 degrees opposite of the truth, but I can’t do anything about it but squawk. It’s like living next door to the bully who beats his wife and children to death one night, hearing the whole thing and being afraid or unable to act.
Would that tend to make a person a little bit … excitable? Well, yeah, it would.
Regarding religion: Atheists hate God, they’re wrong, they’re bad, they can’t love anybody, they can’t have morals, they force children to learn discredited “theories,” they’re the same as Hitler and Stalin, they kill people, they want to bring this country to its knees, they want to stop people from worshipping as they please, they’re closed-minded, they’re too angry, they want to end free speech, they don’t understand what the Founding Fathers intended, they believe in an irrational “faith,” they want to murder babies … damn, what else?
I don’t know a single atheist, I’m not sure I’ve even MET one, who hated humanity, or wanted anything bad to happen to anybody.
What if you only wanted people to be fair? To care about justice and equal rights? To consider that their actions and beliefs have an effect on others, and to never give up trying to get things right?
Sure, you’re a Christian, and you see yourself as a good person, and therefore anybody who “disagrees” with you must be comparatively wrong. Oh, yeah, we have our little lubricating fiction “Well, we all have a right to our own beliefs, our own opinions.”
But …
I know a guy who, if you could only know him, REALLY know him, he’d bring you to your knees with admiration. He wants things to be right, to be good, and he feels compelled to care about it every minute of his life. He never stops caring about Good – I don’t think he’s capable of it. If he were a dog and they made a movie about him, he’d be Lassie and Balto and Hachiko and Greyfriar’s Bobby rolled into one, and the audience would leave the theater in tears every night at the love and compassion that shines out of him.
He’s an atheist, and a strong one.
He’s an atheist not because he’s a bad person, but because he’s a GOOD one. Because he cares about right and good and fair and just. Good things, true things, real things. Real knowledge. Real understanding. Getting the right answer. Never giving up trying to make things better.
He’d never say about himself, “Well, we all have a right to our own beliefs.” Because (I’m guessing without his ever having realized it consciously), he’d probably consider that something only a hopeless slacker would say. He could never let himself off so lightly.
He’d say: True things are true things because they’re true, not because of who says them, or how many say them, or because they’re written down in some holy book. He’d say: If I have something in my head that’s wrong, I want to know about it, and I want to fix it, to replace it with the right thing.
Because he cares about good, and right, and true, and because he can only feel good about himself if he continues to work toward bettering himself in those ways, he CAN’T have a closed mind. Because he can’t give up wanting good, he feels a constant concern, a never-ending second-guessing examination of himself that he might have tried harder, that he hasn’t done all he could.
Because he cares, and can’t stop caring, he can’t let himself believe in mystical things … because they’re too easy, too simplistic, too seductive, too WRONG.
Elsewhere I’ve written about several different types of atheists, but of the ones I consider the most enlightened, the ones like my friend who arrived at atheism because he thought about it for years and came to the best conclusion he could, ALL of them have been more or less like this. They’re strong people, independent thinkers, and they care.
Well, yes, they’re loud. Often angry. Increasingly vocal. Considering how things are in the U.S. today — damn, who wouldn’t be?