Reading back on one of my old blog entries, during a period of naval-gazing excessive even by my standards, I realise I was rather hard on religion. The modern Christian church, I wrote, repelled me because of the large numbers of bigots it still attracts. Thinking about it, I realise this was based solely on what I've read in the newspapers about Christianity. An argument which is only acceptable if we can assume that journalists are empirical and rational reporters of truth. But what's been my actual experience of practicing Christians - and those of other faiths? That almost all are tolerant and clear-minded, strong in their beliefs but unwilling to impose them on others. The bigots come in other hues.
A lot of my group discussions about religion have been like this. A careful, thoughtful examination of contrasting opinions. And one voice which states "I think religion's a load of bollocks." It starts early and continues striking as regular as a clock. Even when the owner is assured that you heard him/her the first time, they continue. Because they feel that this statement which should be the start and end of the debate.
Press them a bit harder and things get no better. This sort of person isn't just an athiest themselves, they're outraged that anyone is anything else. Science, you will soon hear, has proved that religion is a load of bollocks. Believing something just because it's written in a book is ludicrous. Uh huh. Unfortunately much scientific 'fact' is in fact just hypothosis, much of it gets disproved later and the first civilisation to offer rational alternatives to religion, the ancient Greeks, got virtually everything hilariously wrong. There's also the problem of where the athiest actually learned so much about science. Did they actually do the experiments themselves? Or did they, well, read about them in a book and put their faith in them? Plus I'm not sure that a great deal in the Bible, say, has been comprehensively debunked. The world took rather longer than six days to create and that's pretty much all you can say. The best science has been able to do is prove that miracles are extremely unlikely. I think people always knew that. That's why they called the things miracles.
Oh, and there's the killing. This is the fervent athiest's next and apparently irrefutable argument. People kill one another because of religion so it should be abolished right now. Well, yes, it has caused a lot of bloodshed. And people also fight wars because of political systems, property, territorial boundaries, ethnicity and trade. Often these are the sole cause and religion is just used as fancy dress. So we'll get rid of all of them, shall we, and go back to living in the ocean. People fight wars for a lot of reasons and one of the most common is intolerance.
Athiesm has become an alternative religion in western civilisation over the past two centuries. It has its prophets (the Enlightenment thinkers) its holy books (Origin of Species or, to those of a certain hue, Das Kapital) and its icons (the DNA symbol, the Genesis-refuting dinosaur bones). It has the vast majority of its believers perfectly willing to accept that others may have different opinions. And it has its bigots spitting venom at the heretics - and being especially bitter because they can't even threaten anyone with hellfire.
A lot of my group discussions about religion have been like this. A careful, thoughtful examination of contrasting opinions. And one voice which states "I think religion's a load of bollocks." It starts early and continues striking as regular as a clock. Even when the owner is assured that you heard him/her the first time, they continue. Because they feel that this statement which should be the start and end of the debate.
Press them a bit harder and things get no better. This sort of person isn't just an athiest themselves, they're outraged that anyone is anything else. Science, you will soon hear, has proved that religion is a load of bollocks. Believing something just because it's written in a book is ludicrous. Uh huh. Unfortunately much scientific 'fact' is in fact just hypothosis, much of it gets disproved later and the first civilisation to offer rational alternatives to religion, the ancient Greeks, got virtually everything hilariously wrong. There's also the problem of where the athiest actually learned so much about science. Did they actually do the experiments themselves? Or did they, well, read about them in a book and put their faith in them? Plus I'm not sure that a great deal in the Bible, say, has been comprehensively debunked. The world took rather longer than six days to create and that's pretty much all you can say. The best science has been able to do is prove that miracles are extremely unlikely. I think people always knew that. That's why they called the things miracles.
Oh, and there's the killing. This is the fervent athiest's next and apparently irrefutable argument. People kill one another because of religion so it should be abolished right now. Well, yes, it has caused a lot of bloodshed. And people also fight wars because of political systems, property, territorial boundaries, ethnicity and trade. Often these are the sole cause and religion is just used as fancy dress. So we'll get rid of all of them, shall we, and go back to living in the ocean. People fight wars for a lot of reasons and one of the most common is intolerance.
Athiesm has become an alternative religion in western civilisation over the past two centuries. It has its prophets (the Enlightenment thinkers) its holy books (Origin of Species or, to those of a certain hue, Das Kapital) and its icons (the DNA symbol, the Genesis-refuting dinosaur bones). It has the vast majority of its believers perfectly willing to accept that others may have different opinions. And it has its bigots spitting venom at the heretics - and being especially bitter because they can't even threaten anyone with hellfire.
No comments:
Post a Comment