Letters to the Editor
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Oh please
I don't need an anthropologist's permission to believe in god.
I'm really sick and tired of the way people talk about evolution as if it explains everything. Yes, evolution is obviously real, but that doesn't mean that everything about life, about human behavior was caused by evolution. That is the height of unscientific, illogical thinking. Find something that science does not explain? Evolution did it of course! Whereas before there was the "god of the gaps", now there is "evolution of the gaps". Atheists found themselves a hammer and now they think everything is a nail.
Sadly, it is often the case, but spirituality does not have to be about blind faith. People experience things that science does not explain every single day. Skeptics write it off as brain farts but that is not good enough, it does not explain the eerie coincidences. People in isolated cultures experience the same things, so it's not just a "meme". If it was just a meme it would die out anyway, instead of being constant throughout all of humanity and history.
I used to be agnostic, leaning towards atheist. I thought there was no proof, so why believe? But then, one day god tapped me on the shoulder and alerted me to his presences, so to speak. I had a near-death experience that changed my life. After that I realized that there was nothing to fear, not even death, because my soul will live forever. I don't follow any organized religions, but after that, and now, I look around and see the proof was there all along, all around me.
But still, I think it's a waste of time to preach to atheists. They are people who are the impenetrable combination of ignorant and dense. They are the country of the blind that won't suffer us uppity one-eyed creatures. They are people who just have not reached the level of maturity where they can understand, perhaps god does hasn't gotten around to them yet. It's like magic-eye, some people just see a bunch of random dots, and others know how focus and see the design embedded inside. It's like a mathematical proof, the symbols on the page prove nothing to people who do not have the intelligence and background knowledge to understand it. People do often see meaning in things that do not have meaning, but that is no reason to assume religious experience is one of them.
But I guess all of this has little to do with the article here. The article is just more glib dismissal of the real issues... so typical of contemporary thought on the matter. Completely missing is the examination of the contents of religions. Instead, they write politically-correct blather built on the baseless assumption that spirituality is the result of evolution at all. Soon I'll be reading articles about how evolution explains my belief in rutabagas. Maybe people believe in god because... gee whiz, I dunno... because of what they have personally seen and experienced?
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By that definition, my cat is the pope
Good grief. If you define "religion" as "compassionate action," then you could call any animal that notices and is affected by the actions of any other animal "religious."
Deer and wild turkeys in my driveway scatter when my car pulls in - does that make me their god?
Religion was invented by modern humans for modern humans for one reason and one reason only: to exert social control.
That humans, or pre-humans, or the primate ancestor, were capable of simple animal emotions that made it easier to swallow religion's idiocies is beside the point.
That point being: "religious beliefs" that prevent human beings from using science to understand the world and survive in it without destroying it and each other are not just quaint or old-fashioned. Today, they present a clear and present lethal danger to the survival of humanity.
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But seriously folks
So, when was the last time the Atheist Witnesses came trespassing on your property knocking on your door unannounced and uninvited to try to convert you to their way of thinking?
Never but I can't remember the last time a religious organization did it either. Maybe the Jehovah's witnesses left a leaflet in my door once 15 years ago though.
But that's all besides the point since we all know there's one heck of a lot of ways to cram one's ideology down anothers throat without ringing anyones doorbell.
So..
If you're suggesting that athiests haven't equally tried to use laws and the political system and courts to instill their beliefs on the public that largely doesn't agree with them.... If you're suggesting that athiests don't regularly try to browbeat the Democratic Party into litmus testing out the religious (Jewish or Christian anyway)...
If you're suggesting that athiests haven't and don't continue to attack the moderate Democrats who understand alientating religious folks had damned near made the party extinct across 2500 square miles of America ... And if you want to maintain that athiests don't rush out to whatever Christian and political dialogues they can find simply to shout down and piss on people who are believers for their "stupidity", than I can only conclude that your "ilk" as another rabid one phrased it, are on different planets breathing air of different atomic composition than the rest of us.
Understand I don't like the religious right one bit. But I don't like the obnoxious athiest crowd either. And I agree with the person who per se suggested Salon is increasingly throwing red meat to it's rabids in the same way Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter do, by publishing this and similar baiting articles.
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dear bocabaconburger-
How wonderful and superior and enlightened you must be!
"They are people who just have not reached the level of maturity where they can understand, perhaps god does hasn't gotten around to them yet."
Man, is it any wonder that atheists have gotten sick of believers' sh*t by now? I think you just proved a very good point we have all been trying to make... about the smug, self-satisfied, self-congratulatory attitude we are all sick and tired of.
But that's nice that you're going to survive your own death, though.