Posted by:
An Atheist
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Date: January 07, 2018 07:27PM
A:
https://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-problem-with-atheismComments:
I see Sam Harris' points, but don't entirely agree. He minimizes the struggles to [reduce racism] by citing the civil rights movement of the Sixties. In this country alone, when "the majority" of citizens went along in silence with slavery, there were then abolitionists, a civil war, and then, a century after that war, the "right" to sit in the front of the bus. Add another sixty years, and the losers' monuments are starting to come down. To call the number of those who oppose the removal of those racist icons "fringe," -I can only say that Harris did not have the benefit of seeing members of congress, POTUS, and many of those who voted for POTUS in the raw, as the article is dated 2007. I wonder if his views remain unaffected by more recent history. In less than forty years, the end of the civil war will be at it's bi-centennial, and we still we have the fight. That biblically-based fight, I might add. Dark skin and the authority to own others.
Moving that line of thinking into religion, and comparing religion to meditation, one involving metaphysics and one not, but imparting feelings of contentedness as being a primary goal of both, I would again have to disagree. If the purpose of [most] religions were those feelings of being contented, feeling sated and at peace, the religious would not seek to run the government, not seek to control the sexual lives of others, not insist that the world is 6000 years old, not do this and do that, which harms so many. They would be contented, find peace and joy within themselves and in their own worship.
I can put it in another light. Take the Americas, North, Cental and South. If the inhabitants of these lands are primarily religious, where are their souls, the collective souls of morality and peace, of right and wrong, in stopping the denuding of American rain forests? Do they not have enough collective abundance, knowledge and grace to know that it is wrong, and find a way to provide for those peoples, who instead are growing cows, while the religious majority snoozes right through a destruction that cannot be undone? No, let's talk about gay cakes and dead plantation-owner icons.
There was a time an abolitionist had to stand and declare that slavery was wrong. He had to pick up arms, or support those who were able. He had to take on the label, wear the uniform, support the cause of freedom.
The same has been true of religious beliefs, through the ages. We need not elaborate on that history, but suffice it to say that there are those in this country still calling for the deaths of those who do not believe as they do.
I believe the most rational way for me to state my non-belief in invisible creatures who possess magic powers is to say I'm agnostic. I can neither prove nor disprove. But I don't say that, because I feel it to be a dodge, fence-sitting, a way of hiding that I do not now nor will I ever believe it unless I see it. I do believe it's more comfortable for believers for me to say I'm agnostic, but at this point, I am much less interested in the comfort of the majority than I am in the support of non-believers, those who may be afraid, as most of us have been.
And I ask:
1. Why are they afraid?
They are afraid of the religious. Of losing friends, family, home, children, jobs, community. It is the very nature of believing in a "one true god." Either that god has the power to create a universe, the power over life and death, or he does not. If he does not, then I'm not so sure that one could call that being a "god." And if he does have those powers, what human being, who truly believes, would seek the company of, or aid and comfort another who is willing to risk the wrath of that powerful god?
Those who would abandon an [atheist], a living, breathing human being for the sake of a god they can only hope to exist, I mean to call them out. Those who *know* the science of their religious texts to be *truer* than the science of mankind, those who worry not for the condition of a planet their god can [recreate as an Eden], I mean to show them their discomfort with me. I mean to make them admit (internally) that they live in total fear of an invisible god and the leaders who define that god, and that it causes them to shun and harm humans who do not believe as they do, causes them to make uninformed choices based in ignorance.
Religion is about the same sort of power that racists want and use. A self-made majority, power of god and country, definers of right and wrong, our way or the hghiway.
They make assertions: Our god lives, and is maker and ruler of the universe, and you will live according to his law.
To them I say, prove him.
I am atheist. Those three words. I don't have to say anything else.
Agnostic is too soft a word to counter the harm they cause, as they sleep, as they make war on and invest power in insignificant things. Evil is not an invisible adversary, it is believing in one.