Religion...
While walking my dogs this morning, I was thinking about the
fact that some people get visibly shaken when they find out I'm an atheist... I
think they (mistakenly) associate a-theism with a-morality. That couldn't be
further from the truth. Most of the atheists I know are not only highly
intelligent but socially concerned and responsible. (Funny - I just thought of a
parallel between the way atheists and animal activists are misperceived by the
others ... many animal activists are mistakenly thought of as being
anti-human... compassion is compassion... if one has the ability to feel empathy
for other species, he has that much MORE capacity for compassion toward his
own... sorry to go off on a tangent, but had to express that thought).
When I was a kid I lived in Israel for 2 1/2 years... from the ages of 5 to 7
1/2. I attended kindergarten, first, and part of second grades there and my
first written language was Hebrew. Though my grandparents had been ultra
orthodox Jews, my mom was an atheist. I once asked my mom : "In school they
teach me that the world was created in 6 days and on the 7th day god rested...
then I come home and read the books on prehistory and evolution that you've
given to me... I don't understand... which ideas are right?"
My mom answered: " Different people have different theories and beliefs ...
you can believe whatever makes sense to you." (Boy, shouldn't more parents
be so open-minded?!)
The concept of god has never made sense to
me. I've always seen it as a fairy tale... fiction, fantasy, like superman,
santa claus, or the tooth fairy.* Religions, however, do fascinate me. And I
will always support peoples' freedom to believe whatever they want... as long as
they don't hurt anyone.
*[...though I MUST confess, at one point during my adolescence, I did rebel and
desperately tried to embrace the concept of a supreme being or god but try as I
might I could not make any rational sense of it and could find no PROOF of the
existence of such an entity.]
I guess I think of religion as a DRUG. It makes no sense to
me. [I had a house fire in August of '98, and all the next day people were
coming over to me and saying "Thank god you're allright"... I
thought to myself "NO, THANK THE FIREMEN!"...but of course I
smiled politely, and just appreciated their good wishes.] Though I may see
theists as misguided and delusional ( I'm sure many of them think the same of me
and my lack of belief) I believe people have the right to do as they please with
their bodies...including take any drug they feel they need to take to
anesthetize themselves from the discomforts of life... as long as the drug does
not distort their perception so much that they do not realize when it is
contributing to their harming of others. (Unfortunately, often it does.)
Recently, a friend of mine said that an acquaintance of hers had quit
drinking (apparently she'd been a hard core alcoholic) and has become a
born-again Christian... to me that's just replacing one DRUG with another...
HOWEVER, if she feels the side effects of that particular drug are less
intrusive to her life and the lives of her loved ones (let's face it - most
people are just concerned with themselves and their little worlds), then I guess
it serves some purpose for her.
As a nurse, I have always encouraged people to take comfort in whatever
beliefs or imagery they needed to help them cope, all the time realizing that
though these beliefs may seem silly or juvenile to me, they are obviously
contributing to the patient's sense of well-being, and ultimately to his
wellness. I do not inflict my way of thinking on anybody (I don't think anyone
has the right to do that) and have always been (or at least tried to be)
tolerant of peoples' diversity. In fact I've found them fascinating, and I tend
to focus on their parallels rather than their differences.
I have not, however, encountered much tolerance of my lack of belief. I
have come across everything from pity to disbelief to outright rage.
A couple of years ago, when my son Jules wrote an essay on Thanksgiving which
involved his admission that he was an atheist and that the person he felt most
thankful to was his mom, who brought him into the world and nurtured him, there
was an immediate and permanent change in his teacher's attitude toward him. She
became very impatient and intolerant of him, and he could do nothing right in
her eyes (whereas before the essay he was practically her "pet"). It
was a beautiful essay in which he described his lack of witnessing any evidence
of any god or miracles... as opposed to the miraculous effect of dogs on people
who are gravely ill, elderly, mentally handicapped, or lonely. Semi-jokingly he
proclaimed his belief in "DOG" because that was something tangible to
him... something he had proof of.
Why can't we be tolerant of the fact that people think differently than we do?
I'll always remember George Carlin's "My god has a bigger dick than your
god" routine. Though I find it hysterically funny, I simultaneously find it
pathetically accurate .
As I've said before, we have a lot of growing up to do as a species.
5/18/06
Here is a Newsweek opinion piece on angry
atheists (below it is my response):
"Trying
to Understand Angry Atheists" by Rabbi Marc
Gellman
Click here for:
My response
Great Quote by
David Attenborough
(in response to question by Simon Mayo about
whether his observation of the natural world has given him faith in a
creator):
"My response is that when Creationists talk about
God creating every individual species as a separate
act, they always instance hummingbirds, or orchids,
sunflowers and beautiful things. But I tend to think
instead of a parasitic worm that is boring through
the eye of a boy sitting on the bank of a river in
West Africa, [a worm] that's going to make him
blind. And [I ask them], 'Are you telling me that
the God you believe in, who you also say is an
all-merciful God, who cares for each one of us
individually, are you saying that God created this
worm that can live in no other way than in an
innocent child's eyeball? Because that doesn't seem
to me to coincide with a God who's full of mercy."
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