This isn't a poem, but I do have some emotions to share and for me that's what this blog is for, the emotional side of atheism.
So there were hurricanes in New Orleans. Again. Just last week. And as I think of how hard it must be, to have lost everything, and be struggling again, and the fear and uncertainty, knowing that you have faced one of the worst disasters in American history just seven years ago, and you might have to do it again.
While watching news about it at my workplace I overheard a conversation between coworkers. One guy (whom I don’t know well) “Well, you know New Orleans has one of the highest crime rates in the country. It’s a den of sin. It seems to me God’s just killing ‘em all. He’s carving them out of there.”
I was on the other side of the room. I was not part of the conversation, and it is a workplace, so fortunately before I could get across the room, the waitress launched into him. “I have family there. You just shut up, you’re hateful and ignorant.” He was obviously distressed. “I meant no offense”…and backed off. She stormed off. I glared at him. He turned to the one remaining guy. “I was just saying how it looks to me.” I walked off, and thanked the waitress for standing up to him, and told her I had friends who were from New Orleans.
There are people there, real people. Not sinners, not beings god wants to kill, but people. And any suggestion otherwise is hateful.
This is what believing in God does. When you try to ascribe motives to these things, when you believe there’s “a plan,” it seems obvious most people take the next step. God punishes sinners, God rewards the virtuous. Those living a good life must be virtuous. Those in need must lead terrible lives and deserve their fate. It’s a natural progression. Instead of looking at science and nature, and reaching out to help those in need, some know it’s “all in God’s hand.” It lets people stop trying, stop worrying, and stop caring about others. “God cares, so I don’t’ have to”
Most of my life I’ve been an agnostic. “I don’t know, and I’m not sure I can know.” For years I wanted to believe, to believe in God, because it seemed easier. Knowing it would be OK, knowing there’s a point, knowing there is justice. But I was not capable of actual belief. I could pretend, I could lie, but well that’s not true, I couldn’t do those things, I couldn’t even really try. Certainly not in the name of “God” and certainly not when it would mean turning my back on the real world as I felt and believed.
I used to think “once you know, you’re probably doing it wrong. “ So it really bothers me that I’ve grown more and more certain of things as I’ve gotten older. I’ve gone from agnostic, to atheist, and more recently, firmly Anti-Theist. Anti-theism is the belief that religion is harmful and destructive to the world. Honestly It does occur to me that you could be ‘spiritually christian’ and still understand the tenets behind Anti-Theism, but it still feels more like a natural extension of my growing certainty. My certainty that the world and the universe exists without god, and without a plan, and that whenever we steer away from that, whenever we look ‘outside ourselves’ for answers, whenever we plea to a higher power, we allow harm to come to us and the world around us. The more I look at religious beliefs themselves, the more I only see harm in it.
But the more I see the Christian Wrong try to take over our country, and preach their hate and intolerance, the more I am driven to battle the ideas themselves, the very foundations that allow them to follow the natural conclusions, that God must have a plan and so I don’t have to care.
I just hope I’m right and that this backlash, this huge wave of craziness that’s sweeping the republican party, and the country, is the last wave, the last gasp of air before hatred, ignorance and a clinging to ancient ideas drowns in a sea of compassion and logic. I’m braced though, because I think these people can hold their breath a really long time.
