Sunday, May 13, 2012

Reason #42

Here's the thing: One of the biggest questions I see leveled at Atheists is, "Why do you people always act like you're so damned intelligent?" This inquiry is usually shouted, typed in all caps, or in some other way inflected with sarcasm and disdain. The fact is, intelligence is a measurement of ones understanding and synthesis of known facts. The short answer, therefore, is "because we are." Call it arrogant all you want, but when you bleed all the humanity out of it, the truth of the matter is that if I know and understand something that is scientifically provable, and is backed up by a wealth of evidence, and you either don't, or intentionally deny it, then from a definitive angle, I'm more intelligent. Sure, it sounds pompous, but it's true.

It astonished me that in every other area, if someone believes and is adamant about something that has no basis in fact, they are clinically insane, but with religion, it's acceptable. If you insist that the sky is a polka dotted blanket, you're clearly a nutjob. If you go around trying to convince people that your imaginary friend not only bore the weight of the all the sins of humanity on his shoulders, but simultaneously absolved the world of them, yet demands unquestioning fealty in exchange for his unconditional love or he'll throw you into a fiery septic tank for all of eternity... well, that's okay, you're perfectly normal. You're just expressing your religion. Okay, fine.

Why? Why is this okay? Why is it arrogant to think about what you read? Why is it evil to question? Why is it wrong to demand proof? The world in which we live is profound and awesome in the truest sense of the word. Why is curiosity shunned? Why is it okay for people to blindly shuffle through life assuming an invisible sky wizard made everything from dust, rather than celebrate the amazing and elegant triumph that is humanity?

When you go through this infinitesimally short time period called life, and don't stop to wonder at anything because "god musta done it," and you don't bother thinking about the incredible intricacies of life because it's "his will," you become complacent. You stagnate, and when you operate under the assumption that everything is taken care of for you, in addition to walking around with a sense of entitlement, you slough off accountability. That is truly arrogant, and that is why, while I respect your constitutional right to have and express your religion, I do not, nor am I required to respect the religion itself anymore than I am obligated to revere the ramblings of schizophrenic and hold them as gospel.

2 comments:

  1. Hey, don't get too down on the clinically insane. We're in good company. Tesla, Nietzsche, Howard Hughes, even Darwin, messiah of the evolutionists, had his fair share of neurosis (in a game similar to scrabble someone put down an "M" in front of the word "other" and he vehemently insisted that there was no such word).

    Now don't get me wrong. I'm not defending closed minded, judgmental hypocrites. I'm defending the clinically insane. Those who have gazed too long into the abyss and been changed, who have pierced the veil and found their own perception of reality altered.

    After all, a majority of universal laws are built on motion. Even heat/fire, that wondrous magical thing that separated an infinitely dense chunk of matter into its individual components of solid/earth, liquid/water, and gas/air (and perhaps void as that elusive 5th element) is nothing more than varying degrees of vibrational frequency. And motion relies on time, and time, as a lot of people in the field of quantum mechanics have theorized, doesn't really exist, and is only another perception that our (currently) limited minds use to try to make sense of this mess. You don't spend your life contemplating such truths without going a little loopy, imho.

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  2. You know me. I'm not getting down on the clinically insane (especially since that would be markedly hypocritical of me), but some forms are stubbornly more detrimental than others.

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