Intolerance

I sadly had to leave the blog of Richard Beck after I made comments regarding my support for the founder of the Chick-Fil-A franchise, in-as-much as his right to express his opinion regarding marriage. I was attacked as a "homophobe" and slandered without cause, and when I responded, my comments were censored and deleted by the Moderator. Such is "tolerance" in modern academia.

There is much irony in all of this, as I consider myself a survivor of the indoctrination of Dr. Beck's church. During my lifetime I have seen so much intolerance, misunderstanding, and mistreatment of people in my family and circle of friends by those who claim their only goal is our "personal salvation". It goes back in my life all the way to my childhood pastor, a self-worshiping little man who was abusive of his power, as well as both cruel and malicious to me personally and publicly. So many times in my discussions with Evangelicals (and I have had many more than one might perhaps imagine), the question which always comes to my mind is this: "Are you really thinking seriously about what you are saying, or are you simply regurgitating what others have told you?" Because to be perfectly candid, so much of what I have always heard said is either fanciful, dishonest, imaginary, or illogical. So how can any honest and truly thoughtful individual have a rational conversation with a person whose mind is filled with ancient mythology as current reality? You really cannot.

If faith and belief in God informs and comforts a person, how are they made aware of this? In other words, how do they know that they are being comforted? Is it a feeling? Do they fall into a trance? I do not know how else you could experience it. Is it only, then, a belief, like some people believe in elves or unicorns? How is it that their feelings are more trustworthy for me than my own?

People are, of course, entitled to believe whatever they wish about life after death. However, they must also be aware that five or six hundred years ago many of the things they hold as "true" -- if known to those in the official Christian church of that time -- would have resulted in their being excommunicated at best and burned at the stake at worst. And these same people too were constantly quoting passages from the Bible as both proof and justification for their beliefs and actions. They still persist in some form even to this day. Were they simply misguided? Were they wrong? And who gives those with a secular agenda that same authority now over me?

Some will continue to wonder, I am sure, at what harm has come to me by way of my association with the Evangelical Christian church. The list is too broad and deep to enumerate here (yet again), but it is with much dismay that I must currently be separated from someone I love due to the nonsense with which others are filling her brain. She claims to have "returned to the faith", and is desperate that all in her family join her as she fervently believes the world is now ending. She believes not only the prophecies of the Old and New Testaments, but also in such things as catastrophes from outer space, a "Planet X", or Nibiru, which will soon strike the Earth and kill many people, the changing of the shadow across the Moon, great "booms" from the sky above, and other things, none of which I have ever seen written about in any Bible. Why the need for "add-on" mythology? To add credibility or further urgency to otherwise tenuous beliefs? People seldom start and stop with just the Scriptures; they interpret and augment, and this leads to ever more fanciful ideas, it seems. This is the usual outcome with minds that seem unable to distinguish between reality and fiction.

And that is the central problem with all religion. Everyone is free to make things up. All human fears and unknowns can be soothed and "explained" by way of faith in that which is both unknowable and unprovable. It's really very convenient, and that is the reason religion is so persistent in the human experience. I will state once again my main objection to this worldview:

They believe that an all-knowing and perfect God created everything. They believe that all human beings are created in his image -- body and soul. They believe that the very first humans rebelled. (Was that a matter of convenience, or inevitable to the narrative? Why couldn't there have been even one or two generations who remained "perfect"?) Anyway, so all of humanity is born with a "stain of sin", and they must "pay" or atone for this sin forevermore by both dying and then going to Hell. They believe this because God is perfect and cannot tolerate "sin", and that it must somehow be punished. And they do not recognize this as the prototypical human paradigm, based solely on temporal human existence and experience and therefore licensing us to control and manipulate each other -- especially parents and children, teachers and students, ministers and congregations, and governments and citizens. (I shall leave the canonical escape route to others to debate).

In other words, as I understand this belief system, God is perfectly Just and created all human beings with an innate sense of this Justice. And as I understand Justice, culpability is a factor, i.e., in order for an offense to be committed, a person must first and foremost be aware of some rule or law, as well as their responsibility for breaking it. Therefore, neither an infant nor an idiot would be culpable. As well, I had no volition or choice in the matter of my own creation/birth. My "innate sense of Justice" (the voice of God inside me) tells me that since I am not culpable, this "sin" cannot JUSTLY be held against me. To sentence my soul to eternal Hell simply for the sin of being created is both cruel and unjust. This is the voice of God within me. No one can object to this. And there is simply no way for any Evangelical to talk their way out of the corner of this theological room into which they have painted themselves.

The scenarios played out in both the Bible and in the minds of people of all faiths have too much in common with this temporal existence to be plausible as an explanation for some eternal endgame -- for life beyond the grave. There is just too much of this present reality there. Right and wrong, good and evil, God and Satan, Heaven and Hell, sin and punishment, justice and mercy -- all sound too much to me just like life here on Earth as we know it. Religion is a way of control over humans. Without it there is chaos. A system had to be put forth in order to make sense of this life, in order to give it meaning, purpose, and ultimately control. Enter the creation myths, the gods, superstition, mythology, and every other type of explanation for something we all fear and do not understand.

Instead of lacking "faith", how about viewing me as honest with myself and my own doubts? What kind of God is it whom they manufacture who wishes me to lie and be dishonest with both Him and myself in order to attain some type of spiritual reward? If He is as they say He is, He would know my thoughts even before I do myself. One thing he would also know about me is that I -- unlike almost every Christian I have ever met or known -- refuse to be a hypocrite. I have known only a small handful of "Christian" people over the past 60 years who were not frauds and hypocrites with self-serving agendas. Many, many lives whose actions belie a set of beliefs. Their belief system is transparent and hollow to me.

Finally, I have always been in agreement with Socrates -- "The unexamined life is not worth living". Because of the circumstances of my birth -- poverty, hunger, genetic disease, abandonment -- I knew from the very start that living this life is a serious business. Not a day has gone by when I was not in some form of contemplation of it all.

As for the good doctor........

"When I left him, I reasoned thus with myself: I am wiser than this man, for neither of us appears to know anything great and good; but he fancies he knows something, although he knows nothing; whereas I, as I do not know anything, so I do not fancy I do. In this trifling particular, then, I appear to be wiser than he, because I do not fancy I know what I do not know."...........Socrates