Opinionated

kurafire:

friendlyatheist:

ih8religion:

A brilliant cartoon from the folks over at American Atheist.

It does not surprise me one bit that the majority of folks in prison identify as Judeo-Christian … but it still makes me laugh!

Don’t keep the faith,
I H8 RELIGION

Love the graphic.

So, I used to be all over stuff like this. “Boo, religion!” I would chant along metaphorically. “Religion is the source of intolerance!” But not anymore.

The problem is, things like this comic don’t help the situation. Fighting intolerance with a slightly more intelligent form of intolerance is like using refined gasoline to clean up raw crude on the Gulf Shore. It’s not gonna do any good.

Sure, the general atheist demographic is anywhere between 10-30% in most of the western countries, and sure, for those same countries the number of atheists in prison is well below a single percentage. Congratulations, you’ve proven… what, exactly? That atheists are less likely to commit a crime? Great, now what?

It’s perfectly okay to feel proud for being an atheist, but being condescending and hurtful about it doesn’t make you a particularly better human being at all. You may still be smarter or more intelligent; you may still have a better job or education, or work harder or get more done, but if the result of all that is that you, as a person, take on an intolerant, exclusive stance towards people who are religious, then you’re every bit as much part of the problem.

Yes, there has been an inordinate amount of killing and suffering in the name of religion throughout human history, and no, Mao, Pol Pot and Stalin did not do their killing in the name of atheism. There are countless of examples wherein religion has influenced or crafted the reasoning used by people to justify the killing or suppression of others, but similarly there are countless of examples where this is not the case. Some conflicts are inherently religious—e.g. Israel vs. Palestine—but even in those cases, preaching about the virtues of atheism in an intolerant and derogatory manner will not make one iota of difference.

And yes, the Vatican/Catholic Church is a great source of wrongdoing and evil in today’s world, but that doesn’t mean that every Christian is a bad person, or even that every Catholic person is bad. Neither does it condemn Christianity across the board.

I once, for some period of time in my life, subscribed to Richard Dawkins’ attitude of Militant Atheism. Whilst presented quite amusingly at TED one year, the truth is that it fights a flame that has burned down as many houses as it has simply warmed with no ill effect. And, it fights it with more fire, which, unsurprisingly, doesn’t really work.

To combat the problems that some, not all but some, religions bring into the world, we would do much better to fight the individual intolerant claims, the encouragement of intolerance (or worse, violence), and the hatred that some of its followers spread. Not, as some atheists seem to think (and I was once one of them), the religion as a whole, or all of the people who subscribe to it.

An ideal world is not one devoid of religion, but one wherein every human being can live in harmony and acceptance amongst others. There is plenty of room for religion and faith in that picture; the one thing absent from it is intolerance and resentment towards other people for things like who they are or what they believe in.

If we want to make the world a better, smarter and happier place for us all to live in, we should focus on the things that are actually a problem. In this particular case, Hypocrisy: thy face is in the mirror.

The two cents of a different kind of atheist.

I like your train of thought but unfortunately it’s not gonna happen. Not in our lifetime. For the simple reason that most religions are intolerant by nature. Their ‘holy books’ are full of intolerant teachings. An important part of religion and the way it’s designed to ‘stick’ and spread is the sense of superiority it teaches. The bible, quoran, thora etc. are full of teachings of intolerance.

So while I agree it would be great to all live in harmony, religious people and atheists alike, we’d first need to thoroughly ‘re-invent’ all major religions of the world for this to work out.

The two cents of a fellow atheist.