It's funny how I keep getting emails like this from Christians I often get messages with a few ...s in the middle, it seems the writer expects me to add the complicated concepts myself or perhaps they think that ... is actually a knockdown argument? But this guy was different. He used the multiple dot technique.
In what way is atheism a religion? In the same way that Manchester United is a religion? And why do you think that is a charge worth levelling? Do you think I haven't addressed that point dozens of times already? Do you think that being a religion is a bad thing? If you don't why do make that charge? Why should I spend time attacking religions that are dead and dying? It would be a pretty stupid thing to do. Why would I attack Islam when I can publish articles written by a man raised as a Muslim? Christianity is a religion I know something about and Christianity is the religion adhered to by the majority of people who take issue with my writing. Nothing more or less. I'm sorry if that doesn't fit your stereotype of a bitter twisted man in denial, or rebelling against his upbringing, or was I a victim of paedophilia or perhaps you think I was not a proper Christian but a Catholic? I've had all those lines tossed at me on a regular basis. I'm immune. I am an atheist because I don't believe in God, nobody made me an atheist. I target Christianity in particular because I understand it better and I can make a clearer case and I can also find more people to debate with. But frankly I've had your "debate" (if you can call " ....... " a debate) about twenty times already. It bores me. Do you expect me to fill in the gaps according to your way of thinking? Do you expect me to confess that deep down I do actually believe in God? Pah!
That was a BIG mistake. Quoting Webster at me. That man was guilty of the greatest cultural crime since the burning of the library at Alexandria, the attempt to divide the English speaking community up into two warring camps. He's not my favourite American. One of the chief problems of being an atheist is knowing there isn't a chance that Noah Webster is getting his just deserts in Hell. My atheism is not a religion in the first sense of the word, only in a very loose reading of the second loose and wishy-washy sense. There is nothing institutionalized about my beliefs, they are a fluid set liable to be changed at any time in the light of better knowledge or understanding. In the five years I have been writing my website my beliefs about the existence of God have shifted to become weak atheist rather than strong atheist and my belief in a historical Jesus has changed from “probably myth based on history” to “probably myth based on myth”. There are no practices that go with my atheism. My atheism fits the category of religion as well as ketchup fits the category of vegetable or cow's urine fits the category of beverage. I hold my beliefs with passion, I make no apology for that. You seem to have mistaken that passion for hatred. You are not the first person to make that mistake. Many people have held passionate views before and have expressed them in strong language but have not been filled up with hate, think of JFK, FDR, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela. There is no need to have a personal hatred towards particular people to be a passionate believer and spokesman of a cause. I get fired up at the idea that millions of otherwise rational people are falling for such blatant mind control as religions offer. It annoys me intensely when I see good people swallowing such transparent lies and tricks. I don't hate the religious as a whole, only a tiny minority of charlatans and cult founders are doing anything that I would class as evil. I respect the sincerity of most religious people and that does nothing to reduce my frustration at their actions. I don't hate religious people, I see them mostly as victims, but victims all too often become abusers themselves. The idea that I hate God is a non-starter. I don't believe in God. Do you hate the undead evil that is Count Dracula? I trust you find the idea almost meaningless or laughable. If you don't believe something exists it isn't very sensible to say that you hate it. I am not certain that there is no god of any sort. It is just about conceivable that some sort of godlike entity exists. The way I can conceive of such an entity makes the idea of hating such a god to be rather meaningless. I am fairly confident that the Christian vision of God cannot exist in the way Christians speak of him. I regard that god the same as I regard gods of other mythologies, hatred doesn't seem appropriate. I can't admire a tribal god who could create billions of galaxies just to watch a few thousand years of human history unfold, getting jealous of other gods (how does that work in a monotheistic religion?) and telling his chosen people to rape, murder and enslave other peoples and mutilate the genitals of their own children for his pleasure or glory. I don't admire that character, but I see that character as a fictional character, both badly written and unsympathetic. I don't hate that God any more than I hate other unsympathetic fictional characters such as Skeletor, The Penguin, Montgomery Burns, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, Lord Voldermort or indeed Satan. None of those characters exists and as I have never really believed that they do I have never bothered to consider the possibility of hating them. I am frustrated by believers, infuriated and exasperated, but there is no hatred there. I want the world to be a better place. I think the idea of peace and goodwill to all men and a universal brotherhood of mankind to be a thoroughly Good Thing. I see religion as the biggest single obstacle to achieving that goal. That is what you detect. Passion. A passion born of love and hope, not hate. Martin Willett http://mwillett.org/
And I hope the lifestyle comes together. Is it surprising that I have some confidence in the stuff I write about? The internet is full of boring teen angst websites written by people who don't know their own mind, or if they've got one. A lot of people find a strident opinionated approach to be refreshing. I don't know everything and I acknowledge that, but I do know what I believe in and I make no apology for that. You have navigated your way onto the site, if you don't like what you see you can always navigate off. |
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