(Henri Rousseau.)
Why are there so few atheists?
Atheism is the toughest religion of all. It demands much of its practitioners, not the least of which is the ditching of sentiment and a linear, logical approach to all things in life. A life which is completely subjective, based on sensations, based on raw emotions, and as some would have it, one that is hallucinatory at best. Some people believe that, or at least they say they do. They never really live that way, do they? Everything is an illusion, they say. My opinion is that therefore they cannot possibly have any knowledge, but that doesn’t hold back the tide of their opinions, does it? It’s not going to hold mine back either.
To be an atheist is to always be alone, without even God for comfort. You think about that for a minute—even the smuggest hypocrite secretly relies on God’s forgiveness, for surely He understands when no one else could. When caught, (in anything,) they hang their head in shame.
Surely they must believe at that exact moment in time. Otherwise what are you ashamed of?
Partly because of its intellectual rigour, and possibly because it claims no higher source of knowledge, law or even succor, detractors would state that atheism is completely amoral and therefore without worth. The fact is that the sacrifices demanded of the individual atheist are many. Some of them are quite onerous.
Think of a lifestyle with no Halloween, no Easter, no Christmas. Think of a belief system with no angels, no demons, no vampires, no cupids, no goblins, no spirits and no ghosts. Think of a belief system that pays no credit to miracles, accepts no divine intervention, no revelation, and has no dogma. It has no ritual, no candles and no prayers, no hymnology, no great body of organ music, no vast literature of analysis and criticism. It has no sects, no cults and no schisms—and it is my belief that these are vital to the survival and growth of any religion. We have no one to point a finger at and say, ‘This is wrong, this is immoral, this is evil, this is unjust.” We have nothing to go on and nothing to back us up.
It is a system with no priests, no interpreters, and no obscure and irrational points of crossover into another realm. We have no Heaven, no Hell. No Purgatory. No resurrection. No redemption. No sin, no guilt, not even the original kind where billions as yet unborn must pay the price of future mental slavery because of a mistake long in the past in some mystical garden.
We have no cathedrals, ladies and gentlemen. We have no mythology, no pantheon.
No cutesy fucking icons.
Think of a mind-set where empirical facts rule and the demands of the majority don’t matter because factuality, empiricism, is not a democracy, and doesn’t rely on mass opinions for its validity. Think of a belief system which doesn’t pay any heed to prejudice, sugar-coats nothing, and panders to nobody.
Atheism has no fortune cookies, no gambler’s luck and no horoscope. There are no mediums, no prophets, no visions, no speaking in tongues. There is no smoke, no incense, no magic incantations. We have no tenets of social control or persuasion. Nothing.
It is not for the masses. It promises nothing to its practitioners, and justifies nothing for its abusers. Atheism excuses no prejudice and allows for no form of discrimination which can’t be justified by some arithmetical measurement from some verifiable factual baseline.
Atheism conducts no seances, communes with no dead spirits, and accepts no superstitious folklore bearing glad tidings of future pie in the sky. It worships no ancestors. If atheism can be called a religion, which it really isn’t, it is one that has none of the pretty trappings, no spooky ceremonies, no symbols, no decorative icons on the wall that the ignorance of the perfumed masses demand and have come to expect. We have no costumes and no robes. We have no special shoes.
In a world where the Disney acquisition of Lucasfilm is seen as worthy of comment by the most popular pundits, atheism doesn’t have much to offer except to say that tales where good always triumphs over evil are a bit thin on the intellectual meat and defy the reality on the ground.
What will the Disney acquisition of Lucasfilm do for science fiction? Nothing. Nothing at all.
But of course that isn’t their purpose.
It is why folks take the kiddies to the next summer blockbuster film, and woe betide those who don’t, for their children are deprived of the most basic element in their education—a belief system which accepts, accommodates or even demands the fantastical. We can even justify it.
We are stimulating the children’s ‘imaginations.’
You will always do better by telling people what they want to hear. And who do those children grow into?
When grown men can’t wait to go see the warm and fuzzy Koogly-wooblies save Oscar the Penguin from The Grinch who stole Halloween from the Big Pumpkin, and are willing to spend hundreds of dollars to do it, an atheist turns away with a shudder of revulsion, and if not careful, gets trampled in the stampede of mouths, eyes and stomachs.
There but for the grace of wit and knowledge go I…what else can I say?
Some of the words, some of the basic concepts we need to express ourselves haven’t even been properly invented yet.
There is much work yet to be done. No one among us can say who is fit to lead, or even whether it’s strictly necessary. But holy crap, there’s just no way I’m going to follow.
I don’t rule out the possibility of love. If we have one rule, it would be tolerance, which implies a kind of forgiveness. What’s lacking is condemnation and retribution, a remarkable oversight by any standard. It’s a hard sell, as you can imagine.
http://i.imgur.com/U2R35.png
Also, what he said: (Guardian, U.K.)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/dec/24/christmas-atheists
Also, what he said: (Guardian, U.K.)
