Because plucking my eyebrows isn’t torture enough
I’ve now entered into a debate on faith, religion and the immortal soul.
Nowadays, being openly religious in any way at all means leaving yourself wide open for attacks on everything from your intelligence to your upbringing. I resent that. I don’t mind people not being religious, not at all, but there really is no need to go around calling everyone who chooses to believe in something other than science “stupid inbred idiots”. How do we know that there is nothing more? Yes, evolution has been proven scientifically. Yes, we know that space is vast and that God is not watching us from the clouds above our heads. But do we know that there is nothing more? Beyond evolution, beyond the clouds and space. How can anyone say that they KNOW there is nothing more to it than what has been proven up until today?
My reply in the debate was to a person who said that no souls will go to heaven when we die, because the soul does not exist. Again, how do we know?
I’m not saying I blindly believe in everything people tell me, be it religion or science, but I am open-minded when it comes to both. I know it is naive of me, but I really can’t see why everyone else cannot be too. As it is, if a religious person tells an atheist that “you should embrace Jesus”, s/he is immediately bashed for pushing their faith onto someone else. But if an atheist comes up to a person s/he knows to be religious and says “God and Heaven does not exist, when you die you will rot in the earth and that is all there is to it”, that is not considered pushing faith at all. Because then, suddenly, it is not faith at all, it is FACT. But is it really any different? I choose to believe one thing, you choose to believe another. Who’s to say one of us is wrong? Who decides what is fact and what is faith, and does the one necessarily need to cancel the other one out?
Think about it.
This entry was posted on Friday, November 30th, 2007 at 00:51. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
November 30th, 2007 at 05:13
I think you’ve nailed it on the head. There is definitely a “reverse” discrimination in the atheist/religious argument. Everything has to be so politically correct anymore that there is no fairness. Fairness used to equate to “common sense”. Try and find common sense in the politicians and a lot of the young people.
November 30th, 2007 at 14:22
About sums up what I too *believe*. It’s called agnosticism by the way. Wiki’s got an interesting article regarding it.
December 1st, 2007 at 00:14
Well, yeah, I never saw it that way. I am a believer (but I am NOT religious). I don’t understand why atheists have always to shove up their “anti-beliefs” against us who do think there’s something else out there.
It’s exactly the same coin, seen from the different sides. I agree 100% with you :)
PS: What did this have to do with picking eyebrows?
Reply: It’s good to know that I’m not the only one who feels this way about this issue. :) With the torture/eyebrow-title I was referring to how it is rather like torture to discuss issues related to religion (or anything, really!) with people online. ;)
December 1st, 2007 at 16:08
Hmm, such ‘debates” will never go out of fashion. I used to tell anyone who cared to listen that Science has become the new religion of ’sophisticated’ individuals and that’s very telling about their spinal cord. But. I’ve become bored. We believe in anything we care to believe. I had the same discussion with my primary 5 and 6 students today. Does God exist? And where did matter come from?
Anyhow, the point is, believers have backbones (and other things of course) and carry hope for the entire human kind by placing their faith on something or some being that is the creator of everything everywhere. Non-believers are rather a sorry lot, preferring to stick to something as unstable as modern Science. One day, it is a fact and the next, it is a terrible mistake that makes everyone look stupider than we really are.
December 3rd, 2007 at 23:01
Um, evolution has not been proven. Do the research, it’s actually quite the opposite.
I hang with ya, though. Christians are more discriminated against than any other religion, race, or group out there. Yes, they are.
Reply: Parts of it have, at least. With concerns to the second part of your comment, I can’t decide whether or not you’re being sarcastic, so I’m just not going to address that.
December 5th, 2007 at 20:39
No, no sarcasm, totally serious. It’s true.
December 7th, 2007 at 01:21
Something that I must comment on before commenting on the overall entry, is what you said here: ” I’m not saying I blindly believe in everything people tell me, be it religion or science, but I am open-minded when it comes to both. I know it is naive of me (…)”. I think that makes you the opposite of naïve, actually. I think it’s really good to be open-minded, and open to different philosophies and ideas, because there are a lot of things we really don’t know for sure. Sure, we have facts, and I believe in them 100% (I believe in evolution), but I still feel that there could be something bigger, something we don’t know anything about. I won’t exclude it, but I believe it’s impossible to know for sure and I wouldn’t feel comfortable excluding anything completely.
I think it’s so important to be open-minded, whether you’re religious or non-religious, because I think in most cases, that’s really what will get you the farthest. We all have a right to our personal beliefs, and I don’t think anyone has the right, really, to try to ram their beliefs down someone else’s throat. Whether it’s a theist or an atheist.
Very interesting entry J
December 29th, 2007 at 13:30
While I’m not religious, I do find this whole anti-religion backlash to be petty. people complain about zealots trying to convert us, telling us we’re wrong or sinners or whatever yet the same people criticize believers because they do believe How is that any different? Are they not trying to de-convert them? You do your thing and I’ll do mine and we’ll be cool.