My daughter called my attention to an ecard that got me thinking. It showed two guys talking. One said: "That was a very well laid out rational point. But, I will still hold to my emotional opinion based on no facts or evidence."
All of us non-theists encounter that attitude constantly, either in person or via print. It's called faith, which Greta Christina has defined as "an irrational attachment to a pre-existing idea regardless of any evidence that contradicts it."
Why would otherwise intelligent and highly capable people cling to such irrationality? Indeed, why did many of us, in our deluded pasts, cling to the same approach?
Pure and simple, it's FEAR. Nearly all human beings are walking bags of fear! Fear is a tremendous motivator, and political and religious "leaders" take full advantage of that fact.
We fear what might happen to us and our health and economic security in this present life, and we especially fear what might happen to us when this life is over. We possess our wonderful awareness that our animal cousins of varying degrees have no inkling about. Our beloved little dogs are aging every day and, without us, they would be up that proverbial creek with no paddle or anything else. Are they aware of their precarious position?
Not in the least. They sometimes show fear and anxiety, but not in the same way or degree as us humans.
We humans are filled with concerns, worries and anxieties. They motivate us every day.
We had occasion to spend some time with a dear friend of my wife early this week. She's in her early sixties and has clawed and worked her way to the position of executive head of the Arizona chapter of a famous and important national organization. Her husband is also a successful man with an important and high paying position with a major company. They're wonderful people and our stay with them was a delightful mini-vacation.
As I look back on the visit, I see that, for all the success and the seeming security of their position, fear looms over their lives, just as it looms over the lives of every other human being.
When Phyllis first became fast, lifelong friends with her, she was a stuggling female "working stiff" and an ardent democrat. Now she's a fanatic Republican and denounces Obama as "that socialist." We basically just listened to her tirades and tried to figure out her reasoning.
Her husband is a non-believer similar to Phyllis and I, but she clings emotionally to the concept of a god and an after-life.
Why?
Fear. She is afraid that what she has striven and sacrificed for will be diminished or taken away by "socialism." She's knows she's going to die one day and desperately wants for that not to be the end of everything. In case there is a "hanging god" judge and a real hell, continuing to at least pay lip service to him protects against that eventuality, or so people hope.
Do I worry about what the future may hold? Of course I do. I wouldn't be human if I didn't. I have the awareness, so I have the concerns.
I've just progressed to the point where I don't have to resort to irrational belief systems for comfort. Instead, I realize that what a former friend said about fifty years ago when I was commenting on my insecurities is a truth. That friend pointed out that even if everything "went south" for me, I would survive because of the social programs then in place to provide for those who were victims to total deprivation, however marginal that survival might be.
Since I realize there is no big "sugar daddy" up there somewhere and there likely is no existence beyond this brief life, I simply do the best I can each and every day, try to take care of myself and my health and keep the big picture in mind as much as I humanly can.
It sure beats being a bundle of corrosive fears and letting those fears tie me up mentally and emotionally.
Showing posts with label fear based religion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fear based religion. Show all posts
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Thursday, February 9, 2012
IT'S A WAR!
One primary message I got from the meeting Sunday, from Richard Dawkins, Sean Faircloth and Robin Cornwell, is that we are engaged in a ruthless war being waged by the religious right. In many ways, it reminds me of the desperate situation the USA and its allies were in during World War II.
Few people born since 1945 realize how close the USA and its allies came to losing that war. If Hitler and Japan hadn't "jumped the gun" and had held back a little longer before making their move, we very well may have ended up as the losers. We were woefully ill-prepared and equipped when the Germans marched into Poland. They had a superior air force, tanks that made the allied tanks look like tin cans by comparison and overall a vastly superior armed force that was better equipped. They were also far ahead in weapons development.
They almost beat us to the atom bomb!
Instead of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it could have been London and New York!
I remember those days. I was seven years old when Pearl Harbor was bombed.
Religious zealots have always chafed over a secular America. For most of its history, religion had to content itself as an important but relatively sidelined force. Even conservative Barry Goldwater was openly opposed to religion having too much influence and control.
The fear generated by the cold war gave theists their opening. Madison had warned that if American liberties were ever taken away, it would be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.
"Godless communism" gave the theists their foreign enemy opening. They took full advantage of it and missed no opportunity to plant every fearful thought possible in the minds of American citizens. They got as many as possible to believe that their only hope was God and Jesus.
Religious commitment and dedication expanded exponentially, driven by the bombast of Falwell, Robertson and their ilk. It has increased every decade to the point that a former president of the United States can openly state that a non-believer cannot be a patriotic citizen.
That would mean that Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Abraham Lincoln, and several other presidents, were traitors, not patriotic American citizens! We can't know the specific feelings of many presidents because religion or the lack thereof has never been a dominant political issue until relatively recently in the United States of America.
Now, it is a litmus test! So much so that any presidential candidate had better make an open show of attending some place of worship rather regularly! Our president has to end every speach by saying "God bless you, and God bless America." I have no idea whether that is a sincere statement or not.
When I was a child, in the nineteen forties, religion was an important item in a lot of people's lives, but nowhere near as important as it is today. It was more of a personal thing. People believed in whatever they believed in and were for the most part content to let it go at that. Militancy, though present, was much less evident than today when a teen ager in Rhode Island can find herself the object of hate and death and rape threats for successfully blocking a prayer banner in her high school. Instead of the guarantees of our Constitution being revered, they are the source of murderous hatred when someone insists on adherence to their principles!
During my school years, that unconstitutional phrase, "under God" was not a part of the Pledge of Allegiance. It was added in response to America's paranoid fear of "Godless Communism." That addition effectively led to the conviction that anyone who did not believe we were a nation under God was not a loyal American.
Very subtle!
Very effective!
The Muslim Hordes have replaced Godless Communism as the new rallying cry. It's still "us" versus "them."
Fear has always been the main tool religions and political systems use to control people. Get them fearful enough and they will tolerate any abridgement of their freedoms and support the most egregious of tyrannies. It is time for all Americans who value their freedoms to make it clear that they will not tolerate any more christofascist theocratic moves to abridge and ignore our constitutional rights.
Get active!
Get vocal!
Quit hiding in a fear-filled closet!
If you must fear something, fear the kind of world the theocrats envision for your descendents!
Few people born since 1945 realize how close the USA and its allies came to losing that war. If Hitler and Japan hadn't "jumped the gun" and had held back a little longer before making their move, we very well may have ended up as the losers. We were woefully ill-prepared and equipped when the Germans marched into Poland. They had a superior air force, tanks that made the allied tanks look like tin cans by comparison and overall a vastly superior armed force that was better equipped. They were also far ahead in weapons development.
They almost beat us to the atom bomb!
Instead of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it could have been London and New York!
I remember those days. I was seven years old when Pearl Harbor was bombed.
Religious zealots have always chafed over a secular America. For most of its history, religion had to content itself as an important but relatively sidelined force. Even conservative Barry Goldwater was openly opposed to religion having too much influence and control.
The fear generated by the cold war gave theists their opening. Madison had warned that if American liberties were ever taken away, it would be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.
"Godless communism" gave the theists their foreign enemy opening. They took full advantage of it and missed no opportunity to plant every fearful thought possible in the minds of American citizens. They got as many as possible to believe that their only hope was God and Jesus.
Religious commitment and dedication expanded exponentially, driven by the bombast of Falwell, Robertson and their ilk. It has increased every decade to the point that a former president of the United States can openly state that a non-believer cannot be a patriotic citizen.
That would mean that Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Abraham Lincoln, and several other presidents, were traitors, not patriotic American citizens! We can't know the specific feelings of many presidents because religion or the lack thereof has never been a dominant political issue until relatively recently in the United States of America.
Now, it is a litmus test! So much so that any presidential candidate had better make an open show of attending some place of worship rather regularly! Our president has to end every speach by saying "God bless you, and God bless America." I have no idea whether that is a sincere statement or not.
When I was a child, in the nineteen forties, religion was an important item in a lot of people's lives, but nowhere near as important as it is today. It was more of a personal thing. People believed in whatever they believed in and were for the most part content to let it go at that. Militancy, though present, was much less evident than today when a teen ager in Rhode Island can find herself the object of hate and death and rape threats for successfully blocking a prayer banner in her high school. Instead of the guarantees of our Constitution being revered, they are the source of murderous hatred when someone insists on adherence to their principles!
During my school years, that unconstitutional phrase, "under God" was not a part of the Pledge of Allegiance. It was added in response to America's paranoid fear of "Godless Communism." That addition effectively led to the conviction that anyone who did not believe we were a nation under God was not a loyal American.
Very subtle!
Very effective!
The Muslim Hordes have replaced Godless Communism as the new rallying cry. It's still "us" versus "them."
Fear has always been the main tool religions and political systems use to control people. Get them fearful enough and they will tolerate any abridgement of their freedoms and support the most egregious of tyrannies. It is time for all Americans who value their freedoms to make it clear that they will not tolerate any more christofascist theocratic moves to abridge and ignore our constitutional rights.
Get active!
Get vocal!
Quit hiding in a fear-filled closet!
If you must fear something, fear the kind of world the theocrats envision for your descendents!
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