Belief

     I recently had a long discussion with my wife about life experiences and the concept of belief. I carefully introduced the idea of experiencing all that life has to offer, good and bad, as I do not want to leave this short life without having embraced it fully. To quote the late great Dr. Carl Sagan, "I don't want to believe. I want to know". The topic stayed on my mind, until yesterday, when I went to church, to honor my parents' nomination as mission pastors. What I witnessed there, in that environment was far worse than I expected. Indeed all of the speeches and songs witnessed spoke of life being worthless without the christian deity. I felt as though I was sent back in time, during the days of sun worship, when everything about nature was being worshiped as a deity. It brings some feelings of despair, as well as a lower tolerance threshold for nonsense.

     In contrast with these feelings of despair, I chose to fight back and decided to redouble my efforts to understand those who follow the dictates of a Bronze Age myth, renewed in the 3rd century C.E and see why people cling to those tenets. I looked into my opposition, and attempted to start a dialogue, out of five different threads, none ended in a civil disagreement, instead ending with the other party either harassing my every post bombarding them with negative comments for simply asking a question, or posting violent threats, resulting in the poster being temporarily banned and the comment deleted. 

     The discussions ranged from a debate on Marriage Equality, to theological arguments on the nature of original sin, as well as the differences between gender and sex. It appears to me, that those who preach love from behind the pulpit, seem to be fearful, and going so far as to use hate speech from when hidden in behind the safety of the internet, where there is plausible deniability. There was one notable exception, a reverend who received many negative responses. This person made some very valid points in regards to the civil implications of marriage, which were received with the puerile response of repeating a debunked argument several times, with an increasing occurrence of capital letters. The Internet equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and yelling. This same reasonable man also called a few article writers out in their dishonesty and did not receive the accolade one should for telling the truth, instead, his comment, including the misquoted original article, was buried under a number of negative reviews, with no positive comment.

     What I learned in this experience is that when it comes to fundamentalist Christianity and progress, they are mutually exclusive. One cannot embrace an ever evolving human race while holding sacred the tenets of an outdated religion. The leaders in churches are exploiting the followers, not only financially, living in far better conditions than the members of their congregations, but emotionally, by interpreting their sacred texts, and socially, forcing the congregation to agree with shameful altar calls. The rhetoric used in church leadership is typical of isolationist policies, and worse, they are now trying to control the political process by undermining the legal process, and doing so in complete impunity.

     It is no secret that I absolutely despise religion, as it forces us to be satisfied with not searching. Not only that, I do not believe it is intellectually honest to believe in a deity out of fear of the unknown, or even for a sense of comfort and security. The human race is capable of great things, but there are scientific advances which are stifled by religious belief, peace talks which are ruined over land rights allegedly given to a tribe of sheep herders by a deity they worshiped. One would be hard pressed to find an intellectually honest reason to believe. It is especially bad in the United States where a person attending a ministry school calls their degree a degree in theology; I'm sorry, those schools do not give degrees, they give certificates of completion for training in Christian Doctrine. Do not devalue the hard work of many students by putting your fake, third grade writing skill required, non critical thinking, parroting degree on the same level as one issued by a university. 

     With all that being said, the experience gained by visiting those fundamentalist pages would not have been inspired, if not for my wife challenging me to express why I am the way I am, as well as my visit to church. It is interesting where inspiration hits you, and how one may try to analyze the process of belief as well as its use as justification for bigotry, and even segregation. This week I learned a lot about humanity in general, as well as the process by which religious leaders manipulate their followers.