On 'Athiests'

Here’s the thing: I love a good argument. This is because I don’t see them as a clashing of people, but as a clashing of ideas. History is made through arguments; new ideas are defined by pitting them against the old ones. More can be learned through the meeting of the minds than by any other method. Arguing with someone is inviting another thought process into your life, to present a point of view that you might not have considered. Mind you, I’m not talking about some kind of namby-pamby lovefest where everyone is right and everyone’s ideas are considered worthwhile and valuable, no matter how dumb they are. No, the most useful argument is one where no one holds back, and if you say something, you’d better be prepared to back it up. I say this so that when I say that I’ve been known to hit up religious message boards or chat rooms, you know that I’m not just some jackass looking for trouble.

On these message boards, an interesting misspelling crops up fairly often. The word, as depicted in millions of online message, is “athiest.” It is interesting to note, that it is always the religious who spell it this way, apparently all the atheists in the world know how to spell their own ideology. Now, one could take the easy way out and conclude that all believers are idiots (in fact, many do), but that doesn’t quite explain such widespread misuse of the word; after all, surely even some idiots own dictionaries. No, the answer is not intelligence, but rather the exercise of said intelligence. They misspell the word, because they are not used to using it. You see, these people don’t like arguments.

To love an argument is to not have any personal stake in it. My opinions are fluid, they can be changed. Not easily, mind you, I do have certain convictions that are powerfully cemented from years of observation and experience, but they can, and occasionally have been shifted. This cannot be said of the most vocally religious. These people are not fun to argue with. Anything you say to them will either be ignored or quickly forgotten. Instead of arguing a point, they will turn antagonistic, and either attack you directly or unpack their straw man and have a go at him.

I had an argument a little while ago with a mormon missionary when he mentioned he supported a certain upcoming ballot measure in the state of California that would outlaw gay marriage. Out of curiosity, I asked him what the difference between straight marriage and gay marriage was. He replied by pointing out the most obvious difference, which I guess is what I get for wording the question the way I did. I refined my query to “from a legal perspective, how is a marriage between two persons any less valid than a marriage between two other persons?” He replied that marriage is classically defined as between a man and a woman. That didn’t exactly answer my question, but I continued the debate anyway by pointing out that, in fact, marriage in this country was classically defined as between a white man and white woman, so obviously tradition is not a substantial reason to preserve an archaic law. He then said it was because homosexuality is unnatural, and no doubt in anticipation of my impending “how so?” elaborated that two persons of the same sex cannot have a baby. Well, obviously that was contrary to the facts, because there are lots of gay couples with babies, and I asked him if he thought that the “unnatural” practice of adoption was immoral. It went like this for a little while longer, until finally so many of his excuses had been shot down that the truth finally came out. It was because a preacher at a pulpit had said it was wrong. He said, “I know as an athiest (okay, it was a verbal conversation, but I could swear that the way he spoke it he put the ‘i’ before the ‘e’) that you wouldn’t understand what it’s like to have faith.” I replied that the only thing I didn’t understand was how we had talked for over an hour without the topic of religion coming up, when this was clearly the basis for his decision.

Faith, it seems leads people to duplicitous actions. Or, then again, maybe not. After all, what is faith? I would define faith as a confidence that is not based on proof. The religious use the words ‘faith’ and ‘belief’ interchangeably, but I do not think that they are. You can believe in something without having faith in it. Faith implies more, that not only what you believe in exists, but that it has the power to make everything okay. I do not think this young man had faith. I’m fairly certain he believes in his god, but he does not have faith in him. If he did, he would not be using half-assed, poorly thought out “logic” to try to convince me. He would have spoken from the heart, secure in the knowledge that eventually god would sort everything out.

If you believe in god, then you have one of two things: faith or fear. In my experience, it is the ones who have fear who are the most outspoken. These people are so frustrated by every little thing that dares contradict the thing that they so desperately desire, that they will spit out the most hateful, vitriolic nonsense you will ever hear in an attempt to destroy it. If you truly have faith, there should be no need to destroy anything. No pastor delivering an angry sermon, no street preacher crying judgment day, no evangelical speaking in tongues, nobody in a suit handing out flyers, no shouting conservative on cable news, and certainly no boy with a name tag and bicycle, none of them truly have faith. If they did, they would not need to rely on cheap theatrics and social pressures. In fact, they would not need to do anything, because they should already believe that everything is going to end well.

I’ve talked to people who have faith. They are generally much more productive than the believers who lack it. I’ve had some interesting, and much more honest arguments with people of faith. They haven’t been able to convince me to change my views, nor I them, but in the end we’ve usually learned something about each other. For those of you out there who believe in a god and have faith, real, honest faith, then let me say how much I respect you for that. I still disagree with you, and I will defend that position with everything I’ve got. But if you’ll allow me, I’ll buy you a nice cup of tea and we’ll sit down and have a good argument about it.