The Atheist Pig

Can I get more annoyed at self righteous self declared agnostics who declare themselves superior to atheists? Or is that too meta?

Being a missionary requires that you have a product to sell, and for us atheists that would be truth coupled with non-belief. If there is a singular quality that humans seem to have in abundance it is denial. We deny the truth in lieu of evidence, we are likely the only sentient species that can convince ourselves of a lie in order to make the world fit into our narrow perspectives. I will use an example that is somewhat but not entirely personal to illustrate my point.

I nearly did not survive infancy. I was born with a respiratory condition that the hospital I was in did not have the equipment or medication to treat. I was in critical condition for seven days before I improved and still to this day suffer side effects of experimental medications and steroids that were used to keep me alive, many of which have since been put out of production by the FDA for those very side effects. My parents believe that I survived because of prayer, not because of the team of doctors, nurses, nutritionists, and pharmacists who did all the ground work. They do not thank the OB/GYN intern who worked tirelessly on me for seven days straight. That man received nothing but the gratification of knowing that he had helped save my life. He is someone I have never met as an adult, but I owe my life to. My father on the other hand believes that it was not those wonderful, dedicated individuals who brought me through, but divine intervention.

I was met with this argument after I admitted to him after many years that I am in fact an atheist, and he asked me why. I gave him the standard answers, direct but polite in presentation, and I was met (not unexpectedly) with hostility. He told me that the “key” to his belief was my survival. I mentioned the Black Plague, smallpox, polio, SIDS, HIV/AIDS, and malaria and the millions of children that have died throughout the years due to illness, and asked where god was for them. His only argument was “you survived because god willed it, and that makes you special.”

I know for a fact that there is no God in space. I know for a fact that the earth is far older than six thousand years. Humans have gone through great lengths to uncover civilizations, ruins, artifacts, and fossils that are well beyond the six thousand year limit some creationist young-earther types propose. But it is precisely the same logic that is used when one believes the earth was created in so many “days.” My father has not a single answer for any of those questions, and gets angry when they are presented. He gets mad at the idea of not knowing, he is perpetually angered by his own ignorance and refuses to pursue the knowledge citing that “no one can know” when in fact, yes, we can know. We can and do know to the best of our ability what is out there, what we see, hear, taste, feel, and smell. I have not done any of those things and felt a divine presence.

I may not be able to give him a definitive answer about how the earth was formed, but the scientific theory present makes a whole universe of sense more than the idea of an invisible man in the sky (who used to not be invisible according to the bible) creating a universe in a matter of days.

The agnostic folks I meet are generally fairly wishy-washy and a few have admitted to only saying they are agnostic to avoid the stigma that follows the word “atheist” around. My father asked me if I was an atheist or agnostic to make it clear. I told him I did not believe that any human story made up could be divine. Gods do not talk to people now, and if there are things that would fit the profile of a “god” it probably would not even notice us. I do not believe in such things, and even though in purely scientific thought “experience” is subjective, reality stands as thus; god has not spoken to anyone in a very long time like the bible claims it once did. It used to destroy entire civilizations for blaspheming against it and yet there are millions if not billions of walking, talking, abominations and blasphemers as it would describe them and not a single thing has been done against them.

God destroyed the tower of babel and scattered the people who built it. We are IN space, now. No smiting just yet. I presented these facts to my father and he got angry, as he will, and said that I was going to miss out on a lot in life by not having faith. At this point I knew the conversation was over so I went the extra mile and asked him why he believed. He could not give me an answer beyond his own fear. And those were his words. His fear caused him to believe. His fear that I would die fueled his belief as soon as I pulled through he KNEW that there was a god because he was so afraid that I would die.

It is easier to believe a lie than it is to realize the truth. “Nobody’s wrong and nobody’s right” modes of thought do not make progress, they just make warm fuzzy feelings that tell you that nobody will argue with you or pursue difficult conversation. I faced my father with one hell of a difficult conversation, not because I “believe” in science, but because science is not just a body of knowledge in books, it is a way of thinking – it is the collective knowledge of the universe and its workings that exist and function even if we do not “believe.”

To me the sales pitch is too simple, the truth of our universe is too simple to sell to these people who just want to feel good, important, right, and righteous. Christianity’s sale’s pitch is fantastic in that it creates a world view with men at the top, each MAN as the head of his house, the priest of his house, his word is law to his family. Priests and preachers alike are only salesmen, selling this product of salvation to those who do not have it, and force us to apologize for the very crime of being born.

I told my father, as politely and respectfully as I could, that I disagreed with him, that I felt he was being lied to and was believing a lie, and that the money he gave to the church went toward the subjugation of women and minorities. I wanted to say “fuck off.”

You cannot sell to those who are not buying. You can’t beat this ignorance unless you hit people in the face with it. When the Christians were in charge of everything, they hunted people down and killed them, burned them, hanged them, drowned them, and tortured them in the name of their god. Even the church leaders I have spoken to cannot answer the question of why God would smite his own missionaries with disease and death, its own followers with cancers and illnesses and many misfortunes. Are they not praying right or enough? They couldn’t answer. Because life hits you no matter what religion you are. People make the world what it is, not god or aliens or anything. People. We fuck it up. We are our own natural predator.

You cannot be a missionary to people who have already been saved. They have been SAVED from an apocalypse that will never come, from a judgement that will never pass. But they are so quick to judge and condemn you because you don’t have your secret decoder salvation. Buy into the lie and get the big prize!

I don’t care if he’s my dad, if he is wrong then he is wrong and I will not be sympathetic or apologetic if he decides to lecture me on why I should be grateful to something that does not exist so that he can feel better about paying his tithes.

I don’t know for a fact that there is no god or gods. However, gods have the same amount of evidence behind them as unicorns, fairies, the flying spaghetti monster and the celestial teapot orbiting saturn.

I’d feel silly if someone asked me “Do you believe in the celestial teapot” and I answered “Well, we can never really be SURE of it”. I’d feel silly if I said that unicorns may exist. Yes, they might, because nothing is impossible.

It is in general pretty ridiculous to say that because something cannot be disproven it is therefore likely to be true. Every single piece of understanding we have about the universe so far has no need whatsoever for the hypothesis of a deity, and the hypothesis of a deity is not consistent with anything we have so far observed about the universe. All opinions and viewpoints are not equally valid just because the right to have them is equally valid. In the words of Dara O’Brian: A professor of dentistry does not have a debate with someone who removes his own teeth with a bit of string and a door.

I used to call myself an agnostic when I was in my teens, following the very same logic you do “We can never be sure” but I came to realize I do not consider myself an agnostic about Odin, about Ra, About Santa, about Crab People, about elves, about Hogwarts, about the tooth fairy or about the monkey god Hanuman.

Why a monotheistic deity should warrant less disbelief from me than any other equally unproven and equally undisprovable, I have yet to figure out.

But hey, if you consider santa to be likely enough to be agnostic about, more powah to you, brah. But please realize this is why some atheists think agnosticism is weird, because a lot of us have been there and it just makes very little sense to us in retrospect.

It is important to note, I realize, that atheism means not believing in a deity, it does not mean actively believing in the nonexistence of deities. The two may intersect for many people, but it’s an important distinction to make. I believe that no god or gods exists, but I’m also aware that it is possible that I may be proven wrong about this because we can never know for certain. That is not the agnostic viewpoint, that is the atheistic viewpoint.

(Also FYI this dogg was not raised religious.)

Facts and absolutes are not scary, they are just the facts and absolutes, yo.