Day 133b: Summoning the errors of Belief … (September 09, 2019)
“I will freely admit that there are errors in philosophy just as massive as any mistake in any religion, no doubt. And yet the difference between the two sets is just as massive – for the adherents of the former are at worst exposed as being silly or ridiculous, whereas the believers in the latter pose to all a very real threat of violence to the innocent … And so it is that about once or twice every month I engage in public debates with those whose pressing need it is to woo and win the approval of various supernatural beings. And all too often, after I have offered my view that there actually is no supernatural dimension (certainly not one that is only or especially available to a smaller gaggle of the particularly faithful) and that the natural world is actually more than wonderful enough (and even miraculous enough, if you insist) I attract pitying looks and anxious questions. How, in that case, I am asked, do I find Meaning and Purpose in life? How does a mere and gross materialist, with no expectation of a life to come in the hereafter, decide what, if anything, is worth deeply Caring about? And depending on my mood, I sometimes but not always refrain from pointing out what a breathtakingly insulting and patronizing question this is; one fully on a par with the equally damning inquiry: Since you don’t believe in our god, what stops you from stealing and lying and raping and killing to your heart’s content? Well, just as the answer to the latter question is: a sense of basic decency that demands I show others a basic level of respect, so the answer to the first question arrives – namely, that any life that partakes even a little of friendship, love, irony, humor, parenthood, literature, and music, alongside the chance to take part in any of the many myriad battles for the liberation of others or the uplifting of the downtrodden, cannot in any way shape or form be called meaningless. In fact, quite the opposite is the case. What is far more meaningless is what so often happens in my questioners less-hallowed halls; where so many forego the aforementioned and far-higher callings in favor of spending the few priceless moments they have been given in adoring & praising a guilt-abusing, fear-mongering, self-obsessing, and compassion-challenged supernatural nonentity… But there, there. Enough.” ~ inspired by David Hume & Christopher Hitchens
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