It occurred to me a little bit ago how ridiculous this statement is. Atheists all seem to instinctively realize this, but for you theists out there, let's run through the logic.
I'm an Atheist. Your claim "All Atheists hate God", if taken as true, means I hate God. In order to hate God, by definition I have to believe God exists. If I believe God exists, I'm not an Atheist. Whoops, we've reached a paradox.
The follow up claim is that Atheists hate religion. Well, I can't speak for others, only for myself, and unlike you I can't speak for any supernatural beings either. In my case, you might be able to make a case here, but the truth is that it wouldn't be accurate. I don't hate religion par se, I hate the evil done in the name of religion. Religion almost invariably leads to regressive behaviors and in some cases outright evil. I don't believe religion can be fixed. The only way you could solve the problem would be to bring all world religions under the control of a single moral person who could dictate sanity to his/her followers. This plan, though, is inherently flawed. You need look no further than Catholicism to see the problem. Not to mention the temptation to abuse this extreme concentration of power would eventually overwhelm either the leader or one of his/her successors. It would inevitably turn to evil. Therefore, I think the world would be better off without religion.
On a semi-related note, I just recently found out an interesting fact. The crux of the argument against science in general is that Genesis must be taken literally, not figuratively. It took another blogger writing about the observations of his six year old son to get me to realize something. According to Genesis, God created light on the first day, but he didn't create the Sun until the fourth day. Um…. whoops. Apparently the goat herders of 6,000 years ago hadn't figured out that the light comes from the sun. Oh, and God put all the water in one place. One. Just let that sink in for a few minutes.
Taking a text that has been written down by humans in one flawed mode of communication known as written language, and re translated by humans into different inexact syntax of more languages, and then allow it to be interpreted by the flawed human mind, and taking each word literally as if it is what has come from God- That is silly. Words can be perverted, twisted, and used for ones own devices. The Bible does have a lot of great stuff in it, but it's meaningless if you miss the messages behind the stories and spend all of your time treating it like a history book.
ReplyDeleteExactly! So much time is spent on the religion portion and almost none spend on the philosophy purportedly espoused by Jesus. There's a lot of good stuff there, actually. I just wish more people read the thing.
ReplyDeleteIf we learned anything from the Dark Ages it should have been that we should not reject science because it conflicts with our narrow interpretation of ancient folk tales. Alas, we don't seem to remember all that much about the Dark Ages. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.