Sunday, July 13, 2014

“What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof.”

Amid a predictably futile (but entertaining) Facebook discussion about religion last week with a casual acquaintance, who seems to have undergone somewhat of a strident conversion since abandoning the life of a single man, the word "revelation" came up.

I addressed it.

It's a "revelation" you choose to believe for reasons that lie outside the customary realm of human experience. I choose to dismiss it for the same reason. So it goes. I've no need to convert you. Unfortunately, Christians appear on my porch every weekend seeking to convert me, and to be honest, I resent it.

I surprised even myself by referencing resentment in this context, but it is accurate. 53 years spent ordering zealots off one's porch can do that to a fellow.

To me, what happened in Rome, Mecca, (fill in blank with name of specific church building address) or Las Vegas can stay right there without ever brushing against my lint-free vest. And, it would make little sense for an atheist like me to upsell the absence of supernatural belief; after all, how does one sell nothing?

Still, it surely speaks to my occasional inner need to rebut religion that I enjoy links like this one -- and tend to publish them on Sunday. I'll close with an unoriginal observation: The target of the last bastion of socially acceptable discrimination in America is the atheist, and knowing this, perhaps it is why I tend to side with the underdog.

The 20 Best Christopher Hitchens Quotes, by Daniel Florien (Patheos)

Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody—not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms—had the smallest idea what was going on. It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge (as well as for comfort, reassurance, and other infantile needs). Today the least educated of my children knows much more about the natural order than any of the founders of religion.

―God Is Not Great

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