Filler

Had some things to attend to over the last week so have not updated. Sorry. I will soon. Rest up till then.

Alien Nation

I have a friend who grew up without any actual exposure to the homosexual lifestyle. He wasn't bothered by it, but he just didn't know anything about it.

Once a gay female friend had a child with her girlfriend. My friend went to visit, and met her girlfriend for the first time. They struck up a conversation about old times, and he was curious about something. He asked, "How does this work? Who is the kid's father? Is one of you?"

Remember, he really doesn't know. He is simply curious about how things work in his old friend's new world. He just asked a question.

We are, after all, only experts of our own experience. And while we might kind of know how things are for another person, we cannot ever really know exactly. Each person's view of the world around them is unique.

The girlfriend got a little hostile. She assumed he was being a jerk - and in her defense, her experiences might very well have taught her to respond like that - and let at him.

Still, she failed to recognize the possibility that this guy was simply asking a naive question. She instead tried to push him away from her and her life.

She alienated him simply because he could not have known what her life was all about already. But of course, you can't.

Now this often happens in religious debate as well. A person is often so convinced that their religious views are correct that they will simply dismiss any slight insinuation that they are incorrect. Their knowledge of their religion is pure and holy and damn you if you disagree.

(Some atheists get this way too. They get so cocksure that their understanding is the obvious right way to think, they dismiss anyone who believes in something else.)

This type of behavior is alienating. It is damaging, it destroys all communication. And, frankly, in the US it is also very, very common.

If you really want to live a life in such a mindset, that your own religion or personal understanding is the one and only way, and other ideas are simply not ok, you should probably do yourself and everyone else a favor then and stop even bothering to communicate at all, except with the few people who agree with you. You are, after all, by adopting that mindset and maintaining it, personally ensuring that you cannot effectively communicate.

We should, instead, remember that we are only the experts of our experience, but that person over there is the expert on his, and he might have something useful to offer. By opening your mind to new ideas, and always remaining skeptical of all you think you know, you enable communication to not only exist but to flourish. You grow wiser and smarter. You are a happier person.

The biggest disappointment atheists face in the US today is that the religious people have always wanted it to be a God-lovers-only club. And people don't seem to care if they alienate a 25th of the people because they simply do jot matter to them.

Well, I matter to me. So I choose to accept people whatever crazy thing they believe.

It comes down to one simple idea. Reach out never with anger and alienation, but with acceptance and love.

Please comment and share, and ask me questions if you like. Thanks for reading.

P.S. I'll bet you a dollar that there are more atheists who can recite Bible passages than Christians who can accurately define "atheism". Just sayin'.

Being Different

There are Jews in the world.
There are Buddhists.
There are Hindus and Mormons, and then
There are those that follow Mohammed,
But I've never been one of them.

"Every Sperm Is Sacred", lyrics Palin/Jones

Being different is hard enough. When you are only similar to, say, ten percent of other people, you find it hard to relate fully to other people. And when a major poll finds that people like you are the least likely to be elected president, it us discouraging. No one would choose to be that different, would they?

Yet people choose to reject things everyone else seems to just accept. Everyone else rushes to the grocer for bread and milk prior to a snowstorm, but you know your rations are sufficient. People crowd for a chance to be on the local TV news, but you understand the pointlessness of it. Fans camp out for hours for tickets, but you are content with a lesser prize that fits better into your lifestyle.

We make decisions in life that differ from other people, sometimes drastically. Those decisions are not wrong merely because they are different. In fact, we often feel that, in absence of any evidence to the contrary, we may as well be just as right, or more right, than the rest of them.

So what if we took one of the most universal beliefs, namely, the idea that some greater intelligent force has us captive to their power, and decided to question its meaning?

Atheists are people who choose to reject unfounded assertions that some greater god-force has any meaningful reality. Atheists are like the character in the Monty Python slit cited above, except we reject one additional god. We are just like people who don't believe in Greek gods, or Egyptian gods, or Norse gods, but for us, it's any gods.

Just by making that one choice, though, we invite hatred. For some reason the idea of someone thinking outside the "God box" scares the daylights out of people. When we seek equality, we are dismissed as too different. We are distrusted. We are disenfranchised. Not to a horrible, detestable degree - yet. But enough to be noticed.

We saw the Jews. We saw the Irish. We saw the Negroes. We saw the women. We saw the gays. We paid attention. And we learned.

My hope is we can more swiftly dispense with the claptrap of drama and indignity connected to accepting those who are different, and begin appreciating, rather than fearing, the diversity we share.

Because you, in some way, are as weird, different, and special as I am.

I hope that you comment, and share this. I hope to address the questions people have, the concerns they lodge, even the hatred they carry. Please suggest topics for future posts.