Tuesday, February 21, 2012

The Facebook Conundrum: To Respond, or Not to Respond?

So...one of my biggest problems has always been silence. Oh, I like silence in my home, enjoying the calmness of having only my thoughts for company. I get a lot of good ideas that way. No, my problem with silence is my holding my tongue when I know I should speak out, especially in the face of overwhelming stupidity.

I usually do this to keep the peace. It's what I've always done. But with things like Facebook where people can post the most dumbass things it really begins to weigh on a person. When people post a status such as, "Jesus is my lord and savior! Click "Like" if you agree!" or "Please pray for my family. blahblahblah" I swear I want to smack them over the head verbally. I want to tell them what a fucktard they are being and that no magic sky daddy is going to save them because he was invented by simple minded desert dwellers who had NO idea how the fucking world or universe operated!!!!! That magic book you're waving above your head isn't worth an ass wiping! You're living your life based on archaic mythology that has no bearing on our modern world! So shut the fuck up!

...But I don't say any of that. I don't open my mouth, I keep it shut tight. I don't even allow my fingers to graze across the keyboard. That alone is too much temptation. That's when questions start running in my mind...Is it appropriate to respond to someone else's post? Could I say anything that wouldn't be considered an attack? How would this affect my relationship with this person? If they are family, will this exchange get back to my parents?

All of these questions keep me at bay. They stay my ready hands. And I...cannot...fucking...stand...it...!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am truly sick and tired of the religious community being given more free speech immunity from attacks than the secular community. A Christian in America can post all the "Jesus" bullshit posts they want and they get rounds of applause and agreements from the sheeple around them. But is anyone allowed to challenge them? Hell no! They and their minions gang up on you and attack your character, your morals, your values. They say you are a terrible person because you don't believe in anything. They have the inability to be logical, and no matter how innocuously you word your disagreement you are greeted with a firestorm of hostility. On the flipside, if I post something about my atheist opinions I run the risk of being ostrazised, attacked, etc. I've had family members and friends end relationships with me over my atheism.

So all of this was going through my head when I came across a post by my aunt on facebook...


 




I wanted to respond. Oh fucking Jesus H. Christ, how I wanted to respond!! This overly simplistic, irrational statement is what they really think of atheism. They have missed the point entirely. The logical person in me wanted desperately to pull out all the scientific evidence I had stored up in my mind and explode all over the post.

But I didn't. Was I right not to? Or should I have said something devoid of passion, but with a neutral voice of reason?

Thoughts on God: Part I - Journey to Atheism

Just for a little personal background, I was raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I admit, that my early years were not shaped well by the church, seeing as how my family barely went until I was in late elementary school. But my parents instilled in me a love of God by praying nightly with me, childrens Bibles, etc.

Once I began attending the Mormon Church on a regular basis I became enraptured with the teachings and principles, and although there were some things I didn't like I was still thankful to have been born into God's only 'true church'. I even began to perceive anything outside of the Mormon church as an evil, including the behavior of my classmates whom I loathed for their baseness and shallowness. I took a Book of Mormon to school with me and read it on the bus, during lunch, on breaks, any time really that I had a spare moment. But I used it mostly for bus rides which were truly excruciating for me as the quiet outsider who got beat up on a weekly schedule. I did anything to keep my mind off of what the end of the ride would bring.

That was early middle school. By the time I was in late middle school and high school I had serious questions, as did the rest of my family. When I was 15 we all broke away from the church amid a firestorm of retaliation from our former church members, 99.9% of whom never spoke to us again. After that, I was soured significantly on religion, but a great friend of mine, a Baptist at the time, would not let me wander in the world of religion alone. She brought me to a church meeting or two in an effort to help me. The youth meetings consisted of silly Christian rock bands full of praise for God and Jesus, and I didn't really feel comfortable there.

It also didn't help that I was struggling with admitting my true sexuality at the time. I felt deserted, unjustly cast away, and depressed at the thought of God. It would be easy for me to say that it was this struggle in particular that caused me to embrace atheism, but that would be inaccurate.

Many issues brought me to my current state of atheism. The first of which would be the failure of Mormonism to fully take me in. In this religion I felt trapped and so much guilt over every little thing. The most innocent white lie was to me an eternal sentence of hellish proportions. I began to understand the amount of control I was under, and it didn't make sense to me at all why I had to do so many things in a certain way or say things that didn't feel right. I also realized that my personality was greatly suppressed by the church social structure in a effort at conformity. I saw others who showed signs of deviation and they were left behind by the rest. I resented that. I saw it happened even with myself when I made suggestions in my Young Women's group. In this group we were taught to be young ladies and take up interests in handicrafts in preparation for eventual motherhood. We were told to keep ourselves pure for our future Mormon husbands who would hold the sacred priesthood and carry blessings as returned missionaries. We were discouraged from doing things that were considered "boy activities". This was all terrible for me being an absolute tomboy who loved playing in the woods and getting muddy in the creek behind my house. I played sports. Boys were friends only. I resented the young women for being so passive and meek. They never shared an opinion that had not first been pre-approved by the majority. I certainly did not fit in and I began acting out with another misfit during our Wednesday and Sunday meetings. We even had a motto worthy of our middle school rebelliousness; "We don't walk. We don't talk. And we don't participate!". Unfortunately, of the two of us, only I stayed true to what we rebelled against. Once I left the church none of the girls or boys talked to me ever again except one, and even that was sporadic at best. If there was a god, I reasoned, this is not what he intended. Why should a child made to be one way be forced by society to behave in a way contrary to one's nature? It didn't make sense.

The second would be my abhorrence at the idea that God would hate me and cast me to Hell for being a lesbian, which made no sense and which I believed, rightly, to be totally unfair. This took years of reasoning through. I was trying to do two difficult things at the same time: deprogram myself from Mormon ideology, and accept my sexuality as a benign aspect of myself.

The third would have to be my history lessons and seeing all the ways religion has been used to murder, enslave, corrupt, vilify, terrorize, etc. the people of the world in a mad grab for power. It is absolutely sickening. I could go on with this but there is too much to put here.

And the last, my own innate Reason which doesn't allow me to accept anything less than the humble search for truth, rather than the arrogant certainty that Christians, Muslims, and others try to sell to gullible minds.

Atheism was something I was afraid to grasp at first since I was still in the clutches, albeit weakly, of Christianity. I was frightened of leaving the faith, not because of any loyalty to Christ or God, but because I was frightened at the possible consequences of me exercising my mind fully should the God I'd been educated to believe in turn out to be real. Once I realized the nature of my fear I understood that my belief in a god was predicated on the possible punishment of my soul and not out of love. In truth I was furious, first with god, and then with Man for putting these ideas and fears in my head. Naturally, since I don't think it's likely that god exists, my anger towards him/her was totally moot and unreasonable and has since dissipated.

Unlike what Christians and other religions would have you believe, I felt an incredible weight lifted off my shoulders when I let go of my faith in god. I saw with both amazement and rage the potential energy, enlightenment, reason, intelligence, and knowledge all around me; amazement at how Man might use these resources to create their own paradise, and rage at how they squander and demolish them under the claws of religion, greed, etc. instead.

So do I think that religion is dangerous? Yes, I do. Look at history, look at the situation in the present world. In the whole of recorded history more people have died in the name of religion than for any other cause. Men have tortured and murdered because of their belief in a deity. People today are killing for the same reason. We've had the Crusades, witch hunting for hundreds of years in Europe that killed countless innocents (especially women), Kings and Queens killing their own people for having the "wrong" religion, genocides and religious wars on the Balkan Peninsula, Africa, Europe, the Middle East and so on. Pakistan, a Muslim nation, has the bomb. Iran, a Muslim theocracy, is working on the bomb. And the United States of America, a nation that was founded on Secular Humanism but now claims to have been founded on Christianity and "Christian Values", has one of the biggest stockpiles of nuclear weapons on the planet. And in that powerful country the religious crazies are gaining power and influence. Nuclear winter, anyone?

Do I want religion eradicated from the Earth? Well, that's a loaded question. I think that the world would be better without religion, no question. However, I believe that people have the right to have a religion if they want it, no matter how much I cringe when I see them do it. It's not up to me to force them into atheism. That's just wrong, and I would become no better than them if I did that. I can only hope that they realize they're talking to an imaginary magic man who supposedly resides in the sky, and no amount of praying and believing he is real will ever make him so. I can hope that people will embrace their innate reason and logical thinking processes and realize that society is not built upon their personal religious choice. So have what religion you want just do what George Carlin said: Keep thy religion to thyself. I don't want to see your religion directed at me and I certainly don't want it in our government. This is something we have to share and use to better our society for the common good, not your or my personal beliefs. This is the ultimate test of the 'agree to disagree' compromise.

I probably sound harsh. I don't really care if I am. Christianity has been so harsh with me I figure I've earned the right to be a staunch critic. And I'm tired of being afraid of speaking my true opinion, especially when the people around me can express and preach their love of Jesus. Now it's my turn...