Reflection

I had an interesting conversation with myself this morning.

While doing my daily routine of reading various blogs and news articles using the Pulse app, I read an article about "rights of passage for twenty-somethings." One of the ones listed was "Finally being able to give up the whole 'God' thing and start actually living your life." I found that offensive, so I stopped reading and went to a different article. Similar remarks were made there, in a joking manner. So I switched blogs entirely, and there was an article called "Faith to Atheism in Five Easy Steps."

I gave up, did my Bible reading for the day, and went downstairs to clean the kitchen. I was trying to figure out why I was so bothered. I got to thinking about my cousin who's went from simple non-belief to verbally violent and abusive attacks against people that never did anything wrong against him, simply because he's reading that kinda stuff over and over again. The thing is, as a firm believer and intelligent twenty-something that's made a study of scripture and science alike, I find that I disagree with religions that teach things that aren't in the Bible at all as much as I disagree with people that profess non-belief as the only "intelligent" choice. But it's the latter group that actually makes me feel offended or angry.

 The former do, too. The morons that say "tornadoes hit Oklahoma and killed a bunch of people and children 'cause God needed more angels in heaven" and "If you don't pledge $500 a month to our church you're gonna burn in Hell forever" and so on. But generally speaking, I'm able to reconcile people at least trying to believe easier than those that attack the ideas as a whole.

Then I realized why it's so prevalent in my mind lately. Why it seems to be popping up everywhere I look. I live on the internet. And just like hypochondriacs, fanfic writers, perverts, and aspiring authors, the internet is a breeding ground for "militant atheists" or secular humanists or whatever you want to call them. People that would rather spend time trying to make people that express any sort of faith feel stupid, or use comment sections to equate belief in something larger than yourself with believing in fairies and unicorns. Trying to make others feel small.

They'll defend themselves, say that it's only fair since everywhere they turn, religion is being shoved down their throats. And maybe in some small communities it is. But overall, even in America, the world is becoming more secular by the day.

These sorts of people like to talk about hypocrisy among religions. They aren't wrong there. Whether it's Catholics paying off victims of abuse and quietly moving abusive priests a few states away, or Baptists preaching eternal damnation then going out and committing every sin they preach against, hypocrisy is just a facet of human nature. But militant atheists make these accusations as though they're above the same sort of hypocrisy.

Example. A person I know from the internet is an atheist. She talks often about how she's the only one in her family that is, but she's very firm on it. She's far from militant about it, but she does bring it up from time to time, and talks about how happy she is not to have to deal with anything regarding Christianity. Then every December, she celebrates Christmas.

(The validity of Christmas as an actual Christian celebration is itself not accurate, but that's not the point. It's considered to be very Christian.)

Now, some would say that they celebrate "for the family." Some would say that "It's not really just a Christian thing anymore." Whatever their excuse, despite this professed view of non-belief, and the militant stance they take on the subject as a whole, they still take part in what is widely considered to be a Christian holiday. That's hypocritical, and that's not how faith and belief work.

Then there's the fun "atheism isn't a belief, it's a practiced non-belief!" But according to the dictionary, atheism is "the doctrine or belief there is no God." And atheism is most definitely a faith-based belief. It has to be.

Faith is defined as "a belief that is not based on proof." I prefer how Paul put it in Hebrews. "Faith is the assured expectation of things hoped for, the evident demonstration of realities though not beheld." Doesn't atheism require a substantial amount of faith? You have to believe in statistical improbabilities so large that they almost can't be expressed. You have to accept that at a certain point in every science, walls are hit where things just don't make sense. You have to accept that people that know things you don't are telling you the truth, no matter what political or financial pressures are put on them to publish their findings in a certain light. Unless you're going to devote your life to studying every branch of science and conducting every test yourself, you're going to have to put faith in men that lie, that cheat, that steal, that stretch the truth, that make mistakes.

I daresay it takes more faith to believe in man that is fallible than in God.