Annals of Christian Soul Battling

Part of your freedom to believe is my freedom to make fun of you for believing it.

I plead guilty on the “annals” and “kudos” charge — it’s an unshakeable affectation.

There would appear to be an irreconcilable incompatibility between a worldview in which faith in some higher being, etc. is “a fundamental part of who we are” and my worldview, in which faith is analagous to a “fairy story we choose to take seriously.” If faith is inextricably linked with your sense of who you are and how you exist, then snickering from non-believers like me probably does feel like intolerance — like making fun of you for something you can’t change, like your hair colour or the shape of your ears. Similarly, it’s probably completely impossible for the faithful to fully grasp how absolutely and completely absurd it all seems to those of us on the outside. Given that the faithful worldview is the indisputable winner in terms of marketing, public relations, education, real estate, etc. I think it’s probably, on balance, more incumbent on the faithful to put up with snide suggestions of silliness than it is incumbent on me to refrain from pointing out the apparent absurdity of it all.

I always find it strange that religious people seem to think it’s okay to insult and scorn those who disagree with their views; say about birth control, abortion, or “finding forgiveness in our hearts” for child molesting priests; but don’t seem to think the rest of the world has a right to disagree with their points of view…

Take a look here: http://edge.org/3rd_culture/haidt08/haidt08_index.html Nothing truly new, just a tight acknowledgment that there’s a big and durable human “type” that requires formal social hierarchy, and really needs you to accept the fact … and that in pure cases it’s an altruistic impulse. Now, I reckon that any such hierarchy is a human construct, will be exploited by tyrants (if it’s not designed for that purpose), and is nothing I want my peeps in thrall to. The best we can do is something that works like high school? I don’t think so. But I also think it won’t go away, so a smart guy doesn’t lament it. Rather, he steers it. LQ

I think people who believe Star Trek is real are weird too. But I don’t think that anyone who believes anything should be prevented from doing so. Although I do consider it a little absurd that a group of people would go to the trouble of setting up a radio station to “harvest souls.” If you can’t see the humour in that well, maybe you’re in the wrong place ‘cause it seems sorta weird to me. But more power to them as long as they stay away from my children and don’t try to legislate my affairs with their beliefs. And can we stop it with the “if you make fun of Christians you probably push people out of their wheelchairs too, don’t you” canard? However powerful and genuine your beliefs may feel to you, however inseparable from your innermostness they might feel, they’re just things you choose to believe, and they are different from your skin colour, your mental and physical abilities, your country of origin, and other things you actually can’t influence even if you wanted to. The Charter affords us all “freedom of conscience and religion” and “equal benefit of the law without discrimination.” That means that I can’t refuse to rent an apartment to someone just because they’re a Christian (and that’s a good thing), not that I have to place any particular importance on Christianity, nor that I need to refrain from pointing out, seriously or with humour, why Christianity strikes me as being, well, odd. One of the lovely things about my perverted interpretation of freedom is that you are free to ignore it. Or make fun of it. But you still have to rent me an apartment.