zip accident wrote:Muslims would want to execute me for being an atheist.
Me too.
They might even have more issue with me, as I'm a touch "anti-theist", not just "atheist", and actually actively take on the counter-arguments.
But the thing is, in my view of things, Muslims are the primary victims of Islam. As Christians are the primary victims of Christianity, and so on.
(And I don't just mean that this is often actually literally true, in that if you tally up the body counts, Islam has killed more of its own people than external influences have done so - yes, even accounting for the Crusades and that Islam forged an Empire violently and tallying in the body count of terrorist acts, so this is not a trivial claim at all, but it is, so those who've studied it contend, actually a true statement.)
These people have convinced themselves to firmly believe in utter bullshit nonsense.
And, yes, this has serious ramifications for all of us, as they act on their beliefs. So if their mythological "sky daddy" says people who don't believe in him or homosexuals are "abominations", then these people, firmly believing what they're told, react and behave accordingly.
But the external influence is a rarity, compared to the permanent state of internal influence. They externally attack as an event, but the internal attack on themselves is a permanent state of being.
The Catholic guilt trip. Forever self-flagellating, for believing, fundamentally to their core, that they - and everyone else - was "born broken".
(As I've covered before, it varies by religion. And this is a main theme in the Abrahamic texts, but it's also essentially there for "life is suffering" Buddhists as well. It's phrased backwards, in that Buddhists have eternal life and are trying to free themselves from this infinite torture, rather than trying to attain eternal life. But same difference, really, from the "born broken" angle here.)
Thus, to my way of thinking, this is "love the sinner, hate the sin".
These are otherwise decent human beings - because if you've met the majority of religious people individually, they're invariably nice people who're just trying to do the right thing (the problem is what they think is "the right thing" was defined by primitive Bronze Age goat herders and humanity has gotten a touch smarter in the intervening years, that their creed, because it's from an old book, can't always easily absorb and accommodate) - who're driven to think the wrong thing is the right thing, because a preacher tells them that an old book says that a god said so.
I feel one must "hate the sin", exactly because one "loves the sinner". When I attack religion, it's in the hopes that maybe I can get through to them, or at least sow seeds that they can mull over in their own time later, to expose the confidence trickery for what it is, so that they free themselves and aren't victims of this bullshit scam anymore.
The ideas must be attacked mercilessly. Clearly exposed for all to see. But not to harm a single hair on any religious person's head. No, no. It is to be exposed so THEY can see it and realise the scam, to no longer fall victim to it.
(This is also why I'd never ban religion. It must be reasoned out of people. They must realise for themselves to choose to give it up. Banning doesn't work, it just makes people dig their heels in. And banning is not the point - ban a religion and another ten will appear in its place. Educate everyone out of superstition and it doesn't reappear, while everyone has chosen not to believe it, for good rational reasons that they themselves chose.
Indeed, this is why I believe that atheist morality is inherently superior to religious morality. I'm not not committing murders because I'm scared of a punishment from a big sky daddy. I'm not committing murders because I've reasoned them out of my vocabulary. This is a far safer "lock" on my behaviour. I chose to place these curbs on my own behaviour, so I am not going to defy them. If I had any intention of doing that, then I'd not have chosen to impose any restrictions on my behaviour in the first place.
It's actually quite scary talking morality with religious people, as they imply - if not explicitly state - that, ah, if God wasn't around telling them "no", they'd be sinning and murdering and thieving all over the place. This is not a safe "lock" on their behaviour. Indeed, we see this - a voice in their head that they interpret as God telling them to "kill them all" and, carrying that existential weight, they actually bloody well do it.)
I mean, there is the logical paradox of wishing harm on someone who wishes you harm. A violation of the Golden Rule. Gandhi's "an eye for an eye just makes the whole world blind".
You end the cycle by just letting it end with you. Don't pass it on. However tempting. Because my own fleeting petty revenge - which won't ultimately make you feel better, as anyone who has actually got their revenge will tell you from experience - ain't worth perpetuating evil in the world.
To murder a murderer, just means more corpses. History has proven over and over that it never actually means less murder.
I hate the sin - despise it - exactly because I love the sinner.
In my ideal world, Braverman stops being a racist and actually does good - the government actually moves ahead with the economic prosperity of energy transition, we all do economically better and then the scapegoat of "fuzzy-wuzzies from Bongo-bongo-land" stealing all the jobs and sleeping with the white women returns to being a silly fringe belief that people are rightly ashamed of again (and, come on, it's AI and automation that's actually stealing all the jobs anyway).
I don't want any harm to her. On the contrary, she'd be a good soldier - and would only add to our numbers - if she was fighting on the side of good instead. It would be good for her too, as walking around permanently infected by an irrational hatred. That eats a person away. It serves no good for her, much less anyone else.
None of us do it enough. But when you help people, when you voluntarily make things better, when you prevent a wrong. When people come back to you and say "it was a great thing you did there" or "you made me reconsider my position". That's one of the best feelings in existence. It's better than drugs. If we all woke up to less bad news and more good news on the news bulletin in the morning, then all our lives would be that much better and more positive.
I always argue from enlightened self-interest. Doing right benefits you. It feels good. You'll make a lot of friends - the people you've helped - who'll be more pre-disposed to have your back, when you are the one in need of help. If we make the world a better place, then it's a more pleasant existence for all of us. Instead of trying to mentally ignore poverty all the time, how about just not having any poverty? You no longer have to pretend, tell your conscience lies to feel comfortable about shit being terrible out there. You just don't worry about it because we've made sure that it simply isn't even a thing anymore. Then you're free to ignore it - conscience free - because it isn't even a thing that exists anymore.
The reason to do the right thing is to do your part in putting reality in good order. Because you exist in reality, so if it's in good order, then your existence is pleasant and, well, not "problem-free", as we don't exist in a universe that permits that possibility. But an existence where the worst of it all is all just trivial "#firstworldproblems" that don't matter much.
We create and perpetuate our man-made systems. We could, you know, just make them work better. Mutually beneficial for all of us.
It's a horrible irony. Our own fear of ending up in the gutter makes us too often perpetuate a system that, you know, ends up throwing other people in the gutter. But if we engineer a system where no-one is required or can end up in the gutter, then our fears are gone. Properly gone. It's now no longer a thing that happens to anyone, not just a thing that we temporarily avoided for ourselves by hording all the money, at the expense of others.
As hateful as some Muslims wanting to kill me or you might be, this problem ain't solved - this cycle ain't ended - by us throwing hate back at them. This just fills the world with more hate, and makes the problem worse.
The solution to religion is already happening. Non-believers are the fastest rising demographic on the planet. Church attendance has fallen off a cliff - look in your local area to see how many are being sold off to build flats.
Indeed, something like the 9/11 attacks are the death throes of religion. The reason they attacked America - the West - is, by their own words, to defend the Islamic world from "infection" by Jahiliyyah. A state of ignorance of Allah. Pepsi and jeans and movies are penetrating the Islamic world and it's changing minds. The religious right in America has been on the rise, as it's fighting back against the slow but steady deterioration of their political control. They rail against "woke-ism" in movies like Barbie, because they're losing the "culture wars" and they know it.
These are the death throes of a cornered wolf. The last ditch - desperate - attempts to get away and survive.
I mean, I don't believe in gods. So the Jewish claim that God promised them an eternal homeland is null and void. There was no such god, and the supposed "promise" is, therefore, not valid. It didn't happen. It's just mythological stories.
You could say this is "anti-Semitic" but, nah, it's more "a-semitic". I don't believe it happened, as there was no promise giver, so the promise is null and void. It's just another land claim like all the others, with no special magical backing at all.
Indeed, there are Zionists, who advocate for the state of Israel, who do so from a purely secular perspective that the Jews are safer from a future Holocaust that way. Mind you, considering the grief it causes around the world, I'm not entirely convinced that this is the optimal way to achieve that aim. But I can dig a secular pragmatic argument like that, even when I'm not convinced it's the right way to do it. I can at least sympathise with the "avoid genocide" aims.
The point being that, yes, as an atheist, I could be accused of "anti-semitism" or "Islamophobia" or whatever. i did worry, when the "religious hatred act" was brought in, whether nothing more than the positive statement of belief - "there are no gods" - could, in mischievous hands, be classed as "religious hatred". When it's nothing of the sort, of course.
To say "I don't believe unicorns exist" is not "unicorn hate". It's neither love nor hate. it's not even believing there are any unicorns to be loved or hated in the first place.
So I'd rather see it as "a-semitism", "a-Muslim", "a-Christian".
Indeed, the word "atheist" is a weird one. I am an atheist - the hat fits, so I'll accept the label. But it's not saying what I believe. It's saying what other people believe that I don't.
As I've suggested before, instead of calling Christians "Christian", let's call them "a-reincarnation-ists". Like, they don't believe in Buddhist reincarnation, so let's make their label be all about how they're not Buddhists. And, rightly, the "a-reincarnation-ists" - the Christians - would object, because the point is that they believe in Christ, not that they don't believe in something that some people over there believe in.
So, when self-naming, I'm a humanist (sometimes rendered as "secular humanist" but that's unwieldy, so I don't bother with "secular" but secularism is in the set of beliefs, yes).
It's a positive belief in the capability of humankind to do better. That, historically, we have done so already - but, yes, there's still a very, very, very long ways to keep going on that. It's also a belief that we have to do so, because we're on our own. There are no gods nor superheroes that are going to swoop in and save us. There are no magical forces - like "karma" - that are balancing the ship. There probably might be space aliens - but I've given the spiel on that one before that we're highly unlikely to meet and who says they'd help us out anyway? There are the other animals on the planet we share but, again, they're not much use to the overall "optimise good" mission here.
We must be the better man.
Don't react to the hate. Instead, in a quiet moment of contemplation, pose to yourself what a better world would look like. Then just do what's necessary, to the degree you're able, to help make that world come true. Rise above the noise, focus on the signal.
(One thing I used to like about Elon is that he apparently said he did this. He sat down and decided what needs to be done to make a better planet - so space travel to preserve the species (SpaceX), renewables and electric transition to combat climate change (Tesla) and so forth - then just used his PayPal money to do it. That was good and he was doing the right thing there - and it also worked, as Tesla has totally rewritten the script on EVs. But, yeah, he's totally lost the plot since, unfortunately. Like, buying Twitter and the shit he's doing there is the polar opposite of that original noble "plan". He is, indeed, reacting to things and being distracted by that, not sticking to the "better world" plan". He did once have the right idea, but he's totally lost that since, sadly, and I don't know what the fuck he thinks he's doing now. Unfortunately, I get the impression that the whole problem is that he doesn't remotely know what the fuck he's doing either.
He started out doing the right thing - the "what do we need to make a better world?" pre-planning is just perfect - had massive success at it with Tesla and was praised for it. And I think that's all gone to his head - he thinks he is "the Messiah" now or something - and he's quite literally been driven slightly mad by it all.)
This is why my comments about Braverman really can't be racism, as I don't wish ill-will. I wish her to be "disinfected" of her hatred and fear. To realise she's not helping anyone, and steers a better course, for her own sake. It's also based in her as an individual - "the content of her character" - and it's only an incidental, but true, observation of her background. And only because it's horribly ironic that a triumph of multiculturalism would declare it to have "failed".
What's that Shakespearean quote again?
"I understand the fury in your words... just not the words".
I get the anger and despair. The want for revenge. All those emotions. But emotions cause these problems, they don't solve them. You have to use your brain to actually end this shit. Being angry while you do things - perhaps you've noticed - it just tends to drive you to making errors and mistakes. It's not helpful, bar perhaps being the initial emotional inspiration that makes you do something. But once spurred by your anger to take action, put the anger away. It won't help.
Live long and prosper.
"Words ought to be a little wild - for they are assaults of thought on the unthinking."
- John Maynard Keynes
