(no subject)

[theweaselking]

"What it feels like to be an atheist"

Imagine that you live in a world where 90% of the people around you sincerely believe in something that appears to you to be downright whacky, if perhaps relatively pleasant on the surface in many respects. Say they believe in Santa Claus; beard, the big red suit, the flying reindeer, the sled loaded with a billion gifts, the North Pole Workshop, Mrs. Claus and the elves; all of it.

But in this fantasy world, they're not content merely to believe in Santa Claus, they want you to publicly agree all the time that you also believe in Santa, in their specific version of same, and they pressure everyone else in numerous ways to pretend that they're not strange or childish for believing in this. They don't just limit it at that even, they insist everyone kiss their ass about their Santa belief every damn day of their lives and if you don't humor them at the drop of hat under any circumstances, you're being disrespectful, you're out of line. No matter how much you humor them, they always demand more.

Imagine, seriously imagine for a moment now, that these people, the vast majority of the electorate, vote for politicians based in large part on what they think Santa wants, campaign speeches all end with "Be good or Santa won't come to visit". And most of these voters won't even consider voting for someone who doesn't believe in Santa Claus and his factory at the North Pole.

It gets better. Click it, read it.

Comments

[zenten.livejournal.com]

He forgot that 5% of the people believe in the easter bunny, and that they will often kill each other over these beliefs.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

No, he's got an entire section on the people who believe different things. I only quoted the start.

[zenten.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm reading that now.

[unnamed525.livejournal.com]

Ah ... unfalsifiability.

[jsbowden.livejournal.com]

There's an Invisible Pink Unicorn on the line for you...

[unnamed525.livejournal.com]

Falsifiability is what makes a statement scientific, but it's distinct from verifiability. Not all unfalsifiable statements are unverifiable; you can't falsify "1 + 1 = 2", but you can prove it (although, really, the proof of it in successor arithmetic seems long for such an intuitively simple thing). Science uses unfalsifiable propositions all the time: logic and mathematics, for the most part.

[jsbowden.livejournal.com]

This changes about the fact that the Invisible Pink Unicorn wishes to speak with you.

[jsbowden.livejournal.com]

s/changes/changes nothing/

[kail-panille.livejournal.com]

Sigh....

I hope we manage to stem the crazy fundie tide before we make the world that guy's ranting about a reality.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

The world he's talking about *is* reality.

[kail-panille.livejournal.com]

Gotta respectfully disagree with you there.

Maybe I'm just sneaking through with defensive coloration, but I've never been witness to the kind of Santa-bombings described in that essay.

Most of the rest of it I'll buy, but the overwhelming hostility of Santists and the rarity of "fellow travelers" are over the top.

[jsbowden.livejournal.com]

Must be nice. I suspect the residents of the UK would like to live there. As would the residents of Madrid, and most of the Middle East and Persia.

[kail-panille.livejournal.com]

Poor word choice on my part. I did not mean literal explosions with the burning and the hurting and the death.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Take a look around the phrase "They're Not Pretending. They REALLY Do Believe There Is a Santa Claus." A couple of paragraphs before, and a couple after that.

*I* get that kind of treatment - not to the same degree, probably not as common, but I've gotten it - and I live in a nice, tolerant, civilised country. Even then, most of those people aren't hostile, just confused. The hostile ones, well, those exist. In great numbers.

This guy seems like he's abandoned "protective colouration" and just tells people the truth when they ask. That probably hasn't made his life any easier. The thing is, though, that all of these things he's talking about really do happen, the people really exist, and those really are the beliefs and goals of a lot of people. He even notes that most of the time, this doesn't come up.

No, I think it's a shockingly accurate description of how atheists get treated when the fact of their atheism comes up as something to be discussed.

[tosk.livejournal.com]

People believe in all sorts of crazy stuff. They always have, and it's only the huburis of a few who think that somehow humans will learn that belief is a tool, as useful or dangerous as you choose to allow it to be.

Humans tend to confuse the map and the territory, rather, they confuse the Universe that they talk about, which exists only in models and simulations, with the Universe that they live in, which they experience subjectively (filtering Objective Reality through their preconcieved notions, biases, and belief systems). The true Objective Universe will never be experienced, since, in the end, the meta-tool we use to measure things (our own neurological system) will always be prone to error.

I have had expereinces that do not map to a purely physical representation of the universe. This doesn't mean that they are from 'God', 'Goddess', 'Aliens' or the Sinister Ministers of the Bavarian Illuminati. It simply means that they don't fit on the map that materialists tend to use. (No moreso than the taste of sushi and Miso from last night will fit on a map of the City's best Sushi Resturants).

Yet, people contine to confuse the word and the thing, the word and the idea... and then align themselves with others who happen to be blinded in the same fashion.

With the Chaos that this impaired thought process brings... I can only say Hail Eris!

[missysedai.livejournal.com]

Maybe I'm just sneaking through with defensive coloration, but I've never been witness to the kind of Santa-bombings described in that essay.

Most of the rest of it I'll buy, but the overwhelming hostility of Santists and the rarity of "fellow travelers" are over the top.

How lucky for you. But you know, it's annoying when people say "Well, I've never experienced that, so it must not really happen!" It's annoying, and maybe a little ignorant.

It happens. It happens a bloody fucking lot. Maybe not so much where you live, but some of us live in places where these miserable asstards think nothing of ringing your doorbell and spewing their hateful nonsense at you if you dare say "No thank you" or "Please pay attention to the sign that says proselytizing is not welcome here" or "Sorry, not my god". Then there's the street preacher screaming hellfire and damnation at the bus station the mornings I have to go down there. "You gotta give your LIFE to JEEEEEzus! You gonna go to HELL if you don't give your LIFE to JEEEEEzus!" All hail the mighty iPod and its annoyance drowning superpowers, but don'tcha know, that persistent fucker will get right up in my face and scream if he notices the earbuds are in.

I even have a person at WORK who gives me hell (no pun intended) for not adhering to his religion!

It's very nice for you that you've not been subjected to this. But please do not proclaim that since you've never seen it, it doesn't happen. I've never seen a person murdered, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

[kail-panille.livejournal.com]

The contention was not that there is a place that meets the criteria, but that the world meets the criteria.

I am in the world. The place where I am does not meet the criteria (odd, considering where I am).

I'm not saying there aren't asshole theists. There are. I've encountered too many in my life. Asshole atheists, too, in point of fact. The thing I disputed was the notion that the vast majority, not just of theists, but of people, are asshole theists. (That's assuming that the original author acknowledges the existence of non-asshole theists, which isn't necessarily supported by the text.)

[dscotton.livejournal.com]

What your coworker is doing may be illegal.

http://www.law.ucla.edu/volokh/harass/breadth.htm#RELIGION

[cmseward.livejournal.com]

Why did I keep reading 'Santists' as 'Satanists', and then realized it worked just as well?

[wyatt1048.livejournal.com]

It's things like this that make me glad I'm British, and anyone here who is extrovertly religious is treated with mistrust and doubt. Athiesm and agnostism seem far more common here than America, and those who are religious seem to be content to keep it to themselves.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

I ascribe this to the very real understanding in Britain of what officially-sanctioned sectarian rule can be like; Oliver Cromwell and Bloody Mary are never too far away in British history to forget. (And the running sore that was sectarian violence in Ireland served as a good reminder, too.)

The US looks to have forgotten this example, save for careful students of history, despite the very real and urgent feelings (expressed often) of their Founding Fathers.

I blame the pseudo-beatification of the Puritans in American History classes for this.

-- Steve only enjoys Puritans when they're in cans... and even then they sometimes leave a bad taste behind.

[corruptedjasper.livejournal.com]

Remember, remember, the 5th of November:
Gunpowder, treason and plot;
I see no reason why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.


If you teach every toddler that religious extremist Catholics tried to assassinate simultaneously the King, his council of ministers, all the chief justices, Parliament, and most of the richest 50 men in the land, and make them burn puppets representing those men every year in the joyous-day-of-fireworks that's the highlight of kid's lives, that apparently is the result.

Here, toddlers just get taught that Spanish religiously extremist Catholics invaded our country and it took us 80 years of warfare to throw the bastards out. Seems to work pretty well, too. Leiden's Ontzet (the Liberation of Leiden) is still celebrated in that region with herring and white bread. And of course, don't forget the national anthem, which comes from those days, and "In naam van Oranje, doe open die poort!" (In the name of the House of Orange, open those gates!), which was famously said by the Resistance when entering Den Briel, the first city to fall out of Alva's hands.

Alva makes Bloody Mary look like a tolerant pussycat.

[wyatt1048.livejournal.com]

While Bonfire night is primarily anti-Catholic (especial in places like Lewis!), it should probably be noted that in most places it's turned into a 'burn your troubles' night - back when I was a kid, we had Maggie T to burn in effigy, there was a lot of trouble (somewhere in leicestershire, I believe) when they burnt a fake van full of gypsies, and only thirteen days ago we threw a dummy in the image of Bush on the flames.

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

There's a book that just came out recently that traces this development of the holiday (along with another one that lays out in some detail just what the Gunpowder Plot was about). I forget the titles but both were reviewed in a recent issue of The Economist.

I'm toying with the idea of requesting them for the collection (I'm a librarian at a Christian university, although it's a Lutheran one so they're pretty mellow about it).

[corruptedjasper.livejournal.com]

"What do you call the Archbishop of Canterbury?"

"Agnostic."