That’s the kind of angry atheism I can get behind.
Religion has its legitimate uses. Solace in a time of pain and chaos. Guidance towards a moral life and a higher state of being. A place to go where you feel included and welcome and like you are part of a community. A way to deal with the fundamental loneliness of being an over-brained monkey lost on the ocean of being. A way to give thanks… and complain. A way for people to formulate their intentions and desires and release them into the world via praying. A way to make sense of the world and your place in it. And a regular gathering with like-minded people where through rituals, song, and teachings you synchronize your mood and your mind with your fellow believers and get the deep pleasure of human connection so necessary for us to thrive.
Or so I’ve been told.
All those things, and doubtless many many more, can safely and legitimately be in the wheelhouse of religion. They are vitally important spiritual and emotional functions that help billions of people cope whether or not they are “true”.
But religion can’t feed you, or clothe you, or shelter you, or give you a job. Only people can do that. And while religion might inspire someone to do that for others, it will still be people, and not god(s), who do it.
Real, live, human people who are down here on Earth with the rest of us. People who are not all that different from us. People with no special role in divinity or permission to lead or powers unavailable to all of us.
Just your fellow human beings trying to do the right thing, just like you.
What religion should not ever be allowed to do is to be an impediment to action on the things we human beings can do for ourselves. Don’t pray for relief from disease when you can go the dang doctor. Don’t use prayer as a balm to soothe the aches and pains of cruel poverty when you can advocate for change. Don’t go to your astrologer for business advice, go to an accountant.
The boy is quite right to say these things come from human beings, not Ram or God or Ronald McFucking Donald. All the important and pragmatic things need to be ruled by the people and things we know to be real.
Things like this life, in this world, right now. Maybe there’s an afterlife, and maybe there isn’t. But we know for sure we have this life and it is ours to live and experience and enjoy as much as we can.
So why live your life denying yourself all the pleasures your God put here on Earth for you in favour of some post-life stage that might not even be real?
God, if He exists, wants you to be happy. Like any good Father, he wants to see his children grown and thrive and prosper. Anyone who says otherwise in favour of an angry, punishing, anti-joy and anti-fun and anti-pleasure God needs to ask themselves whose voice they have really been listening to?
Hint : It ain’t God’s.
Man, I would be an amazing preacher.
More after the break.
When I withdraw….
…things fall apart.
I’ve only just realized how big a pattern this is for me. I put a few tentative, tender, timid tentacles out into the world for a little while and maybe even start to feel a little bold and confident, but at the slightest sign of trouble, scariness, or challenge, those things spool back into me like a retracting measuring tape and I completely withdraw from reality and leave everything to go to hell out there while I stay “safe”.
Ehehehe. Some fuckin’ safety. The dude from The Life of Pi was safer than I am, and he was stuck on a rowboat with a tiger.
But hey, it was the same tiger for months on end. He had plenty of time to get used to it being there. And after that, it probably felt just as “safe”.
Anyhow, where was I?
Hell, many times it has only been after everything goes to hell in the world outside my mind than I feel like it’s “safe” for me to emerge again.
After all, the new scary or hard or troubling thing is gone now so it must be “safe”. Sure, I have done harm to myself by giving up on doing something I should be doing or could be doing to improve my lot in life but none of that matters.
Because when that far too sensitive alarm system goes off, all that matter is escape, and to hell with the consequences. That’s how the adrenal response works.
And it doesn’t bother me that I am sabotaging myself in horrible ways because I am not there to experience it. I am locked away in the stuffy little safe room in the crawlspace of my mind, “safe”.
The things falling apart and the ways in which I am failing are the outside world’s problem, not mine.
That’s why I give up on things so easily, whether it’s a new video game, an attempt at self-improvement, or a goddamned expensive sex toy.
New things are inherently highly stimulating and therefore prime me for freaking out at the merest hint of trouble. The potential for overwhelm is high and my threshold for overwhelm is low, and so it’s amazing that anything new can ever enter my life.
A game’s got to be pretty good to survive that, I guess.
And that’s how the “wall of fear’ I described to my therapist as holding me captive last week works. It doesn’t matter what my desires, intentions, or best interests are, once that alarm goes off, I retract,. everything falls apart, and I get absolutely nowhere.
In order to escape, therefore, I need to calm that god damned alarm down, and the only way I can think of to do that is a variation on the exposure therapy used for phobias.
But even that would require a certain steadiness of resolve precluded by the very problem I am trying to solve.
What I need is for someone to hold my hand and anchor me and help me to stay calm and not be triggered so easily.
My lonely childhood did not include anyone like that. Not once I went to school.
And I don’t feel capable of making that for myself, either. Whatever it would take to be able to do something like that, I ain’t got it.
So I guess I’ll be a fugitive from nothing rotting on my lonely island till I die.
But anyhow, how about you?
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.