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My first thought was, well, any group that "goes against the grain" with a starkly different minority view is going to be meet with suspicion, fear, prejudice--at least from some people, and especially from either insecure people or powermongering people. For instance, how would an American who identified himself or herself as a "communist" fare in social, job and political situations? Even though "communism" is no threat whatsoever to their mode of life--and putting aside the long history of insanity in U.S. politics on this matter--self-identification as a "communist" would inspire...suspicion, fear and prejudice.
I was trying to think of something comparable as to "button-pushing." And, indeed, in my youth, "communism" was strongly associated with "atheism." I remember being taught to pray for the "conversion of Russia." "Godless communists" was the negative phrase.
But I feel there is something more at work, as to atheism. And it is this: Religion has been such a handy tool for powermongers of every kind--from bad priests and preachers up to bad, warmongering, torturing, thieving presidents--that its handiness as a power mechanism gets constantly re-enforced by people in positions of power, or who seek power, who have a tendency to try to dominate and exploit others. This is not to say anything about anyone's religious beliefs. It is a comment on how religion gets USED--for bloody Crusades, for witchhunts, for Inquisitions, for devaluing and demonizing women, for supporting rich elites, for impoverishing and exploiting others, for starting wars, for greed, for a long and dreary list of purposes that have nothing to do with, say, "Love thy neighbor."
But that is not why people hold religious beliefs, or why the churchgoers among them go to church (or other religious ceremonies). They do not intend to be exploited or manipulated. Most people are religious for two reasons: 1) They genuinely believe in the core of the religion (say, "Love they neighbor" or, say, for Indigenous Americans, "revere Mother Nature"), and/or 2) for community.
Most religious people are not against others (who don't believe); they have a need to be in accord with with others. The discordant notes are almost always the result of bad priests or preachers, bad members of whatever congregation, bad politicians, who exploit this need for community for vile purposes. You can find their ilk in any organization--businesses, the military, police forces, schools, environmental groups, the fire department, Hollywood film productions, the Bank of America, you name it. Wherever people gather, for whatever purpose, there will always be those who seek to dominate, to gain power and to use power for ill purposes.
And it is these sort of people who demonize "atheism" (or anything else they find useful to demonize). I REALLY don't think that the phenomenon of demonization is unique to religion. But I do think that religion--far, far back to its very earliest origins in human society--has been, first of all, a way to pull people together--to solidify a tribe or community in their common purpose of survival which requires cooperation. It allays individual fears of dying. It brings people into accord. That may even be a definition of "God"--or it's one that I am thinking about, anyway. "God" is what we want to be, what we are striving toward--it is a goal: amity and cooperation in a loving community that values everyone.
That this core impulse of humanity has been diverted at times into demonization and other evil purposes is simply a wrong path--which powermongering selfish leaders have sometimes led people down--USING their need for amity and community to exclude others--to not recognize the humanity and the rights of others, and also to devalue variety.
The odd view in a tribe--or the odd person in a tribe, or the "outside" person--is ALSO necessary to survival and community. The odd, creative person might figure out a way not just to chip a stone tool but to bind the chipped stone to a handle. Their messing around with stones and binding materials may seem very odd, to most of the tribe. But eventually it will benefit the tribe. Human beings began to understand this, at some point, and began to tolerate oddity and to foster creativity.
The odd stranger showing up--from outside the group-may have knowledge of distant food sources or sweet climates, and know the way there. He/she might also be a spy, with a band of murderous warriors following behind. But if human beings had always acted on their fears and suspicions, and had not taken chances with outliers, the human race would have expired long ago. The odd, outlier view is essential to human survival and community, and to what I am thinking of as the ultimate goal of humanity: to be God, in the best sense--to be amicably united.
Seeking to be amicably united also includes our scientific and engineering impulses--efforts to improve our life conditions, even to the point of physically living forever, controlling the stuff of which we and everything else is made, and doing good with that knowledge--for instance, terraforming other planets, turning them into beautiful green matrices of life (--if we don't destroy our only known beautiful green matrix of life before we get there).
Excluding the outlier is the exact opposite of what religion has done for human beings, from time immemorial (pulling people together in common purpose). And it is only when the few powermongers among us get hold of a group, via religion, that religion becomes a vehicle of exclusion--and thus retards human progress. Granted, this has happened quite a lot, but it is not inevitable, and it is not in accord with the initial impulses of religion (to learn, to explain, to calm, to heal, to unite).
The early Christians brought a new idea to the Roman Empire in that the Christians regarded slaves as equal human beings. The Romans were actually not as bad, as slave-holders, as the racist slavery that came later, in our era. Nevertheless, slavery was a deep flaw in the Roman social system which crippled and destroyed many lives and minds, and this needed a correction, for the sake of human progress. The idea was born that "all men are created equal"--not just all citizens of the Roman Empire, but all people, everywhere. This was the original, creative impulse of Christianity--and it extended to women and children as well, who were NOT equal even if they were citizens. It is only later, around the 5th Century, when the powermongers got hold of the Christian religion, and wedded it to state power, that it began to be oppressive and exclusive--a political tool. It took Europe and England about ten centuries to undo the damage to this initial Christianity idea (equality). And there have been many grave troughs in that progress (the slave trade, the decimation of Indigenous Americans, the Third Reich, the Vietnam War--all perpetrated by people calling themselves "Christians"). So the use of religion for power purposes is not to be dismissed as some kind of anomaly that can be easily overcome. It is very dangerous.
I just think that, in considering its dangers--exclusion and demonization being among its most serious dangers--we should understand the difference between genuine belief/community (the desires of most religious people), on the one hand, and the terrorization of the human mind that can occur when individual people think they are "God" and dominate and use others, for their own self-aggrandizement, power or greed.
There is a BIG difference between these two modes of religion, and we only have to look around us for examples to see how important that difference is. Consider the life and works of Catholic Trappist monk Thomas Merton, for instance. He publicly advocated that the U.S. to abandon its nuclear arsenal. He explored the deepest ethics of "love thy neighbor." Or Fr. Dan Berrigan, who went to jail for pouring fake napalm on Draft records during the Vietnam War. I think there are a lot of Catholics like this--I think it's probably the majority. They may not be such activists as these, but they really believe "love thy neighbor."
Personally--having been raised a Catholic--I think even the best Catholics are too attached to the distorted patriarchal architecture of the Vatican power establishment (which derives directly from those 5th century power worshippers who wedded Christianity to the Roman Empire). It's kind of like the English attachment to the Monarchy--a visceral need for stability. Thomas Merton, for instance--truly great and visionary man that he was--obeyed his superiors when they told him to stop advocating nuclear disarmament in public. While the order did not come from Rome (that I know of), it nevertheless reflects that authoritarian structure that even rebel priests (and other rebellious Catholics) seem to need--a need that goes back to the original human reason for creating religion in the first place: community.
In any case, I guarantee you, if you are an atheist, that most Catholics--and probably most Protestants--do not hate atheists. Most Catholics, and I think most Protestants--have grown far beyond the "Godless communist" ravings of the 1950s era, though there are certainly powermongers still in the midst of these religious people, and cynics and evildoers in our political establishment who ally with those powermongers. "Atheists" are a danger to their POWER. And that power is a danger to us all. That is mostly why you meet prejudice--the powermongers using propaganda to enhance their power. They want everyone to believe the same things--just like the 5th Century Church prelates who burned and suppressed all the other gospels and formulated a monolithic ideology which they then got enforced by the state. MOST Christians don't hate you. And the best Christians understand very well that your alternative view is essential to community.
My view of atheism is that it is essential for humanity to realize that God does not exist outside of human beings. WE are the love, the community and the eternal life that most of us posit as being dependent upon an exterior agent--but which, in reality, is what we seek to be. It may be a "fairy tale" that God exists--that God is a sort of person, who lives in Heaven, who is going to reward or punish you in the end. But it is no "fairy tale" that most people want there to be a God or Gods. So what is that virtually universal desire and imaginative creation all about? It is NOT easy to explain.
As I said, I am coming to the conclusion, myself, that it is a goal--that, in a sense, God exists in the future, or in one future, in which all the best qualities of humanity come to fruition--our scientific passions, our various loves, our generosity, our communal spirit, our creativity. We are trying to progress toward that goal. It is the common ideal of humanity. However distorted it may appear at times, a common thread comes through: our best selves in unity with each other. Aldous Huxley called it "The Perennial Philosophy"--the common thread of compassion in all philosophies and religions. But I'm not sure he saw it as the goal of becoming God, together.
And to get there--to Godlike knowledge, wisdom and unity--we have to stop committing the "sins" of exclusion, violence, war, greed, egotism, consumerism, lording it over others, trashing of Mother Nature and all the stupid, unwise, selfish things that most of us know are wrong. These are not going to be punished by a God whom we project as existing. They are simply going to result in us NOT becoming God, together. Our species will destroy itself, and that will be that--a tragic end.
But we have posited, to ourselves, that we CAN go there--to wisdom and unity. And this, to me, is where atheism is so incredibly valuable. To say that there is no God is the truth that we must realize before we can finish our journey to becoming God--to being as powerful, as wise, as knowledgeable and as compassionate, in our collective existence, as most of us imagine God to be--and also to expand and meet others in the Universe who are seeking or have achieved their own projection of God.
I know it sounds a bit "fairy tale"-ish. I was just re-reading this and thinking, 'Wow, where did all this mysticism come from?' I was starting to de-bunk my own thoughts. But I'll leave that to others. I think there is substance here--something going on with us humans that we don't understand very well and need to understand, and that's what I'm reaching for.
I think that I haven't sufficiently dealt with the "dark side": our fear of death before we get to the point--if we ever do--of literally living forever. Scientifically, it seems right over the horizon--but it's not here now--we're all gonna die, as far as we know, and we all want to be special and NOT die, and we humans could get into a pretty ugly fight about who gets the new medical miracles that extend life and may extend it indefinitely.
There are a LOT OF "dark" paths we could go down, to becoming a less than perfect and compassionate collective God--and into stark evil. We've seen it in the past. We see worrisome signs of it today. All those innocent people exploding under our drone bombers are not terribly impressed with the God we are projecting. Their God didn't save them. Our God didn't care. And this is one of many "dark" Gods that we could become, if we don't destroy ourselves (our more likely fate, since our wisdom and our engineering abilities are so out of sync): Overly clever, heartless destroyers who think they are God.
There is the "dark side" in many of our behaviors, and the "dark side" of the universe itself--literal "dark matter" and "black holes" and the incredibly beautiful but incredibly violent lives of stars and galaxies. Do we become God to harness all that incredibly immense energy? Is that our goal--to be the controllers and creators of universes? What kind of Creator will we be? The omens aren't very favorable, that the more powerful we become, the more benevolent we will be. Is our projection of a punishing God--and, in some religious belief systems, a cold-hearted one, who would cast innocents into eternal Hell for the slightest offense, or, in some religions, is the embodiment of horror, suffering and death--the thing that we ARE becoming, or a tidal side-path that we might be pulled further into?
If you are an atheist and believe that this is it, there is no more, you have this life, make of it what you will and then it's over, it must be a great relief not to be doing all the projections that most of us are doing, good and bad. And I would imagine that you look at the rest of us as kind of insane, which we are. We desperately want there to be something more. I tend to side with the rest of humanity in this loony bin of religion. But I don't necessarily think that insanity, in this sense, is a bad thing. It's troublesome and mysterious. And it is neither good nor bad, in itself. It just is. Most people think this way. Most people have this projective need and ability which can lead them way far from reality and way far into bad behavior. The projections, however, have this strain of commonality toward some kind of distant or future collective good. Most people don't realize that they are themselves creating or destroying that distant or future good, NOW. If they would just give up the notion that God exists, they could start taking responsibility for the kind of God that they and all of us together could possibly become, if and when we stop being assholes.
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