adventure games and personal stories
In blogland, it’s easy to get involved in endless discussions with Christians about evidence, logic and common sense. To summarise: there’s no evidence for invisible deities; it’s illogical to think your religion is correct and the rest are wrong; common sense should tell everyone that organised religion only brings problems to the world.
However, conversation can come to a stumbling halt when they pull their last, emotional card from the pack: their personal story of the intervention of the god God in their life. What can an atheist do with these stories? It’s fine to ridicule abstract concepts, it’s fine to fiercely object to words in a book and mock the random interpretations of these words. But when someone gives you what is often a sad story full of pain and serious difficulties, through the lens of they wouldn’t have survived without God, it’s impossible to say anything. It’s cruel to ridicule, it’s disrespectful to criticise their understanding of their own life and it’s worrying to attempt to pull a rug from under someone’s shaky feet.
What I want to do here, is offer words of encouragement for anyone afraid to dispose of religion in their lives for fear of the havoc that may occur. I want to assure potential de-covertees that life continues past deity-belief and that incredible coincidences can still occur, great changes can still happen and that your life will progress with notable and interesting features even as an atheist. Because being an animal is an adventure game with many potential paths. Ask any raven.
That advice is appropriate. Whereas I don’t ridicule when a person shares their personal experience and attribute them to god, I encourage them to see it as a personal effort and to thank the person really responsible for their getting better whether it is their therapist, friends, spouses or anyone else for that matter except gods.
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I read a really interesting post after I’d published this that made me consider that having faith in some kind of religion may well help people do things they might otherwise struggle with … but I’m still not convinced they can’t come to the same conclusions on their own, or that the path they might have gone down without religion would have been as disastrous as they imagine.
http://philebersole.wordpress.com/2013/06/23/an-atheist-critique-of-christopher-hitchens/
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I saw the Slate article by White this afternoon. I will read this one too and maybe comment later if I find it interesting
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http://attaleuntold.wordpress.com/2013/01/21/christians-are-all-mental/
I rest my case.
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Sounds like a fun experience!
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Ha. Mmm. Er, a totally weird synchronicity saved my life. I might have survived otherwise but been damaged.
And- if good things happen to atheists, perhaps God is looking after them too! He could be nicer than the Christians think. It is this mean God who creates people to suffer and die and gives them just enough wisdom to disbelieve in him without the additional wisdom to believe in him, just so’s he can send them to Hell, which I can’t believe in.
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I suspect randomly good and bad things happen to atheists and Christians alike. 😉
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