In all humbility, I’m talking about myself.
I once told an online friend that ‘I notice things.’ He replied that he had noticed me noticing things, something that many people can’t, or won’t, do. Having noticed things, I am capable of adding 2 plus 2, to get 4. I have gotten some insights into myself through science fiction. One author wrote of ‘The Diagonal Relationship, where un-noticed or seemingly unconnected data, mesh to reveal unexpected results.
My Mother was a dutiful church-goer. She went to the Presbyterian Church, because the family went. Everyone went to church! It was just expected. Then she married my Father, who was a Baptist, so she did what was expected of a wife, and became a Baptist. Only, Dad was a twice-a-year Baptist – Christmas and Easter….maybe. 😳
I noticed that individual denominations were not important. They could be switched in or out at will. If denominations were of no importance, then entire religions could be accepted or rejected as well. Church attendance was also unimportant; its only apparent purpose was to display your piety to others.
Another of my mental properties that I identified through Sci-Fi, was strength of will and determination. As one book character explained to another, the reason that they had not been telepathically controlled was that, “We could raise stubborn as a crop, and sell it at a profit.”
Strong-willed, but not willfully rebellious, I am still not as desperately gullible as most. The reason that Christian Apologists are most upset about the concept of Atheism, is that, like one little crack in a dam, even one little doubt, can suddenly release their floodwaters of disbelief.
I once asked my Mother why she sent my brother and I to Sunday School, if she and Dad weren’t there for church service. She said that it was so that we would get some exposure to religion – an excuse that I do not agree with, as an adult.
So, I went to Sunday School, not with my rebellious little mind made up that it was all fake – but with my skeptical mind made up to only accept it as true if there was convincing evidence. So much of religion seemed to be optional opinions.
No-one had yet tried to convince me that religious claims were supposed to be exempt from questioning and disbelief. I wanted to believe as many true things, and as few false things as possible. Going in with no preconceptions, I soon learned that the conversations inside were almost exactly the same as those outside – the same boasts, brags, exaggerations, misdirections, and statements that, if they were not intentional lies, lived right next door. My savior can beat your savior.
I am not absolutely, positively, convinced that NO God exists, but I am absolutely, positively, convinced that no definition and description of a God that has ever been presented to me, has carried a sufficiently coherent characterization of the proffered deity to cause me to accept and believe it. Once we strip off all the impossibilities and contradictions, whatever is left – if there is anything left – it, BY DEFINITION, CANNOT be God!
Archon's Den 