ATHEIST BULLSHIT

23. November 2009 by Frank.

I’m getting tired of being told no real atheist is 100% certain there is no god.  I’m sick of hearing the words “trope” and “meme” as if they magically expressed some deep truth.  I’m quite exhausted by all the logical arguments.

We’re not all college age debate squad members.

And I know for a fact that the average church goer does not seek out unbelievers to use logic on them.  Nor are they likely to understand logical arguments if they do encounter one.  As much a deal is made about witnessing and saving the lost, the vast majority would rather just let the pastor do it.  I was in church, in ministry, for 20 years; I know whereof I speak.

So why are so many atheist blogs so big on trying to debate and prove wrong theologians and apologists?  Seriously, where does one go to find the local theologian, the wise holy man who knows all the arguments for and against?  There aren’t any mountaintops here in Michigan to make a pilgrimage to.

If it makes perfect sense for people to reject every god except one, then how is it that when one rejects that final god he still isn’t allowed to be 100% certain there are no gods?  What?  Have we got an additional supply of gods we don’t know about?  Am I being facetious?

Definitely.  I get tired of being told what I can and cannot think.

Practically everyone I know is some form of christian.  I do not debate any of them, I have no desire to do so.  I could show them so much proof their beliefs are wrong from their own holy bible that you would think anyone would be convinced I was right.  I don’t bother because it’s futile.  Anything I say goes into a very selective filter so that the christian never hears anything they don’t want to hear.

You can’t even get a Baptist to hear a Pentecostal belief correctly.

What chance would an atheist have?

There’s a time and place for debate and anyone can blog about whatever they want.  I actually enjoy some sound logic now and then.  What I resent is being lumped into groups that I’m obviously not part of.  We do that to the religious all the time and think nothing of it.  But they aren’t all the same, they don’t all agree, they certainly don’t all think alike.  Atheists don’t have any common bond other than a lack of belief in god(s) and yet we still try to put labels on each other and define how we all should think.  Sorry, that doesn’t work.

I read.  I come across words and phrases constantly that I have never heard anyone use in conversation.  I am reasonably sure I would have to define those words to whomever I was talking to, if I were to use them myself.  Meme and trope are two such words.  Atheist blogs use these words with alarming frequency and yet I have never heard them spoken by anyone.  I come in contact with a lot of people.  Atheist bloggers seem to think that everyone sits around thinking about these concepts if not all the time at least most of the time.

But what in the world is a meme?  From Dictionary.com, “Richard Dawkin’s term for an idea considered as a replicator, especially with the connotation that memes parasitize people into propagating them much as viruses do.”  Or “Ideas can evolve in a way analogous to biological evolution.”  Heavy stuff.  College professor speak.  Atheist bloggers picked up on the concept and obviously ran with it to the extent that one of them is mentioning a meme every time you look around.  I find it odd that my spell checker knows meme but apparently hasn’t heard the obvious sounding but totally obscure parasitize.  Put simply, memes are thought viruses.

Now that we have that straight, what’s a trope? From Dictionary.com, “any literary or rhetorical device, as metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony, that consists in the use of words in other than a literal sense.”  Don’t be embarrassed, I had to look up metonymy and synecdoche, too, although my spell checker does know them.  Let’s just say figure of speech shall we?  I used to get in trouble when I was a kid because I enjoyed reading the dictionary.  I was delighted to find cool sounding words that no one knew the meaning of.  I stopped doing that a long time ago but obviously other word nerds didn’t.

The point is, nobody talks like this in normal conversation.  What are we doing, trying to sound intellectual?  Or just trying to give the impression that we’re all a bunch of deep thinkers compared to our religious targets?

I do have to admit that there are quite a few atheist bloggers I read that actually are college students.  But outside their little groups who actually talks like this?

I have the misfortune to be related to some people very heavily involved in politics, law, and big money.  Occasionally I have been in their presence when they are communicating in political, legal, and wealth language that I barely understand.  I politely listen, keep my mouth shut, and manage to get the gist of what they’re talking about.  It isn’t pleasant and, again, most people don’t talk like this.

It’s also extremely obvious that nothing I think or say would be of interest to any of them.

I get the same feeling with quite a few atheist bloggers.  That’s what I’m ranting about.  I haven’t read all the relevant books, I don’t know all the right words.  I understand all this stuff far better than you might think but I don’t find it useful in dealing with other people.  Logic and reason are wonderful things but beating people over the head with them doesn’t work.  Someone struggling with losing their faith isn’t necessarily looking for cold hard facts, they may need some kind of emotional empathy more than that.

I had to deal with my stroke altered life and my loss of faith at the same time.  I didn’t have anyone to turn to, no one stepped in to help me or lead me to someone who could help.  My doctor knew nothing of stroke effects beyond his PDA and textbooks.  If there was any kind of support group in the area, no one referred me to them.  Not one but two churches turned their backs on me, there was no spiritual counseling either.  There weren’t any atheist blogs back then and, in a way, I’m glad there weren’t.  All the memes and tropes and logical arguments thrown around today would have left me cold back then.  I needed cold hard facts.  I needed solid reasons and explanations for what happened to me.

I didn’t need word games.

I certainly didn’t need anyone to tell me what to think or to believe.  I didn’t need to be assigned some label or to be put in some category.  I didn’t need to be alienated from the very people who actually could understand what I was going through.

That’s what disturbs me about a great many atheist blogs currently.  They seem hell bent on alienating the very people they claim to be trying to reach.

Lighten up, people!

OK.  Rant over.

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