The Atheist's Heart

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Aug 17
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On Conversion and Prophecy

Well before I officially labeled myself an atheist, I observed with sadness, and oftentimes anger, the discord that religion, notably Christianity, causes in our society.  The intolerance, the ignorance, the judgmentalism, the hatred…all are well documented and sadly, all too frequent. 

Why does religion spur this degree of negativity towards those who don’t believe – or believe something other than a given religion’s dogma?  And why is it so hard to convince the faithful that their animus is not only misdirected, but it’s just plain wrong?  While the drive to conversion is well-understood as a source of intolerance, I believe that another piece of the answer lies with the notion of prophecy: that the future has been revealed in some fashion to believers, and that that future is unavoidable and unchangeable.

First, conversion of the unfaithful is an explicit objective of the monotheistic religions, notably Christianity and Islam.  One might argue that this is simply good marketing – after all, success as a system of thought is dependent on growth.  However, it has some obvious negative side effects.  Intrusion into political systems and into our personal lives is one of those harmful effects.  Of course, the drive to conversion also creates, through in-group/out-group psychological dynamics, a judgmentalism that can fester into true hatred in extreme cases – see Fred Phelps and Westboro Baptist, and the muslim Jihad.

But this is only part of the problem – it’s well-understood why theists cannot tolerate or hate non-believers, and why they are convinced that their dogma, their system of morals, is the only way to cure the ills of the world.  However, I’m much more interested in why they refuse to accept that there are other ways.  Why are the true b’leevers so adamant that they have the only solution to the problems in the world today? And why are they so convinced that alternative solutions are wrong?

One answer: prophecy.  In examining Christianity, the promise of the Rapture is what I see as the root cause of the unwillingness or inability of the fundamentalist mindset to accept new ideas for social, economic and political change.  It’s self-fulfilling on a grand scale.  Secular change is against God’s will, and will result in the destruction of the world…we can only be saved through God’s word.  If we accept that word, then we shall be saved while the world burns around us.  And since not everyone accepts God’s word, then destruction is inevitable.  Some true b’leevers even seem to want to hasten the destruction. As one of my friends so eloquently posted: "...trying to find ways to ameliorate global, climatic catastrophe is to resist --in effect, to deny--the will of their "god." It is, in fact, blasphemy."

What true b'leevers fail to recognize, of course, is that their faith, and their zealous efforts to convert others to that faith is the cause of many of the problems facing the world today, at least from a social perspective…and there are arguments that the thought patterns implicit in theology result in many other environmental, economic and political problems as well.

So, how do we break through this circular wall of conversion and prophecy? How do we prove to them that rational, secular solutions to the problems we face today are the only reliable means of addressing them?  I wish I knew.

But, to end on a (only slightly) lighter note, from the Onion: