There are times when there’s next to nothing to write about, and the muses of blogging are off somewhere on a drinking binge.
Then there are times like now.
Seriously, I feel inundated. I probably had material for two weeks’ worth of posting in my browser at one point, until I realized that commenting on current affairs kind of requires that the affairs be, you know, current.
I could probably get away with writing about the Brit who was told to take the St. George’s flag off his car because there were fears that it might be racist. Talk about re-envisioning the white man’s burden. I almost preferred the English outlook that led Churchill to belittle Gandhi as a “a seditious middle temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well known in the east, striding half-naked up the steps of the viceregal palace, while he is still organizing and conducting a defiant campaign of civil disobedience, to parley on equal terms with the representative of the king-emperor.” It gave you something to really hate – and you know how frequently I use that word.
Alternatively I could go back to my old stomping grounds, wailing on the recording industry for their latest legal…well I would say “theory,” but that would put it on the same level as something like evolution – and while I do not think much of it, it’s better put together than almost anything the RIAA can crap out, so I’m kind of at a loss for what to call the thing.
I was thinking for a bit that I might talk about the rather ludicrous fact that customs agents are allowed to copy the contents of anyone’s laptop – probable cause and warrant need not apply. However, my interest in this has more to do with the fact that everyone including Neil Gaiman has felt the need to talk about it; or rather, particularly that Neil Gaiman felt the need to talk about it. Which struck me as interesting, but not in that Greg House sort of way that generally impels my writing.
No…Instead, I’m going to talk about a truly amazing study I found on MSNBC’s website. I’m not going to talk about the perturbing heterodoxy and ignorance it suggests amongst the American adherents of organized religion, however – at least, not in that sense. I’m more interested in discussing it from the standpoint of one of the more interesting points of data mentioned in the article: “21 percent of self-identified atheists said they believe in God or a universal spirit, with 8 percent ‘absolutely certain’ of it.” The percentages of supposedly religious people who espouse pluralistic notions roughly equivalent to “one religion is just as good as any other” I’m used to. They’re stupid, generally worthless religious people, but they’ve been around for a while.
What really puzzles me is how an atheist can self-identify as an atheist and yet be even as equivocal as to suggest that some sort of spiritual life exists. There’s a disconnect here, I’m positive of it. Last I checked, “atheist” means someone without God – regardless of whether or not my personal definition of “being against God” holds any water or not – which isn’t a philosophical position that lends itself to making room for the idea of a higher power. And since at least in the West we don’t tend to construct worldviews according to the operating principles of quantum mechanics, the idea that you can be an atheist and even something as vanilla as a deist is a little bit more than my brain can process.
Props to the irreligious community for being so open minded, but I’ve got this nagging feeling that it’s got less to do with wanting to be inclusive and more with what Zoe would refer to as a problem with their brains being missing.
The somewhat serious implication of this little quantum theological junction is that words and their meanings are – in the minds of some people, at least – totally are totally disconnected from each other. That’s overreacting a bit, I know. It’ll be a long time, I expect, before a survey on racist ideologies comes back with any minority of Klansmen who think that blacks and Jews are perfectly decent human beings and upstanding members of the community with solid and legitimate value to bring to the table. I have that feeling.
But then again, I would never have called the whole spiritual atheist angle, so my analytical acumen might be more than a little bit on the fritz. Maybe.
Filed under: atheists, disturbing, enigmatic, epic rant, faith, idiots, just plain strange, language, religion
You’re dead on actually. They aren’t atheists, like AJ Ayer, they’re ignorant. The people I’ve met (many to be sure) who identify themselves as “atheist” but also retain a deist or even a spiritualist notion of ontology often don’t know what the word means. Even BA holding members of the American populous associate the term with some flavors of Christian, Muslim and Hindu zeitgeists, thus their rejection of those three major WESTERN religions ends up terminating in their misappropriation of “atheist” to render a sickly rebellion. While the spiritualism and deism of these people might border more upon many of the larger Eastern religions, they’re unaware that there is already a faith built upon the principles they flux between. In the end, I usually point this out and get a Philosophy-related chuckle (or giggle once) in return for the massive, emotional and psychologically over-revealing quest that is a discussion of faith. Religion is so much easier to argue, since it has rules – this may be why they choose to identify themselves as “atheist” in the first place: they never really asked the question. Their pitiful attempt at rebellion (a la Camus) can’t stand up to an argument, thus they define their “lives” with a vague feeling of dislike toward people they usually don’t actually know who equally (in most cases) misidentify themselves as Christian, Muslim or Hindu. It’s truly one of the most lively, violent (either emotionally, psychologically or even physically) discussions one can have: faith. So personal, so revealing, so powerful – the nuclear-arms level of beliefs, illusions and self-deceptions. I highly recommend it – if only with yourself.
Yeah. It smacks more of agnosticism than atheism. Which, again, is bothersome since I’m pretty sure that “agnostic” isn’t that complicated of a word…yet there are a significant chunk of morons out there who seem to think that not being in an established religion is equivalent to atheism. It makes no sense.