Deus Ex Blog

Chrono Trigger DS! Chrono Trigger DS! It has to be!

It seems my old High School and their parent church have made the news again. In this case Kotaku, a gaming news website, is expressing bemusement at the latest sermon title: Wii, What Is Important? Horrible attempt at a pop-culture reference aside, what I found particularly interesting were the comments on this story. This story was merely a picture and a caption making fun of said picture and yet it, and seemingly anything posted on the internets that even remotely references religion these days, sparked a flame war. Atheists taking the story way to seriously and calling all religion evil. Religious people defending themselves and attacking the atheists. Back and forth, on and on. There are a lot of very strong opinions out there about religion’s place in the world or lack thereof.

The reason this argument always gets so heated is because religion (and the lack of religion) strikes at the identity of religious and nonreligious alike. Belief in God is not a defensible position. We’re arguing for the existence of something beyond our very understanding. You cannot use reason or science to prove the existence of God, God is beyond the realm of human understanding. He gives us bits and pieces to better understand him, but it’s equivalent to trying to explain nuclear physics to an amoeba. And yet, science cannot disprove the existence of God either. God is outside of science’s scope. And so, for or against, we are left with the choice of whether to believe in God or not based on our own reason, faith, and experiences. It’s a very personal decision, and that belief or lack of belief in God forms a large part of our world-view. When people attack this, they are attacking a very large part of our identity. When we attack them or argue with them, we are attacking a sore spot for them as well. A lot of Atheists I have heard would like to be able to believe in God, but they find it too easy, to convenient. They are no less seeking truth than we, we’re just looking in different places. To foster a bit of understanding on this subject, I’d like to address a few of the major points of contention between Atheists and the religious.

1) People have been right bastards in the name of religion just the same as without it. If we want to get into a pissing match over whether religion (Crusades, inquisition, Jihad) or Atheism (The holocaust, the purges of Communist Russia and China) have been more cruel and inhumane, I think we’ll come to a draw. The problem with this argument is that in certain societies, religion or atheism is implied by the culture. Not everyone in Nazi Germany or Communist Russia were atheist killing machines, and not everyone in medieval Spain or England or Iraq were on holy wars to convert the heathens and kill anyone who wouldn’t convert. Most Atheists live perfectly moral and upstanding lives. Neither side has a monopoly on morality or immorality for that matter.

2) Despite this last point, one side or the other being really nice, wonderful people is no basis for a system of belief. I’ve known many wonderful, nice people that were very, very wrong on any number of issues. Christians in particular are called to exhibit the “Fruits of the Spirit” consisting of Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Gentleness, Faithfulness, and Self-Control, however doing so is for it’s own value. Doing so for any reason other than “It’s the right thing to do” is not convincing. If someone went out of their way to be nice to me just so I’d join his side, I’d be insulted. We can’t argue for or against anything based on how happy and nice one side appears to be compared to the other. Looks are often deceiving.

3) Just because someone believes something based on faith does not make them a sheep. If you get down to it, everything we believe we do so by faith. “You think that’s air you’re breathing now?” - Morpheus. As much as it irks Atheists, believing in the existence of God takes no more belief than believing that he doesn’t exist. Scientific facts we can argue and solve but we can’t prove or disprove anything with relation to God, so looking down on others because they either believe in God or don’t is simply silly and won’t get us anywhere.

4) Arguing the nature of God, and all the other issues of differing thought and belief against an Atheist is completely pointless. I’ve seen far to many arguments on this subject devolve into critiques of individual sects’ beliefs. (For some reason, most Atheists seem to think that all Christians are Catholics.)

5) Arguing the existence of God is ultimately pointless. We can argue and bicker till we’re blue in the face, but a staunch Atheist is not going to be able to convince a staunch believer any more than a staunch believer will be able to convince the Atheist. The television show Crossfire is like this. The whole show is based on getting two intractable people of differing views and have them yell at each other for half an hour. The argument of whether God is, and from there what He is like, is a personal journey. You can’t argue it, it hits you when you least expect it, that sense of awe. After the belief in God is established, doubt still attacks all the time, “was that really, really real?” Oddly enough, people attacking your beliefs help to strengthen them. The more we argue one way or the other, the more we are going to shore up our opponent’s defenses.

6) We can discuss this without attacking each other. Really. We can. If we’re both open to trying to understand each other instead of jumping on top of each other trying to convince them that they’re wrong, we can actually have a conversation that encourages understanding. “Oh, THAT’s why you don’t believe in God. I can understand that…” “Wow, that’s a really impressive story about how your life turned around after you accepted God into your life. I can understand why you put so much into that religion stuff of yours.”  This kind of discussion would be far more beneficial than 2000 years of arguing.

Last night I watched the History channel’s biopic of Martin Luther King Jr. I must say that the images of what those working towards integration endured at the hands of the white establishment lowered my already dim view of humanity. But there is hope. It’s amazing to see where we have come since those times. There is still far to go to erase all the years of bigotry, violence, and hatred, but we’ve come a long way towards racial equality. Until Dr. King’s dream becomes the dream of every man, woman, and child in America, we will still have a long way to go.

One thing that stuck out to me during this harsh history lesson was that the people beating and in many cases murdering blacks were claiming to be God-fearing Christians. I cannot wrap my head around this one. How can someone who claims to follow Christ do this sort of evil? The only answer I can come up with is that these were not Christians at all, but were following some warped, distorted view of Christianity. They obviously fail the litmus test that the Apostle Paul uses. Their actions did not promote or show any Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Gentleness, Faithfulness, Goodness, or Self-Control, and Paul teaches us that it is by their fruit you shall know if they are followers of God.

I think it points to something much deeper though, something that transcends religion or politics. These white people were afraid. Their fear manifests the way it does in many of us: Anger. As Yoda said, “Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.” And yet, what were they afraid of? Change? Did they really think that if Blacks were able to become equals or prosperous it would diminish their lives any? After all, we as a society do well when people (not corporations, but that’s another post) do well.

It was also amazing to see what things the modern church can learn from Dr. King. Dr. King was not merely interested in integration, he also sought to combat two other evils: Poverty and War. He is less well known on these two fronts, but they comprised much of his work in the years before his death. What are we doing these days to combat poverty and bring an end to war? What are we doing to bridge racial divides? What are we doing, in short, to carry on Dr. King’s legacy? This is not just for African Americans, but for all Americans! Indeed, all humans! What are we doing to bring about peace, hope, and love in the world?

I never thought I would see anything more awesome than

But that was before The Angry Zen Master Showed me these:

and

Well, it’s been a while in coming, but I finally have branched the politics portion of the site over to a new site: America Is Purple dot com. (www.americaispurple.com) Update your RSS feeds and bookmarks accordingly! Also, if any of you are interested in voicing your opinion on politics in a constructive and thoughtful manner, I’d like to add contributers to the new site so it’s not just me talking. If you would like to become a contributor, send me an email at mors@ either deusexsomnia.com or americaispurple.com.