If only it were so simple with close friends. The other night at a friend's house, I'm listening to a friend tell a story about Matt Parker and Trey Stone giving a lecture at a ComiCon or some similar venue, and he segues into:
"you know, a lot of people are surprised when they find out they're not atheists. They called some guy out in the front Dow, and said: you're an atheist, right? The guy says 'yeah'. Well Matt says, 'how many Christmas carols do you know?' And the guy names off a list, and Matt says 'see? Who doesn't love that? The only people who hate Christmas carols are holiday retail employees. How can you not love that?' Atheists are still mad about having to spend every weekend in a pew, or because something bad happened to them."
Which is the biggest pile-o-shit appeal to emotion non-argument I've heard in some time, but there were four other people laughing, and I've worked my share of holiday retail, and haven't been able to stand most Christmas music since, so I sort of chuckled, too.
Never mind the fact that Matt and Trey identify as AGNOSTIC, likely for publicity reasons with an acerbic show like South Park, and are likely agnostic in the way that Neil Degrasse Tyson is agnostic, or I myself am agnostic.
At some level, you have to realize that *Chef Voice* "hey, this over here smells like a big ol' heapin' pile a' stinkin' bullshit" and "why, this here looks like the same pile o'bullshit, 'cept they covered it in glitter and dressed it up with hand tied bows."
TTA's Seth Andrews uses Mexican food as a metaphor: religion seems to be all the same ingredients presented in different ways.
"I'll have a taco. What's in a taco?"
"Well it's beans, meat, lettuce, tomato, in a corn or flour tortilla. We can fry it and make it crispy if you like."
"Hmm. Well, I'll have a burrito. What's in a burrito?"
"Well it's beans, meat, lettuce, tomato, in a corn or flour tortilla."
So I consider trotting out this metaphor, and how I can subtly imply religion seems to be all the same ingredients dressed up in different ways for different palates, some of it is useful and some of it not so much, and the majority seems to have so much dogmatic nonsensical garbage thrown in that it's better to discard the whole thing and pick out the useful pieces than order something made out of the same key ingredients with a bunch of crap nobody likes heaped in "because invisible deity X wants it that way."
And I'm sifting there, stewing, with my deist girlfriend on my left, a couple I barely know to my right that seem marginally deistic, and knowing my friend with the story has a gay older brother who is a priest, and a very nice man, of what I can only assume is Unitarianism, knowing their mother is in hospice care.
So somewhere between "haha, yeah, what are those atheists so angry about? They're silly" and "what in the hell does the Christmas music developed from traditions dating back to the Vikings have to do with the Bible's message of rape, infanticide, slavery and eternal torture," my train of thought derails, I'm stuck smiling and nodding like an idiot, while the passengers are screaming, some of them on fire, and the conductor is fingering the trigger on his Colt Single-Action, trying to figure out whether the chambered bullet looks tastier than the possibility of eternal damnation vs. the 100' drop into the gully below.
Is it me? Am I the one who is on the fence here, surrounded by people who need any reason to believe there is a hereafter, and something beyond, or am I an agnostic who knows there is no possible truth claim about the supernatural, and what comes after death, knowing I didn't see any angels or pearly gates the last time I was pronounced dead?
How is it me, when I have first-hand knowledge of what I saw prior to the medic who straightened out my airway, and pronounced me "already dead on the spot," who is the odd one out in this conversation that everyone else seems so convinced they have pertinent knowledge and answers to?
So I grinned, laughed, took another pull on my beer, but it still bothers me. These people who are so certain that they're morally, factually, or otherwise completely superior to the position of agnosticism, but unwilling to state what their actual beliefs are, are not superior to me. They're afraid. They think there's some supernatural entity in the sky, who will come down and grant them a boon for not truly deciding one way or the other.
They think the title "Agnostic," which I have held so long and with such conviction will grant them a second stay. A period in which they can reflect on the musings about a heaven in which they believe their loved ones reside, with whom they will eventually be reunited.
No. I'm sorry. Whatever religious beliefs you think you have transcribed over under the auspices of Agnosticism doesn't hold a candle to what may come of your lack of belief in whatever tradition you were indoctrinated into, because none of it makes sense.
Being agnostic does not mean you get to check out on a bunch of bullshit claims. It means you have to confront them, and examine your claims for what they really are.
Which, right now; seems like a bunch of bullshit claims with celebrity names attached to then.
"you know, a lot of people are surprised when they find out they're not atheists. They called some guy out in the front Dow, and said: you're an atheist, right? The guy says 'yeah'. Well Matt says, 'how many Christmas carols do you know?' And the guy names off a list, and Matt says 'see? Who doesn't love that? The only people who hate Christmas carols are holiday retail employees. How can you not love that?' Atheists are still mad about having to spend every weekend in a pew, or because something bad happened to them."
Which is the biggest pile-o-shit appeal to emotion non-argument I've heard in some time, but there were four other people laughing, and I've worked my share of holiday retail, and haven't been able to stand most Christmas music since, so I sort of chuckled, too.
Never mind the fact that Matt and Trey identify as AGNOSTIC, likely for publicity reasons with an acerbic show like South Park, and are likely agnostic in the way that Neil Degrasse Tyson is agnostic, or I myself am agnostic.
At some level, you have to realize that *Chef Voice* "hey, this over here smells like a big ol' heapin' pile a' stinkin' bullshit" and "why, this here looks like the same pile o'bullshit, 'cept they covered it in glitter and dressed it up with hand tied bows."
TTA's Seth Andrews uses Mexican food as a metaphor: religion seems to be all the same ingredients presented in different ways.
"I'll have a taco. What's in a taco?"
"Well it's beans, meat, lettuce, tomato, in a corn or flour tortilla. We can fry it and make it crispy if you like."
"Hmm. Well, I'll have a burrito. What's in a burrito?"
"Well it's beans, meat, lettuce, tomato, in a corn or flour tortilla."
So I consider trotting out this metaphor, and how I can subtly imply religion seems to be all the same ingredients dressed up in different ways for different palates, some of it is useful and some of it not so much, and the majority seems to have so much dogmatic nonsensical garbage thrown in that it's better to discard the whole thing and pick out the useful pieces than order something made out of the same key ingredients with a bunch of crap nobody likes heaped in "because invisible deity X wants it that way."
And I'm sifting there, stewing, with my deist girlfriend on my left, a couple I barely know to my right that seem marginally deistic, and knowing my friend with the story has a gay older brother who is a priest, and a very nice man, of what I can only assume is Unitarianism, knowing their mother is in hospice care.
So somewhere between "haha, yeah, what are those atheists so angry about? They're silly" and "what in the hell does the Christmas music developed from traditions dating back to the Vikings have to do with the Bible's message of rape, infanticide, slavery and eternal torture," my train of thought derails, I'm stuck smiling and nodding like an idiot, while the passengers are screaming, some of them on fire, and the conductor is fingering the trigger on his Colt Single-Action, trying to figure out whether the chambered bullet looks tastier than the possibility of eternal damnation vs. the 100' drop into the gully below.
Is it me? Am I the one who is on the fence here, surrounded by people who need any reason to believe there is a hereafter, and something beyond, or am I an agnostic who knows there is no possible truth claim about the supernatural, and what comes after death, knowing I didn't see any angels or pearly gates the last time I was pronounced dead?
How is it me, when I have first-hand knowledge of what I saw prior to the medic who straightened out my airway, and pronounced me "already dead on the spot," who is the odd one out in this conversation that everyone else seems so convinced they have pertinent knowledge and answers to?
So I grinned, laughed, took another pull on my beer, but it still bothers me. These people who are so certain that they're morally, factually, or otherwise completely superior to the position of agnosticism, but unwilling to state what their actual beliefs are, are not superior to me. They're afraid. They think there's some supernatural entity in the sky, who will come down and grant them a boon for not truly deciding one way or the other.
They think the title "Agnostic," which I have held so long and with such conviction will grant them a second stay. A period in which they can reflect on the musings about a heaven in which they believe their loved ones reside, with whom they will eventually be reunited.
No. I'm sorry. Whatever religious beliefs you think you have transcribed over under the auspices of Agnosticism doesn't hold a candle to what may come of your lack of belief in whatever tradition you were indoctrinated into, because none of it makes sense.
Being agnostic does not mean you get to check out on a bunch of bullshit claims. It means you have to confront them, and examine your claims for what they really are.
Which, right now; seems like a bunch of bullshit claims with celebrity names attached to then.
