This isn’t your typical Sapient Saturdays episode.
This is a rant!
I have a lot of people ask me why I hate religion.
Religion has become so embedded in who they are, that they often ask this in the most
offended manner, as though my rejection of their religion is a rejection of them.
How dare I have the audacity to not believe in their god?
But I don’t reject them.
I don’t hate them.
I don’t even dislike them.
Almost all my family are Christians, and I love them to death.
Most of my friends believe in some type of god.
The fact that I don’t find any scientific evidence to back up these claims doesn’t
mean I reject everyone who follows them.
If you can love the sinner and hate the sin, I can embrace the religious without accepting
the religion.
It’s exactly the same thing.
Think of it this way: your identity is like a quiver.
Your beliefs are like arrows.
When you receive evidence that contradicts certain beliefs, you should be able to easily
swap out these “belief-arrows” in pursuit of truth.
For example, you’ve probably heard that lightning never strikes the same place twice.
But if I told you that it actually does, and that the Empire State Building gets struck
by lightning a hundred times a year.
You’ll probably have no issues swapping out this belief, because you’re not emotionally
attached to it.
The danger comes when you make a belief part of your identity – when the belief becomes
the quiver itself.
If you say “I believe in the Hindu gods.”
OK.
If you say, “I am a Hindu,” you’ve suddenly made it a part of who you are.
Now you can’t remove the belief without some level of identity crisis.
And, now, if someone says that they don’t believe in your gods, it’s no longer just
a disagreement over ideas.
You feel a level of personal rejection.
You take offense where none was given.
And if they present evidence against Hinduism, you feel personally attacked.
It’s much harder to pursue truth because of the emotional walls you’ve constructed.
And any evidence they present, no matter how true, hits a barrier of cognitive dissonance.
I'm not specifically anti-religion.
I'm anti-cult, pro-science, pro-freedom, and pro-truth.
Most religions in this world just have a nasty (and often subtle) way of using cult-like
behavior to isolate people and manipulate them out of their freedom, in one way or another
– to make the religion a part of who you are and then demand subservience (which is
a nice way of saying slavery), in the most humiliating way – all out worship.
I take issue with beliefs that twist the truth, denying science to support their narrative
(to the detriment of us all).
I am opposed to the idea that you can’t have purpose without worshipping some made
up character in some man-made religion.
You don’t have to grovel your way through life.
Have more respect for yourself than that.
There are aspects of religions that I find admirable.
For example, in Jainism, the focus of the religion is on extreme non-violence.
In Buddhism, the idea of the middle way, avoiding extremes (e.g. extreme gluttony or extreme hunger)
can be a useful guide to pursuing happiness.
The concepts of extreme forgiveness found in Christianity would make the world a much
better place.
But as an atheist, I can rationally sift through holy books and accept these ideas without
deep throating on your dogma.
If our idea of spirituality was feeling one with the cosmos when we stare up at the sky
with a sense of pure, unadulterated wonder at the scientific notion that we're all stardust
forged in the hearts of supernovas, then I'm totally down with that.
And I have nothing against a code of ethics as long as it's based on moral philosophy
and reason and can be updated to keep pace as our culture grows.
For example, the idea of do no harm to others but promote well-being is vague enough to
evolve with society but clear enough to be powerful.
What I take issue with is moral frameworks that don't evolve and keep up with society,
that claim to be perfect, unchanging, final revelation and become a part of people’s
identities, entrenching dogma and making it hard to pursue truth.
Moral frameworks that inflict rather than prevent harm, like killing gays because an
invisible sky-daddy might get so offended where they put their wiggly bits that
he’ll nuke a whole city or jack with a nation's GDP!
Really?!
But religious moral frameworks are always left playing catchup, because they claim to
be the final, perfect revelation and have to wait until the practitioners can find a
new way to re-interpret the horribly backwards texts and for the conservative neophobes who
disagree with the new interpretation to die off.
Most religions have some kind of moral framework along these lines, and a great deal of suffering
has resulted.
No idea should be held as so sacred that it can’t be questioned in the free marketplace of ideas
Even ways of life like Buddhism, which seem pretty chill, should be questioned,
because even though the Dalai Lama once said, “If scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate
certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and
abandon those claims,” Buddhism still holds some spiritual/mystical ideas that have no
basis in science and have way of propagating woo.
And therefore should be questioned.
I'm not here to just rip something special or near and dear to people away from them.
I’m here to show them the dangerous of turning beliefs into identity and refusing to really
question these beliefs with a level of sincere, doxastic openness that we apply to just about
everything else.
I’m here to show that you can have a beautiful, meaningful life where you can learn and grow
and pursue truth without blindly swallowing the religious dogma invoked on us as children.
Because every idea should be questioned.
I don’t hate religion because I don’t live under a cloud of hate.
I love truth, and I want to pursue it.
Will you join me?
Thank you so much to all of my patrons for supporting this video and making it possible.
If you want to support the show, I've got some pretty cool perks over at www.patreon.com/holykoolaid.
I also have a few other ways to donate if you want to just pitch in and help out the show
Next week, I'll get back to my series on fear.
It's just taking a little bit longer than normal to do all of the research and animation
for my next video.
You can be free, dare to be curious,
and don’t drink the Koolaid.