The Orthodoxy of Disbelief

Let me make this perfectly clear, attacking someone’s religion doesn’t make you cool, intellectual, or hip. It makes you the same kind of disrespectful asshole that you despise religious people for being. The orthodoxy of your disbelief is just as oppressive as their orthodoxy. This is not to say that you cannot debate, refute, or dispute someone’s assertions in a public debate. You are more than welcome to do so, and many have.

I spent much of my life with deeply held Christian beliefs, and I was a good man. I now self-identify as a Buddhist, and I am still a good man. I respect learned religious people, most especially those who acknowledge the intellectual inaccuracies of their feelings without apology.

I will never be an Atheist, I am not so illiterate or bigoted that if God actually appeared I would deny him to his face. I refuse to refuse that I may, in fact, be wrong. I admit that we may be living instead in a really deeply flawed world that has or had a God. Maybe he’s alive, maybe he is dead. I refuse to believe that anyone has all of the answers. More so I insist that anyone who thinks they know the answers is always wrong.

The teachings of Buddha as I understand them speak to me. However many of the beliefs of both Judaism and Hinduism resonate as well. Generally I don’t think that religion is a conspiracy so much as a series of mistakes and rationalizations. However those mistakes and rationalizations have produced thousands of years of art, culture, and science that are truly beautiful to behold. Works that are real and good and breathtaking.

Here’s the rub, without this religion that you despise there would be no science. Without intellectual discourse made possible by religion there would be no philosophy. The scientific method would not exist. Both John Locke and Voltaire would have been viewed as pedestrian and impolite without religion to react and answer to. There are positive things that religion has done, and your refusal to respect the beliefs of others does nothing to earn respect for yourself.

I understand all the evil that religion has brought us. I also understand the good, and I refuse to be inflexible.