Undue Defference

So today I'm going down the highway today, tuning into the extraterrestrial information streams and all I can say is, "Whoa."


Let me start with the day's World Have Your Say, from the BBC. Today's topic? That trusty stand-by bit of flame bait: Religion.

Specifically, the topic of the day was whether or not religion and it's invocation garners undue deference or special consideration from society. Predictably the lines were swamped and I never made it through. That's a pity, as this is one debate I am absolutely prepared for. There were a number of points brought up; that additional time ceded by employers to religious behavior unfairly increases the burden on nonbelievers, that Atheists are effectively barred from elected office, that differing confessions often generate conflict where there might otherwise be none and that religion in general attempts to impose dogma that flatly contradicts the objective evidence of how the world works.


The first point is obvious; lost productivity has to come from somewhere. It's worth pointing out that the time in question is regarded by many, perhaps most, people in the general populace as being trivial, except when taken over the course of years. Furthermore, the time is generally not begrudged by nonparticipants unless it becomes either excessive and/or above and beyond the normal allotted break time most employers give their workers. I'd like to suggest, however, that the faithful who demand extra time to meet the demands of their faith be made to choose between smoking/snacking/gossiping etc. and fulfilling their religious requirements. Consider it the type of sacrifice (of either profit or leisure) of the sort most religions demand of their adherents.


The discussion of course brought up the question of whether or not Atheists are actively discriminated against. That would be entirely dependant on where one lived and worked. Certainly there are places in the world, particularly the Middle East, where a confession of atheism is followed by swift judicial murder. In the West this isn't exactly common, but other, passive forms of discrimination and disenfranchisement are. In a simple social context, atheists are generally excluded from group activities by their sectarian neighbors, unless the goal is the conversion of said Atheist.


On the grand stage, I needn't do more than point out that of all the elected officials in American national government, there is only one professed Atheist. Given even the most conservative estimates of how many Americans are Atheists, this statistic is obviously unrepresentative of the population. Then again, looking at the poll results that anyone with political aspirations cannot hope to escape, that should come as no surprise.


The funny thing is that a prospective candidate's atheist status trumps all other concerns. forget the fact that they might be pro-gun, pro-life and speak eloquently on making English the official language; they'll lose out to an ill-spoken incompetent who loudly professes that Jesus is their special friend and tells them what to do.


One of the more staggering blind spots that people in the West seem to have stems from religious hypersensitivity. As look we at conflicts throughout the world, we go to great lengths to avoid attaching appropriate sectarian labels; we misidentify these battles, willfully, and thus fail to deal with them properly. Look at the Balkan fighting during the 90's; the groups in question were identified in the US according to political labels, with the exception of the Muslim minority. We tagged the other two factions as Croat's and Serb's. In point of fact, the internal language of the battle was religious. Orthodox, Catholic and Muslim groups. Certainly there were important political, social and economic issues involved but the participants identified themselves, tribally, by their sectarian confessions. Pictures of the Virgin taped to rifles and prominently displayed Orthodox Icons, etc. The exact same thing occurred for decades in Ireland; "A Protestant State for a Protestant People." Political conflicts that could be and were resolved via political solutions were subsumed and ratcheted up by religious rhetoric and terminology. The Nationalist and Unionist factions referred to each other chiefly by confession; A gunman jumps out of a doorway, holds a gun to a man’s head and asks, “Are you Catholic or Protestant?” “Actually,” says the man, “I’m an atheist.” “Ah, yes,” replies the gunman, “but are you a Catholic or a Protestant atheist?”

The joke is cheap but it makes the point.

Finally we come, as we should when talking about religion, to the point that every single religion out there espouses dogma that flatly contradicts facts established by the methodical collection of evidence. The Scientific Method runs in direct opposition to the very concept of "Faith". The former demands evidence and the latter denies, dismisses and/or demonizes it.

In case there is any possible doubt (have you been paying the slightest attention?) I stand firmly in the camp of the Scientists. Certainly there are many things in our existence we do not yet understand, which we cannot control or properly anticipate; that does not mean, however, that we never will. It is the habit of the religious person to assert that present ignorance is the same as permanent ignorance; that no amount of study, research or experience will ever reveal certain mysteries. I would point out to these people the history of chemistry, biology and physics.

Let's cut to the chase; why do the worst of superstitious people try so hard to contradict the constantly expanding realm of scientific discovery and understanding?

Short version: with fewer and fewer unexplained phenomena, they have fewer and fewer things with which to credit to their various deities. The more sophisticated types try to get around the continuing explication of the universe by assigning to religion the task of investigating a cosmological motive. "Why" questions, versus "how" questions.

This is asinine. As wiser persons than I have already explained, just because you can phrase a grammatically correct question with the word "why", doesn't make it anything more than nonsense.
"Why is the earth flat?"

There are no "why" questions when it comes to natural phenomena and inferring intention or meaning serves only to confuse things. If you want meaning in your life, then you need to put it there.