The Atheist Argument I Hate the Most

'The problem with religion is that it isn't scientific.'  Well that's not strictly true.  Religion doesn't use the use the scientific method which is now associated with 'science' as such.  Yes, that's true.  Religion can't help you build a plane that can travel at twice the speed of sound.  That's true.  It's not going to help the government out of its fiscal mess and the host of other problems that pervades our modern world.  Again, I won't dispute that.

The problem here is American religion not religion as such.  The problem with American religion - and Protestantism as such - is that pretends to develop a rational argument for its 'usefulness.'  I see this on my Facebook account all the time.  I have a couple of morons who do nothing it seems but post pictures of the most recent gun atrocity with the caption 'It's Because They Took God Out of the Schools.'

You see I am a student of history.  When I express fondness for religion (and how could I study religion for this long without having love for it) I do so because I am a sensual person.  I love food and everything that dazzles the senses.  I don't partake in a religion because quite frankly I am a misanthope.  I love beautiful women and part of my love for beauty is to know what is inside of that woman who is beautiful.  But when she opens her mouth - it forever destroys her beauty.  I know she isn't really beautiful.

That's why I can't partake in a religion.  I have this idealized notion of what the religion of Clement of Alexandria must have been like.  But I know that if I somehow got a hold of a time machine and met him and Origen and Theodore and all the rest of the gang, I'd probably be shaking my head at some of the stupid stuff that would come out of their mouths.

Nevertheless though it has to be stressed, religion isn't about fixing stuff, or making stuff or solving stuff.  It's about the right way to live your life.  This doesn't mean that there is one right way for everyone to live.  Far from it.  But I am attracted to the idea of God being found in your brother.  I know this sounds stupid and overly poetic - silly ultimately - but this is the real choice that each of us has to make.

If you want to go through life without myth or poetry that's your own business.  I don't have a choice in the matter.  I can't help but feel this partnership.  I don't mean to do it.  I don't preach it to others.  I just wrote this post because I see American atheism as a disease.  It's the inverse of the American religious experience I have loathed most of my life.  There is this over-simplistic emphasis on practicality and functionality.  American atheism continues to perpetrate the same degeneration on the world soul that American evangelism started.  Indeed they are one and the same because they come from the one and the same cultural impoverishment.

Let's try to keep the world beautiful.  More singing, less dogma.  The last thing we need in the world is more serious people.