Song of the moment: Cat Stevens - Can't Keep It In
I was told this is a quite delicate subject and I never wrote about it before, probably because of the possibly polarizing view I have. The reason I decided to do it was because of what happened in the subway on my way home today. I overheard a conversation of two girls of approximately my age chatting about first an upcoming exam and second about the christian believes of the one girl. The other one was an atheist, agnostic or at least seemed not so totally convinced of the whole God thing like her friend. At one point the believer said (not word-by-word): "It was so beautiful, I experienced God last night and he told me that everything will be alright, that I'll pass the exam and that someday go to heaven if I keep up my faith." It would all have been fine if I didn't accidentally laugh. (I didn't laugh and the rest is just a thought process; but could have happened.) They looked up and the other girl said: "What's the matter, are you making fun of her religion?" Not wanting to start a debate I said "No, I'm sorry." But she insisted "No, I'm curious, why did you laugh?"
Well, classic Christians believe in a supernatural almighty God which is a logically impossible concept, claim that he is an omniscient observer meaning that the future is already determined, yet think they have to pray in order to fulfill his will although this cannot possibly change anything and I am not allowed to make fun of that? It's technically like you were not allowed to make fun of me believing bats lay eggs. The only difference is that the bat-eggs are not as much an influential view.
However this does not mean that I think there is definitely no God or supernatural power or whatever you like to call it. It just means that I am a rather sceptical human being and find this particular concept (which I described above) extremely counter-logical and since there is no proof for its existence while nonexistence is unprovable I accept that we will never find out. One could also state the problem in a different way. Whether or not there is a God is rather irrelevant in itself. What's really relevant is what implications this would have. Since I don't think I as a person would need to change depending on which is actually true (while implying there is no such thing as almightiness and omniscience) it does not really matter. And that's all this believe is about: oneself. I totally understand why people believe for example as a coping mechanism in difficult times or because it brightens their lives in general. And they shall believe if they do desire so. I don't think less of them if they do. It only gets annoying when they bring it up all the time. Hell, you would get annoyed too if I talked about bat-eggs all day.
What is totally unacceptable is to enforce your believes on others. This does not only happen in extremely religious cultures like the Arabian countries. I don't mean the kind way like before an exam somebody says "I pray for you." In the eyes of a non-believer this is not going to help at all, but at least it's a nice gesture in their eyes and should be treated as one. I am talking about education in schools in the United States. This could never be an geography test in an European country. The perfect example of good education is this. Reasoning or creative problem solving is not really taught in European schools either. Sadly most teachers are just terrible at their job or have to stick to weird study plans. I quite often wonder how people can be so naive repeating every bullshit they ever heard regardless of how obscure it sounds. Having said this, what really bothers me is that for example women have to wear a headscarf, whether they like or not or even get beaten and this is acceptable because this one book tells you it is? In reality it is more a stupid cultural habit. I get really angry whenever people say it cannot be changed because their God or prophet says its okay. Treat it as a tradition and let people opt out if they think it's stupid. Don't blame your imaginary friend.
Woops, accidentally English.
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