I wanted to take this opportunity to apologize on behalf of atheists like me who find this kind of shot across the philosophical bow offensive, low brow, and frankly dumb. First let me just tear apart what Mr. Justin Trottier of the CFI said about the ads, because that’s the real source of my ire right now.
“I’d love it if everyone saw the ads and knew the point of the campaign is to emphasize, not the kind of knee-jerk debunking to anything suspicious, but that we’re interested in a genuine debate, a conversation about so-called extraordinary claims. We’re not here to mock people who believe in these claims.”
I don’t know about you, but I don’t see a lot of wiggle room here. You are comparing the cornerstones of the lives of millions of people to Bigfoot, UFOs, psychics and Zeus. You are implying, openly and unambiguously, that Christians and Muslims are either crazy, archaic, or share the same kind of mental space as the most typical and archetypal paranormal believer that you can think of.
How is this NOT going to create a knee-jerk reaction?
If you weren’t here to mock people who believe these things, you wouldn’t have run that ad. There are other ways you could have done this. The “Millions of Americans can be good without God” or “There probably is no God, so stop worrying and enjoy your life” ads looked like genuine invitations to thought and debate. You can do this, you have seen that other people have done this, and you decided not to. But you have outright denied that this is what you wanted to to, so you are either lying or stupid. Or both.
“Why is belief in Big Foot dismissed as delusional while belief in Allah and Christ is respected and revered? All of these claims are equally extraordinary and demand critical examination.”
Wow, well I guess it’s my turn to apologize. I had no idea there was such a huge Bigfoot following. I never noticed the thousands of people in my community wearing the holy symbol, the enlarged foot with five prominent toes. I was never aware of their daily prayers, wherein they bow their heads and consider their bare feet several times a day. I was completely unaware of their rich culture, and the way large-footed, hairy members of their religion are venerated and respected for their wisdom and moral uprightness. I had utterly no idea that major world religions had so much in common with a cryptozoological theory.
I must look terribly ignorant right now.
Religious belief does not boil down to the factual evidence that supports its principal deities or personages. Sometimes this is how people are convinced, but religions also have rich moral, historical, personal, cultural, aesthetic, existential, philosophical, and theological spheres that help inform believers and enrich their understanding and their lives.
And you just equated that to bigfoot.
You look terribly ignorant right now.
This kind of bullshit does nothing but polarize people, and it’s a dishonest attempt to create press coverage. I like the idea of religious and philosophical ads, when they are done in a way that encourages thought, discourse, and debate. And we really do need someone from this side of the aisle to answer stuff like this:
But the proposed ads that may be splattered across Canadian busses don’t answer this kind of ignorance in a well thought-out and intelligent way, it’s just more garbage that makes us look ignorant.
Last night I spent some time on my knees. No, I wasn’t being unchaste and violating my fast, pervert. I was praying. Usually when I pray I find a private place, my room on my days off or the washroom when I’m at work, wash my hands and face, turn towards the east, open my hands in front of me, and say a prayer. Mostly it feels like I’m just mumbling words in the dark. I feel a little something, but it isn’t something that I would call spiritual, or even terribly convincing, but it’s enough to let me know that I am doing something that feels… right. I still don’t feel like I’m actually addressing anyone or anything, so when I pray it feels transparent. It’s a like a put on, a con on the worst possible mark imaginable- God.
This issue of a diety is something I have to solve if I am going to genuinely experience these faiths. I feel that there is some way that I can appraoch this belief, that there is a way that I can conceive of God that will bypass all the issues I have with a diety. That He has a will, that He created life, that He is… anything other than intangible ideals of humanity.
Can one believe in a focus of all great and virtuous things? Just without being an arbiter on worldly affairs, good without being dogmatic, incomprehensible and yet a source of inspiration and strength. Something less mythical, more Platonic. I need something to imagine, something to put in my mind’s eye as I pray and get through the month. I think this is necessary to get at the core of these religious experiences, because speaking to nothing is not what these people are doing. At least it isn’t what they think they are doing. But any conception of God that I could try for would necessarily strip it of anything that makes theism what it is- the existence of a personal, loving creator. Therefore it would not be Baha’i.
So, paradoxically, I asked for help last night. I think the act of falling to my knees helped to get the effect that I was looking for- supplication before a greater power. Submission to His will seems like something God is big on. It isn’t something that I am used to. The idea that something or someone has a greater claim on my life than I do has been strictly anathema, until this point. I thought it was something that I had to do. It felt like the right time.
It was a lot like the first ritual I cast when I was a Satanist. It was personal, mostly ad-libbed, and it was performed in order to better come to terms with something I really don’t understand. It felt different. The ceiling didn’t split open and no divine voice did bellow forth from on high, praising my prostrations, but it did feel different, and the day after went much the same. Nothing really changed, except that I was more committed to what I’m doing, a little bit more vested in this project, a little bit more confident.
I’ve had this idea of God for a long time, this thing wholly separate from the deity that exists in the prayers and holy writings I read every day. Maybe it will make a good stand-in until I can be convinced to buy into the real thing. Maybe that will never happen. In the meantime I think I’ll spend more time on my knees. It encourages me to consider things that are higher than I am.
When I got home on Tuesday I felt spiritually drained. It was cold outside, and I had just come back from my second lesson with Jack. It was all about how God and religion were the only hope humanity had for a bright future, how every human being was imperfect, frail, and full of fault and that it was only through God that we could really change for the better.
Accepting God is a sign of maturity. All morality has derived from religion. Life is full of tests and it is during these times that a person who does not believe in God will act purely out of self-interest and the survival instinct.
Man is naturally impotent, ignorant, weak, wretched and imperfect, whereas all strength, power, knowledge, wisdom, ascendancy, virtue and goodness are from God, praised be His glory. Therefore man should under all circumstances regard himself as imperfect, ignorant, and captive of self and passion. He should not feel depressed or hurt if people impute to him these characteristics which, after all, are inherent within him. On the contrary, he should be happy and thankful to them, while at the same time he should feel disappointed in himself, should take refuge in God and beg protection from his own base and appetitive nature.
-Revelation of Baha’u'llah Vol.2 p. 43
Through all of this all I could think was how wrong he was. The word ‘no’ circled my head over and over again but it couldn’t settle on any one statement. I brought up enough questions to clarify that he thought people could be good without religion (a rarity he would insist) and that people in religion are rarely always saints, but this didn’t seem to prove anything to him.
Anyway, I came home to find one of my roommates playing a song on their guitar. It didn’t sound familiar, turns out that they had composed it themselves, and it was beautiful. It was soft, loving, and… well, just beautiful. It was exactly what I needed to hear, and I thought that perhaps a real Baha’i would give thanks to God for such a perfect moment. Not the singer and song-writer, not the instrument or all the human ingenuity necessary for the production thereof and not to mention the discovery of tones and the engineering of the fundamentals of music. Just God, because it was good. Because all good things come from God.
