psyche

I don’t know why, but you’re likely to read this and immediately find an excuse to use your new hard-hitting argument against me. I implore you to wait and actually absorb what I say before doing this.

I believe the following:

Religion, which often leads to suffering, is a global cultural phenomenon. All attacks on religion cause personal distress and conflict. A large attack on religion might shift the way large populations think and therefore eliminate religion from the cultural cycle and really help to reduce suffering. However, it takes a certain “activation energy” to make a significant change. If you attack individual people on the basis of their beliefs, you get the negative effects of criticism (pissing people off, being viewed as irrational) without the positive effects (improving people’s philosophy, reducing suffering). That is why it’s counterproductive.

I am not saying religion’s good! I’m not saying anything specific about anything! The twitchy people of today appear to be itching to read a whole world of meanings into what I say, probably based on misconceptions, preconceptions or simple personal motives.

Blind faith is always risky and almost always leads to something bad. You sometimes have to step back, examine the ethical implications of what you’re doing and really think. This includes in social behaviour (*glares*). Many religious people are good but religion overall is bad. I KNOW that the petty conflicts over slightly different interpretations of the same thing are stupid. I KNOW that blind faith is not good.

I will not be here and be raped by people’s cool rhetoric, impressing others with their zealous secularism or their fervent godliness or whatever. I respect good people, and there are good people in both camps. Usually when people criticise my arguments, I rebuild them as stronger and more wide-ranging philosophies. How the fuck can I do this when people pretend I’m saying something I’m not and then debunk that? I don’t know what it is about me that attracts these kinds of attacks. I really don’t. Is it that I once had a religion? Is it that I believe that it’s not always right to go in with all guns blazing, condemning and despising people who have no idea that their innocent faith that something good will happen has in fact lead to most of civilised humanity’s suffering, instead of helping them understand? Is it that I’m a hypocritical, attention-seeking neek with no apparent purpose? What is it? I’m sorry, I’m not ranting. I haven’t said anything I regret, nor anything I don’t mean. I believe that there is a neutral path and I intend to follow it.

Sometimes, stop showing off. I understand you can make sentences. I’m so sorry that you picked me.

Pax