Saturday, February 12, 2011

What's To Hate?

I just got the following bizarre/amusing comment from someone calling himself OJ Simpson on the first post I ever made on this blog (where I told the story of my deconversion). I figured it needed to be both dissected and shared.
A beautifull world,but beyond your mind,beyond your closed mind, beyond your reach,
Two things: 1. You really like commas! 2. My mind isn't closed. It's open to evidence. If there's another way to figure things out that doesn't require evidence, you'd need evidence to show that that method can produce real knowledge.
because you are just a slave a peon of this system,
Not anymore. Kinda broke out of the whole 'following a dogma' thing when I gave up my belief.
you are just dancing between two sides, two sides of one big lie,neither is real,nor neither is false,
Either gods exist or they don't. One side is false. Sorry. It's a dichotomy - that's how it works.
between two sides,carefully raised in order to keep you brainwashed,two extremes.
That's another problem. Y'see, by giving up on dogma and on uncritically accepting what I'm told, I'm sort of immune to being brainwashed now. But go on.
I feel sorry for your death of your uncle,
Thank you.
but that traumatic moment has darkened your mind, your hatred for god was very visible in your life story.
Now this, I just don't get. When I was a believer, I never hated God. I think my testimony makes that rather patently obvious. I even came right out and said it when I talked about my slide toward deistic agnosticism:
I was outraged – not at God, but by my fellow Christians who were so closed-minded about these things and what they meant about the truth of our beliefs. Why did so few of them care if what they believed was true or not?
And when my uncle died:
I returned to my car, where I wept like a lost child, screaming at God to come back into my life and tell me what to do. I poured my entire being into it. I wanted nothing more than for something solid and permanent to reassure me that everything would be okay. I wanted that old comforting certainty again. And for a while, I felt like I had it.
This is the only thing I can think of that even sounds like I was angry at God. What "OJ Simpson" seems to be overlooking is the context of what I used to believe. Calling out to god to come into your life and take control isn't anger at god - it's a desire to draw yourself closer to god than before. It's the whole "Jesus, take the wheel" thing.
Many people have worse lifes, have bigger problems, your problems are pitifull compared to others, insignificant, but who am I to judge.
In other words, "Quit whining." Sorry, I didn't realize that my life experiences weren't good enough reason for me to change the way I lived my life. I'll be sure to get your permission to change my mind from now on. Who are you to judge? That's a fantastic question. Maybe you shouldn't.
You must understand death isnt bad, death is a cycle of life, death brings life and vice versa.

Ahh, good old-fashioned theistic death denial. If you believe in an eternal life after death, then death isn't real to you. But I don't. I believe that when people die, they're gone. Saying "my uncle is dead" is not like saying "my uncle is in Mexico." If my uncle is in Mexico, he still is. If he's dead, he just isn't. Isn't anything. Death is not a part of life. It's the absolute end of it. It does not bring life.
For your uncle, if he had serious life problems, death was salvation, death is beautifull but scary.
My uncle didn't have serious life problems, and death wasn't salvation. He isn't there anymore. Not here, not in some magical fantasyland - nowhere. He doesn't exist. There is nothing beautiful about that, and you are delusional to think there is.
You started to hate god, because of your selfishness, because your uncle left your life

No. I never did. Sorry. Not that I actually give a damn whether you think I hated your imaginary friend or not - it's just really goddamn aggravating that you could get what I said so fractally wrong.
but question yourself, is it truly better to live in pain or die?
Honestly? I'd prefer to live in pain, because at least then I'd still exist.
If you truly loved your uncle, you should be happy that your uncle is free, free from mortality, free from the pain, not selfishly hate god for his death.

My uncle isn't anything anymore. Not free from anything, not trapped by anything, just not anything. And again, you seem to keep getting my reaction entirely wrong. I did not get angry at god for my uncle's death. At the time I didn't even believe in the god I'd believed in before. My reaction was to retreat into the belief I'd been indoctrinated in - to try to seek comfort from what I'd believed before. It wasn't hatred. It was desperation born from loneliness.
You tasted both sides of a lie, so you should be ready to break free, to open your eyes from this "grouping" from these doctrines, both crippling either mind or spirit.
What the hell are you even talking about? I don't have any doctrines.
Remember God loves you, he doesnt want you to worship him, he just wants you to live,be free and love everyone, nothing more.
Oh, yay! Soft, sappy, warm-fuzzy platitudes! Just the sort of thing to convince someone who gives a damn about reality to stop giving a damn and just believe! Not to mention that your concept of god is useless. If god just wants me to live, be free, and love everyone, then it sure as hell doesn't seem to matter if I believe in him or not. Whoops!

People wonder why atheists get angry - it's drivel like this. Just because you think you've come up with a happier kind of god doesn't mean I should give you any more credence than I give a fundamentalist. In fact, I think it makes less sense to believe what you believe, because it's patently obvious that you've just invented a deity that seems likable to you. Fortunately for the rest of us, reality is not subject to your whims and desires.

So, to answer the question posed in the title... What's to hate? Not god - I'm an atheist. There's nothing there to hate. A complete misunderstanding of my point of view, combined with self-important empty-headed reality denial thrown at me mixed in with an attack on my way of thinking? Sure, that's hateable.