Way of the Mind

From the post-bicameral mind:

Strike up a conversation with a religious person, and claim to be a member of any religion other than the one of your subject. Usually this will result in a nod, or maybe a weird look, or maybe some questions.

Now, strike up another conversation with a religious person, and this time, say you are an atheist. Whole other ball of wax, huh? Popular reactions include:

• “You’re Stupid”
• “You’re going to hell”
• “I’ll pray for you”
• “You think you have all the answers, huh?”
• “You’re the reason the world is all fucked up!”

Lesson learned:
Generally speaking, religious people do not care where you get your morality from, as long as you don’t get it from yourself. In fact, the idea that a person is capable of not worshipping a god and figuring out for themselves what is “good” and “bad” is so unthinkable to most religious people, that they often endlessly drone on about how we somehow “worship” things like science and material “stuff”, as if that’s even possible.

This is because religion is based on external authority, and that external authority says that in order to survive, you must listen to– you guessed it– external authority. Big surprise there.

Indeed, this may help explain why most theists despise atheists, while they tolerate theists of other faiths.

It’s like a slave who tolerates slaves with different masters, but hates a free man. He’s spent his entire life convincing himself that slavery is inevitable, and is actually a good thing… but the existence of a free man (who is actually happier, too) is a threat to his world view.