Rant Time

Today is Easter Sunday, and as is typical and predictable, two things happen on Facebook when a Christian Holiday occurs. The first is enjoyable: people post their plans for the day or proclaim the message. The second is about as frustrating as having someone you don't know try to join your conversation: people post obnoxious anti-Christian straw men arguments.


Overall, I suppose the frustration was at a minimum considering what it could have been. I saw two things posted that made my irritation alarms go off: One person posted "I choose senses over blind faith." The question is: who chooses blind faith over their senses? That isn't a Christian concept, and even people who don't know much about their faith definitely value their experiences as Christians over this abstract 'blind faith' concept. In reality, it doesn't mean much as a term, because people don't embrace worldviews without reason. Even if individuals have arguably 'bad' reasons for doing so, they don't do anything 'blindly'. But straw men tend to be the theme of a lot of arguments against Christians. What I typically see is people pulling out examples of extreme 'Christians' on their worst days saying things that are way out there and then acting as if those statements are standard Christian viewpoints. The trick of it is that Christians then fall into a trap of arguing against the absurdities, which makes them appear to support the extremist in their attempt to justify what they actually believe. It ends with the person behind the original claim having to do no mental processing whatsoever, although such people seem to develop a talent for manipulation.

The second annoyance revolved around 'zombie Jesus' references and other various jabs at Christians for no other reason than to spark stupid conflicts. I don't use the term 'stupid' lightly either. I suppose I don't quite understand what it takes to drive a person who calls themselves simply 'nonreligious' to be anti-religious in every possible situation they can involve themselves in. In fact, it is very often the 'nonreligious' that tend to have a religious zeal for something: the mockery of people who believe in God.

As I said, this is a rant, and therefor I don't intend for things to flow like a standard train of thought, and as I was typing I also remembered another annoyance that's crossed my mind recently: know-it-all college undergraduates. It is amazing the difference of personality between a person who thinks they know everything and a person who actually knows something. The one can't stop talking and often fills the void of their ignorance with enough wordiness that the listener gives up. The other doesn't say much, they just do whatever it is they do with their knowledge. My frustration is amplified when people can't tell the difference between the two and ignore the quiet knowledgeable person and follow the loud-mouth.

And a final rantish point that may lead to a discussion in another post: The topic of hell. It is absolutely amazing how many misconceptions there are about it. I'll often read things like "God loves you but He also will send you to hell to burn forever and ever if you don't do what He says."

There's something curious about this though. The Apostles and early Christians were not stupid people. A lot of the Theologians throughout the centuries were some of the smartest men of all time. These men realized the love of God and the reality of hell simultaneously. The reason? They didn't interpret hell the same way a modern non-Christian does. Isn't that an interesting thing? Who do you think has a more accurate stance- the people who have studied Scripture their entire lives or the people who have hobbies insulting Christians?

Like I said in the title... it was a rant... and now I'm going to bed.

What Annoys Me

I have had, in the recent past, a problem dealing with certain people in my life. I, unfortunately, didn't quite know which question to ask to discover what might be causing the issue in the first place, and so I spent my time chasing after symptoms and shadows instead of actual causes. I personally spend a great more deal worrying and fighting over things that don't matter than I ever do pursuing those things that do, and so it took quite a while to actual identify what was bothering me.

The main source of the strife has been between myself and some (as I call them) evangelical/militant atheists. Now, I've always thought that atheism was a bit dishonest, in my own mind, even at times of doubt in my Christian faith when I deeply considered other ideas. I realized that agnosticism was a much more honest approach to things, but that atheism was essentially designed for those who need religious belief but want to deny any responsibility to it. This article isn't really about disproving or arguing with particular beliefs; it is about me thinking to myself about what has been bothering me.

In the past, I would have referred to the symptoms as arrogance and hypocracy, and perhaps those terms are still correct in their descriptive power. But, to take it a step deeper into the realm of the minds of those who I have been arguing and struggling with, I think it has something definitively to do with how those I encounter discuss their worldview. Before providing an example, I think this quote is marvelous in capturing my thoughts:

"As he piles doctrine on doctrine and conclusion on conclusion in the formation of some tremendous scheme of philosophy and religion, he is, in the only legitimate sense of which the expression is capable, becoming more and more human.

When he drops one doctrine after another in a refined skepticism, when he declines to tie himself to a system, when he says that he has outgrown definitions, when he says that he disbelieves in finality, when, in his own imagination, he sits as God, holding no form of creed but contemplating all, then he is by that very process sinking slowly backwards into the vagueness of the vagrant animals and the unconsciousness of the grass. Trees have no dogmas. Turnips are singularly broad-minded." - GK Chesterton

This description fits well part of the issue I encounter. Essentially, those that I argue with attempt to make themselves somehow more than human, while at the same time denying that any such thing exists. It is human to worry about life after death, about the meaning of the universe and its inhabitants, about morality and ethics, about what belief is correct. But then comes some pseudo-intellectual response indicating: 1. A very poor understanding of the topic in the first place, and 2. An attempt to make the arguer superior to the very conditions that fundamentally describe their species in the first place.

A great example would be of death and what occurs after it. Any man worthy of the title spends a great deal of time thinking about this question, because anyone willing to admit to being human knows that meaning and eternity are bound together. It is difficult to imagine meaning in something that is so temporary as to be unnoticed. And yet, a response to such a question from one atheist friend of mine was along the lines of suggesting some metaphysical and intellectual sounding connection of life-after-death with some vague statement about meaning. We're human beings, and our response to a question that means so much is the realization of an attempt to sound intelligent, manifest in words? What a shame and what a waste of time.

A better example might be of such people posting and enjoying anything anti-Christian that exists. I find this particularly close-minded by a group that claims to be 'free-thinking'. (Incidentally, if atheism is true in its explanation of the world, there is no free will and 'free thinking' is a delusion).

I simply get tired of all of this. There gets to be a point when I don't want to deal with it any more because I spend more time on Google, looking up where certain people got entire columns of 'argument' from, then I do actually engaging some of these people. The few places I have truly seen intelligence in my life did not include Facebook or groups of twenty-somethings getting together to try compete for the title of 'presenter of the deepest-sounding point', a very hippy-esque engagement that doesn't seem to transcend the less pleasant aspects of the 60's movement in my experience. I always make too big a deal of these things; a lot of this isn't worth the waste of time I spend on it. But sometimes I feel it needs to get addressed, and at the very least, I needed to think some things out.