Enough is enough!

I'm sick and fucking tired of a particular conversation that keeps happening between me and those who believe. The conversation goes roughly as below.

Me: I don't believe in a God as is popularly defined.

You: Ah, so you are a skeptic. Skepticism is all well and good, but don't you think that there is something higher than you?

So what is wrong with that conversation, you ask. It seems like a natural conversation between an atheist and a believer. But it is not a natural conversation. It is a perverted, upside-down discourse. To see how that is so, let's turn that conversation on its head.

You: I believe in God.

Me: Ah, you're gullible. Gullibility is all well and good, but don't you think that the stark reality is that this is all that there is? No one is responsible for you but yourself.

But the second conversation is not the norm in polite company, and the first one happens regularly. Do you know why? Because it is somehow assumed that the default position is the belief in a God who is all-loving, yet who sometimes unaccountably shoves giant tsunami-shaped dildos up humanity's ass to demonstrate his love. If wholesale and indiscriminate slaughter of men, women, and children is love, then fuck that shit. I spit on that love.

It is assumed that the default position is theism and we the skeptics are the deviation from this position. That is so assbackwards and fucked up that the mind boggles.

We are all born atheists. So that is the default position. And then, depending on which group of people get to brainwash you before you reach the age of consent, you start believing in an invisible sky bastard with the head of an elephant, or in a murderous goat-fucking Middle Eastern God pimped by a child molesting medieval Arab death merchant, or in a two thousand year old Jewish zombie who had to get nailed to a fucking tree just so you could safely screw over your friends and co-workers all your life, beat up your wife, jack off thinking about the neighbour's pre-teen daughter, and still get to go to heaven. It is so retarded that just the thought makes me want to throw up in my mouth a little.

Yet ninety percent of humanity believes in variations of this mind-numbing nonsense because it is easier and more comforting to simply accept the lies and bullshit fed to you by your family and peers instead of taking the harder road of thinking for yourself and making independent decisions about yourself. Pathetic.

Doesn't it strike you that if indeed there existed an omni-everything god with oversight of all humanity, the knowledge of this god would be uniform? That there would not be the need of pre-adolescent brainwashing by your well-meaning family and friends that turns you variously into Hindus, Muslims, and Christians. That you would instinctively be able to figure out which one the One True God is and not have to cut each other's throats to prove whose god is the bestest. You cannot do this automagically today because there is no fucking god.

No you see, I am not a skeptic. I am a regular average guy. You are fucking gullible.

Morality is temporal

This morning, I listened to a man on radio who argued against same-sex marriage. I don't recall his name and I can't be arsed to find out, but he has apparently made a bit of a career defending the institution of marriage, i.e. he has written a book.

I don't recall the name of the book and I can't be arsed to find out, but I have it on good authority that it has pages and stuff.

The man was a guest on a liberal talk show, and so most people who called in asked unfriendly questions. Someone pointed out that marriage is a social contract. The definition of many social contracts has changed over time and people have changed their minds with it. So why didn't the guest be a little flexible and change his mind?

The guest answered that people have changed their minds when some worthy social issue was in question. If this was, say, giving women the vote, he would have changed his mind, but he would definitely not change his mind about men poking at each other's bums. No siree.

As I was listening to the guest on radio, it suddenly occurred to me that no matter what he says now, the guest would NOT have changed his mind about the things that he says are worth changing ones mind about. No matter what he says, a hundred years ago, he would have been up on a platform arguing that he fails to see why women will ever need to vote. Two hundred years ago, he would have been arguing that those dirty negroes have no damned business working for pay outside of a cotton field. Someone who loudly prescribes discrimination against a group of people today based on what end of a human they prefer to stick their willy into is not likely to have displayed liberal views yesterday.

But why dwell on a random conservative guest on talk radio? What happens when we raise the mirror to ourselves?

A lot of us possess this sort of a self-image bias. We believe that we are better than we really are. A lot of us believe that we are more moral, more liberal, more intellectual, and more talented than we are.

Morality is temporal. Most of us are completely comfortable defending the morality of long established notions. Even gay rights has been around for some time. But how many of us would have stood up for something when it was just a renegade idea? Today we support a woman's right to vote because somebody else fought for and won that cause. We express our approval of the result, not necessarily the cause. When we defend the equality of sexes, or the equality of races, or separation of religion and state, we defend a result. It is easy--and superfluous--to defend a victory. How many of us would, were we to be magically displaced in time, fight to actually win that victory? And how many of us, like this guest, would actually have fought against the cause that seems so natural now?

Don't see what I am saying? Well, consider these ideas which are not popular today and see how many of them you can get behind. How many urban Indian men would be comfortable with the idea of the complete sexual liberation of Indian women? Or at the very least press for a sexual standard for women equal to that applied to themselves? How many Indian men that you personally know would, in your estimate, take as completely normal the prospect of a marriage to someone with five previous relationships? How many Muslims in Islamic countries would stand up and defend the right to apostasy? How many Hindus still consider caste to be an important factor in marriage and sometimes in employment? And how many other Indians simply humour this first group and go along with the plan, instead of informing them, in straightforward language, that they are fucking idiots?

How many American politicians can publicly discuss their atheism without at the same time risking their careers? How many people would endorse the legality of completely polygamous relationships where many husbands live with many wives and raise unmarked children in a communal way, out of personal choice?

These ideas are not popular in their respective cultural domains because their time has not come. At some future time, when somebody has won the cause, we will vigorously defend these ideas. Some of us will appear on future talk shows and hold up these ideas as worthy causes, while simultaneously arguing against a an even futurer(?) idea. Almost certainly. But the question is, would we fight for them now?