Religion and Blaming Human Nature

Husband and I have a little ritual of Sunday morning breakfast at a small local diner famous for its sausages. Last Sunday, we had a cute wizened old gentleman at the next table, very jolly and sweet, who insisted on sharing information with us just out of open-heartedness (”I’m saving half for tomorrow – that’s what I do when I eat out” etc.). We were indulgent as one is with a child. When we were paying our bill and getting ready to leave, he says to us, “Have a great day, folks, and remember, the Lord loves ya!”

To which I responded, “Thanks, but we’re atheists.”

No doubt, it was a cold thing to say, even if I said it with a smile. But the assumption on the part of a fuddy-duddy Christian that anyone should care that the Eternally Invisible Lord ‘loves us’ when he has never made an appearance in our lives for good or bad, is pretty damn offensive to me. How would people feel if I randomly informed them, “Remember, science is good for you!” If true, it’s trivial. If false, it’s just patronizing and presumptuous.

It’s like the NRA telling us that guns don’t kill people, people kill people. No, sorry, guns kill. Religion kills. That’s why, if you take guns out of the equation, people – who never stopped being people, never changed their human nature – somehow stop killing as much and the murder rate goes down. That’s why, if you take religion out of the equation, mothers stop having to choose between a daughter and Allah.

I don’t have any religious friends. I don’t even have any mildly religious friends. No moderate Christians. No moderate Muslims. Fundamentally, they believe in something that has no basis in fact and reality and so we clash. Ideas matter to me. Truth (that can be proven and has some basis in reality) matters to me. Ultimately, the fact that ‘their truth’ and ‘my truth’ are diametrically opposed, in my world doesn’t mean we’re both ‘equally valid.’ We both know we aren’t. I, because science and reality tell me so. They, because Allah and Jesus tell them so.

The focus on Islam right now which makes some Muslims say, “Well, but Christianity is just as bad” doesn’t tip the scales in Islam’s favor. It just goes to prove my deeper point that all religion – everything that makes any truth-claims without proof – is bad. When I focus on Islam, it’s because this particular form of irrational religion is what has affected my life and destroyed my relationship with my family.

My mother is not a wishy-washy Muslim. She’s a True Believer. She sees that Islam doesn’t want Muslim women to marry non-Muslim men (interpret your way out of this, Muslims – try, please) and so she’s forced to choose between her daughter and Allah. This is a real quandary she’s in. She would like to believe there’s some way to reconcile the two, and she just can’t see it. If you see it, Moderate Muslim, let me know. I’d like to give my poor mother another option.

See, she’s not a bad person. We were very close, she and I. She wants to be a part of my life. She wants to come here and celebrate my marriage the ‘proper way,’ the way a daughter’s marriage ought to be celebrated. But she can’t, because her Allah says it’s Wrong.

These are not assumptions I’m making. This is what we talk about when we (very rarely) talk on the phone. She exhorts me to return to the path of righteousness. I lie that I fasted in the month of Ramadan. She wonders if maybe I’ll get divorced and then she’ll be able to be a part of my life again. She calls my husband, my only support and great love of five years, “That man.” She yearns for me, she misses me, and yet she sees me across this great gulf, this divide between belief and non-belief over the chasm of Hell (which she literally believes in.)

Don’t tell me it would be just as bad if my parents were Democrats and I married a Republican.

Matters of truth are fundamental to our being. We can’t compromise over them. If you hold beliefs that are basically empty assertions taken out of ancient ‘holy’ books with no other claim to truth, you are a dangerous person. There is no way around that. I am not so married to my beliefs (all based on facts) that I wouldn’t willingly abandon them if they caused active harm in the here and now, were demonstrated to be factually false, or militated against a comfortable happy life. But religionists are. For them, practical and human considerations take second place to vague non-factual ‘truths’ that have vague non-factual consequences in a vague non-factual ‘hereafter.’ Just because Muslims can share the burden of irrationality with Jews and Christians (and other True Believers) doesn’t exculpate them. Just because Ahmed Deedat could say, “Hey, you think Islam is bad? Just wait till I show you how Christianity sucks!” doesn’t mean Islam is any truer than any other brand of hokum.

It just means all beliefs which claim to own truth and have nothing to show in the way of facts are ultimately harmful. If you think (even in a very vague, non-judgmental way) that someone, anyone, is going to an actual hell, you are dangerous. Beliefs do shape and dictate people’s actions; religions have done more harm than good in this direction, particularly when it comes to rifts in families. This is not to say that a quarrel over any belief, per se, is bad. If my husband converted to Islam, I would leave him. But a quarrel over non-substantial non-truths is really unnecessary and in my view, very evil, because there, there is no room for error: Allah says what Allah says, and it will never change. There’s no arguing with Allah. Therefore, if Allah says, “Stop being a mother to your dauughter” my mother has to obey. Belonging to the democratic party will never dictate to my parents in every facet of their lives, or send me to hell for marrying a Republican, or leave no room for change in the democratic party’s ethos. But being Muslim does mean, “With us or against us.” It’s Bush-ethics. It’s absolute. It’s evil.