Ray on Occasional Days: 8.3
We're in the final throes of Ray's book, You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think, in the section entiled, "Further Food For Thought".
What Ray says in this section can also be found here, so I feel it is appropriate to reprint the whole thing:
Ray is right that we don't usually want to die. We fear death. If, as a species, we did not fear death or have an insatiable urge to survive, then we probably would not survive. Death is the ultimate root canal for which there is no painkiller, and the sentence should end right there. there is no compelling proof that Jesus ever existed. there is no compelling proof that your god exists. If your god did exist, he would be a vile entity and I would not worship him or pretend he is the most amazing entity alive because I fear death and want to survive it. I would rather die and join the army of Satan than follow that character. In a religion where one's biggest enemy is one's god, oneself, and one's own inability to follow impossible rules, it boggles my mind how people can love their god so much; how they can see it as a pillar of perfection while it supposedly orchestrates and carries out the vilest acts imaginable. I really don't understand, and the more I immerse myself in Christianity, the less I understand it.
People hate knowing that one day they will die. It's hard to imagine that one day your brain and heart will stop, and your body will decay. It's hard to imagine that the building you are in will one day crumble. Your city will one day crumble. The earth will one day be uninhabitable by any living creature. Humans as a species will die out, and the universe will die a slow, aching death.
Knowledge of one's own mortality is a powerful, scary thing. As an outsider, religion and god look to me like a way to see noneternal things as eternal. Gods are eternal, souls are eternal - they remain when everything else passes away.
Think of a sandcastle some children (perhaps your own children) have just built on a beach. Their sandcastle is beautiful and magnificent, yet the sun is setting and the tide is rolling in. Most people would be compelled to "immortalize" the image of this sandcastle - to photograph it, to draw it, to at least take it in and let the image of it burn into their memory. We want to keep it but we know we cannot, so we make an image of it.
The sandcasle is worth building, even if it is washed away and no images are made of it.
What Ray says in this section can also be found here, so I feel it is appropriate to reprint the whole thing:
Do you like to snuggle up in a warm bed on a cold night? Do you have a favorite position for going to sleep? Have you ever woken from a nightmare, and taken about ten minutes to shake off a feeling of terror?Of course we're alike. We're both human beings. There is a very good reason we're so alike. Humans evolved as a population of animals to do the things that we do. It's no wonder we are so similar.
Has your whole body suddenly "jumped" because you thought you were taking a step, just before you dropped off to sleep?
Do you get annoyed when someone asks you personal questions, or do you feel a sense of identification, because you have had these experiences?
I hope you do identify with me. The reason for this is that it's my knowledge that you are just like me that drives me to try reach you with the gospel.
Whether you like it or not, you are like me. You have many of the same loves, fears, desires and concerns. You, like me, want to enjoy the pleasures of this life. No one in his right mind wants to be unhappy, and you therefore instinctively don't want to die. Everything within you pulls back from the experience of death. It's the ultimate root-cannel for which there is no pain-killer outside of conversion to Jesus Christ.
So, if you don't know the Lord, ask yourself some personal questions about me. What is my motive for pleading with you like this? I don't get paid for having a blog. I don't sell advertising on it. I have never asked for your money, nor do I want it. Christianity doesn't do anything for my ego. Neither is my motive to get you to join a church or a religion. It's simply a deep concern for your eternal welfare. Please, repent and trust the Savior before death seizes on you, and it's too late.
Ray is right that we don't usually want to die. We fear death. If, as a species, we did not fear death or have an insatiable urge to survive, then we probably would not survive. Death is the ultimate root canal for which there is no painkiller, and the sentence should end right there. there is no compelling proof that Jesus ever existed. there is no compelling proof that your god exists. If your god did exist, he would be a vile entity and I would not worship him or pretend he is the most amazing entity alive because I fear death and want to survive it. I would rather die and join the army of Satan than follow that character. In a religion where one's biggest enemy is one's god, oneself, and one's own inability to follow impossible rules, it boggles my mind how people can love their god so much; how they can see it as a pillar of perfection while it supposedly orchestrates and carries out the vilest acts imaginable. I really don't understand, and the more I immerse myself in Christianity, the less I understand it.
People hate knowing that one day they will die. It's hard to imagine that one day your brain and heart will stop, and your body will decay. It's hard to imagine that the building you are in will one day crumble. Your city will one day crumble. The earth will one day be uninhabitable by any living creature. Humans as a species will die out, and the universe will die a slow, aching death.
Knowledge of one's own mortality is a powerful, scary thing. As an outsider, religion and god look to me like a way to see noneternal things as eternal. Gods are eternal, souls are eternal - they remain when everything else passes away.
Think of a sandcastle some children (perhaps your own children) have just built on a beach. Their sandcastle is beautiful and magnificent, yet the sun is setting and the tide is rolling in. Most people would be compelled to "immortalize" the image of this sandcastle - to photograph it, to draw it, to at least take it in and let the image of it burn into their memory. We want to keep it but we know we cannot, so we make an image of it.
The sandcasle is worth building, even if it is washed away and no images are made of it.
posted by Ziztur
at
8:00 AM
7 Comments:
Okay, my 0.03$:
1) I adore your metaphorical sandcastle. Awesome. May I steal it if the need arises?
2) "I would rather die and join the army of Satan than follow that character."
I second this.
3)"Food for Thought"... Bruahahahahahaaa...
Ray C. would have died of starvation a looong time ago :D
What is my motive for pleading with you like this?
Let's not forget that Ray also uses the blog to fish for new "questions" to answer in his next book, which will make him money.
"No one in his right mind wants to be unhappy, and you therefore instinctively don't want to die," is illogical, as the conclusion doesn't follow from the premise. As usual, Ray's reasoning is lacking.
The idea of Christianity removing the fear of death is also strange to me, as I find the likelihood that I will cease to exist far preferable to the possibility that a large proportion of humanity will be tortured for eternity, even if I could guarantee that I would not be among them. If I thought Ray had considered his beliefs at all instead of just repeating Christian mantras in parrot-fashion, I would have to consider him extremely selfish for being happy with this system, in which he personally gets eternal happiness at such a large cost to others.
Marc, you just pointed me towards something I never actually noticed before: Any religious person that believed in eternal punishment in the afterlife would do literally *anything* the religion not explicitly prohibits to ensure that all the people they know would go to heaven or some similar place. They'd all start with family, then friend, neighbours, co-workers, working down the list until everyone they know has gotten a maximum of humanly possible support to ensure that they go upwards after they die. And then they'd try to save all the people that are not outright hostile, just indifferent to them. They wouldn't do it halfheartedly (a little praying and baptizing'n'stuff). They would put all their energy behind it. Because as soon as they realize what eternal torment means, they cannot but try to avert it from anyone but the vilest and lowest of human beings.
Since we very rarely observe such behaviour in religious people (for which I am very grateful to His Noodly Appendage), we can therefore assume that the concept of Hell(tm) has not really sunken into most of them. Or, going out on a limb, I might conclude that they actually don't believe in it.
I agree that beliefs like Hell have not really sunk in for them. I actually think that religious "belief" is generally not actually belief at all, in that it's not an intellectual assent to a set of propositions. It's more of an emotional loyalty to a particular set of mythical stories. This is why rational arguments are so ineffective against them, and why their behaviour is seemingly unrelated to the beliefs they claim to hold.
It's one small step for Atheism, but one giant leap for me. Realizing that the overwhelming majority of people believe with their guts rather than their brains is certainly not new to the Atheist community, but was rather surprising to me. In a way, it increased my compassion for all those who believed in such things. In another way, it just heightened my contempt for the way they handled something that allegedly was sooooo important to them...
Drawing the line, I must assume that there will be--for a very long time--a gap between believers and non-believers that just cannot be bridged by any means.
(Sidenote: I cannot recall where and when I made this particular objection first, so forgive me if I repeat myself: Most religious people never have thought through the concept of eternal bliss. Being eternal means that literally anything the probability of which is greater than zero happens an infinite amount of times, i.e. there are no *special* moments whatsoever anymore. No winning the lottery, no candlelight dinner with the person you adore, no becoming mother or father for the first time, no losing the person that meant the world to you... The list goes on (almost) infinitely. Sounds like Hell 2.0(tm) to me...)
The sandcasle is worth building, even if it is washed away and no images are made of it.
Sure, but it's this much better when you can back up the reason for doing it with a biblical passage or three. A human-purposed sandcastle is temporary, but a God-mandated one is forever.
Devysciple "Any religious person that believed in eternal punishment in the afterlife would do literally *anything* the religion not explicitly prohibits to ensure that all the people they know would go to heaven or some similar place."
Naw. Then they'd be for abortion. Heck, they're probably make it mandatory, doing it themselves. They're willing to sacrifice time and energy to get new converts, but they're not willing to sacrifice their own spot in heaven to guarantee that the little 'uns that would fail to follow Jesus (that is, most of them) do. Jesus died for Man's sins, apparently, but they're not willing to face hell (the ultimate sacrifice) to save others from theirs, much like the soldier who is willing to suit up...up until the point that he needs to fall on a grenade to save his comrades.
On a side note, I'm terribly glad they avoid the kind of logic I used above. On another side note, I'm pretty sure that Ray believes that all people who failed to be like him go to hell, fetuses included
(I could Google it, but I try to avoid his writings. It's like a Chuck Palahniuk book, but with a protagonist with whom I can't empathize).
"They wouldn't do it halfheartedly (a little praying and baptizing'n'stuff)."
Ray does it halfheartedly. Cold dropping the "are you a good person" test on someone is a piss poor way to get (and keep) new recruits. The success rate is something like 2 or 3% (close enough to zero, actually, to be considered a null outcome if Ray was a pill being tested double-blind).
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