Logic never was the force that drove humanity; it was always belittled and infantalised by the more popular systems that base their what-is and what-is-nots on fantastical stories and fanciful ideas that declare their longevity a key indication of their truth. I cannot fucking stand it. The only thing that drives me even closer to the brink of insanity is how some fellow atheists / agnostics respond to these stories.
But let us not bow to the temptation of ranting and raving about the inane and illogical tendencies of humane nature. Let us instead start at the beginning.
The Da Vinci Code. About 2 weeks ago, I was one of the remaining 3 people who had not read the novel. Of course the other 2 were Paris Hilton, who reads nothing except the occasional Burger King script, and Osama Bin Ladin, who is stuck with the Koran as his only reading material, in that lonely underground cave in Afghanistan.
Not wanting to be classed among such ill-named company, I finally bought the book, and almost as soon as exams were no longer in my way, I read it. It took me less than 2 days, and not only because I could not wait to get to the part where I was supposed to lose my religion. The book was actually that good. Upon completing the novel however, I realised that the book had left me with much to research.
The very first thing that I decided to research was the following quote:
"The newborn Krishna was presented with gold, frankincense and myrrh."
Out of all the claims, I selected this one because it indicated that the parts of the new testament, the cornerstone of Christianity, were borrowed from older religions.
Imagine my surprise when, after searching through pages and pages of the web dedicated to the birth of Krishna I could not find it. I did however find a less startling similarity between Krishna and Jesus. Both of their births were predicted and then relayed to a king who found the news worrying.
For Jesus it was King Herod, who did not fancy the idea of a King of Kings being born - a superiority complex, apparently. For Krishna, it was his uncle, who was told that he would be killed by nephew. When both babes were born, both kings sought to exterminate the baby king by murdering all babies born around the time the baby king in question was to be born. But that is it. No gold. No myrrh. No frankincense.
No dice.
It was much later when I decided to research the possibility of Jesus being married and even "getting busy" if you know what I mean. Apparently, this theory is not much more than that - based on purely circumstantial evidence, mainly that it was very common for Jewish men to be married. Dan Brown's book went so far as to say it was frowned upon for a Jewish man to be unmarried, but my research does not seem to indicate this. In fact even www.athesit.about.com states that the arguments for and against Jesus' marriage is purely circumstantial, stating that although it is true that traditional Jewish men were commonly married, it was not unknown for there to be men who chose to remain unwed.
It does not stop there, folks.
In researching the whole Krishna birth assertion, I stumbled upon several sites that drew startling similarities between Jesus' birth and another deity - Horus / Osiris - Egyptian Gods. Here, I saw commonalities including:
„X Place of birth - a manger
„X Time of birth - during the Winter Solstice (rounded to December 25)
„X Virgin mother
„X Three wise men in attendance
„X Star indicating place of birth
And the websites kept coming, and behold I was amazed at what seemed like compelling evidence! Yet, I was slightly suspicious. I have researched the bible before, looking for discrepancies and fallacies, yet this certainly never came up. And of course, it was then I realised that all of the websites that proclaimed Jesus an inferior copy of Horus / Osiris were all atheist websites or "free thinking" websites.
I may be agnostic, but I do not trust something I read simply because it is written by a fellow non-believer.
When I tried to find these similarities in stories of the birth of these Egyptian Gods within websites about Egyptian mythology (and essentially not concerned about any other religion), I was hard pressed to find any.
And this. This. This is what initiated my current annoyed state. Here it is atheists contriving and clinging to unsubstantiated stories! Propagating them so that they fill pages and pages of internet! These are pages of lies. This bothers me so because it makes us no better than theists who also cling to their man-made stories. In fact, it makes us worse. In trying to prove that their stories are lies - mythology partially based on history, to be exact, we misrepresent a claim made by a writer a few years ago (the first to suggest that Jesus was a carbon copy of several other Gods, and therefore not focusing on any one God and definitely not Horus or Osiris / I cannot remember the name of the writer now, and am not bothered enough to look it up for your benefit), propagate it, and then add lies to it.
In my agnosticism, I constantly seek to challenge my beliefs, or lack thereof. Whenever I hear compelling arguments either for or against God, I research them for any shred of validity. And this, it seems is the result - an acknowledgement that some atheists, although shrewd enough to figure religion to be no more than inane tales believed by the masses, do not really bother to delve further, and settle into their lack of belief as comfortably as a believer settles into his God-exists-no-matter-what-you-say state of mind.
What drove my annoyance to the brink was some new information - Nar, my current boy-toy of sorts, believes in horoscopes. Take your time. I know that it takes a bit of effort and the death of a few brain cells to wrap your head around that idea.
Now I am not going to belittle my diary by delving into the reasons why horoscopes are a crock of shit. I may as well pen detailed entries debating the existence of the Tooth Fairy or goats head-butting trolls over a bridge.
Instead, I will say that I did bother to delve into the reasons when explaining to Nar the stupidity of his belief, and even after this, he shrugs and says he believes anyway. This boggles my mind, and makes me not want to talk to him any more. It has actually crossed my mind that I should not attempt any relationship with him because I cannot be with an idiot. I need to be with somebody who challenges theories and with whom I can debate philosophy and ideas. But after talking off his ear for a round 20 minutes, he shrugs and says he still believes.
I don't know who said this, but they must have been brilliant beyond their years:
"There's no cure for stupid."
I will also say that constant interaction with the human race has led me to believe that humans are pathetic victims of their emotion. From experience I have realised that you cannot present inconsistencies, discrepancies or even absurdities either in the philosophy or the facts as presented in the bible to a believer and sway his beliefs. However, have someone he is close to killed in some extremely violent and gruesome way, and either he will shun God or his beliefs in Him.
You would think it would be the other way around, would you not? I mean, with all the stories in the Bible where He killed people's entire family (Job namely) and then expected his faithful servant to praise his name...
"the lord giveth, and the lord taketh away..." - popular bible verse
...You would expect these faithful believers to accept death of loved ones as a test of their trueness to God. Alas, but no.
And this only goes to show that humans (and when I say humans I refer to both theists and atheists) operate on emotion and not logic. It is saddening, pathetic but true. In our defense, this is what makes us human, and humanity is considered a beautiful concept. Of course, it is also what makes us flawed.
And in some cases, it is what makes stupidity so appealing.
I swear, if I live to see the end of humanity, and I hope not, but if I do, and I have a smile on my face when the comet hits, it will only be because I am happy that we are finally making way to a more intelligent species. This planet needs a dominant species that uses more than just 10% of their brains, and if Nar is any indication, most people use far, far less.
"You morons in this town are spreading like weeds. Like little bastard dandelions, I wish I could just pop every one of your goddamn heads off." - Maurice, "Gardening with Maurice" - WCTR radio, Grand Theft Auto, San Andreas.
Here's a link where I posted a comment about the Da Vinci Code on someone's website: