religion – the taller eight

Love this song.

I may have told this story here before, but when I was about 10 or so, I was kicked out of Sunday school for the only time I ever attended. When the instructor asked if anyone had any questions, I raised my hand. The story of “Noah’s Ark” was new to me, so I had PLENTY of questions, and she rebuffed all of them before kicking me out of the room.

When my mother asked what happened, I told her what happened. She’d always told me to ask if I didn’t know something, so when I explained the experience, I figured I wouldn’t be in outright trouble, but I was worried how she might respond.

What she said was: “Do you want to get ice cream?”

And that’s when I knew that if I was going to find some kind of faith, or religion, or spirituality, it was going to be up to me. So since what I’d been exposed to wasn’t going to work, as an adult, I’ve created my own.

Once in a blue moon I find myself stumbling through the rabbit hole that is YouTube and watching a smattering of videos on a particular topic, all in a row, sometimes for hours at a clip – professional wrestling matches, music videos, and most recently, videos of atheists/humanists debunking creationist videos. Usually having fun at their expense, but still pointing out my favorite method of debate: “you are wrong, and here is why”. I don’t do it to affirm my own lack of belief – I’ve been open enough throughout the years about my never actually being a believer – but as a reminder that bad arguments exist everywhere, and deserve to be approached.

Those videos can be highly entertaining, but this last go-round they actually have made me a bit sad as well. Not empathetic so much for the attempts at converting me or other non-believers (that still feels “dirty” to me, trying to “save” a person from themselves when they can be perfectly happy and healthy as they are) but disappointed at some of the ways even my fellow atheists approach the aggressive proselytizing of the faithful with a nearly-equal fervor. And it’s made me really try to break down, both for myself and for anyone who might not understand, why so many atheists can come off either angry or frustrated in the face of the one trying to convert them.

It’s a pretty simple, straight-forward answer even.