DON'T BELIEVE IT

The other day I wrote on Facebook something to the effect that a person who does not believe in God is likely not to believe in just about anything.

I based my epigram – sort of – on a line Oscar Wilde once wrote: a woman who will tell you her correct age is liable to tell you anything.

Both witticisms are perfectly true as far as they go. Both are expressed well-enough for everyday conversation, particularly on Facebook.

The philosophical reverse is also true as far as it goes: a religious person who does not believe in the secular institutions is also likely not to believe in just about anything.

Once a person starts to disbelieve – seriously disbelieve, disbelief can carry a person in any number of faithless, negative directions.

Many people fancy they act based on their principles and in what they believe. In other words, they believe they act for positive reasons. Some do, and huzzah for them. However, many if not most people act based on what they do not believe.

Often, we read obituaries listing things that The Dearly Departed believed. I would find it interesting to read the list of things which the Departed did not believe.

For example, my obituary [some day far off] might note that I do not believe in California or Vermont or Delaware or the Dakotas and did not live in or support outdated internal boundaries. I did not believe in alcohol or tobacco. I did not believe in the Vampire Diaries. I did not believe in Martians, Kris Kringle, or Star Wars.

The concept of Belief in politics evolved not from a swamp but into The Swamp. Voters have always found a candidate’s belief in God and belief in specific brands of God a hot issue in American politics. This has become especially true in the Republican brand in the last 25 years where a good candidate can get a lot in both money and power by capitalizing on a conservative siege mentality.

Only a few certain places in America will voters elect a professing atheist to office. Only in certain places in America will voters elect a Mormon to office. Hardly anywhere in America will elect a Muslim into office. Furthermore, as we have seen in Winter 2012, primary elections in The South demonstrate certain hypocrisies among the evangelical voting set. Some of them prefer a serial adulterer to a monogamist Latter-day Saint.

We should not regard Politics as a world of its own. It reflects native culture. In American culture, if a person wants to generate a very angry discussion very quick, he or she should start discussion on the subject whether we believe in God or believe in Atheism.

Atheism has a lot more to it than just the non existence of God. My experience over the years suggests when a typical person becomes a typical atheist and loses faith in God, the lack of faith usually starts as losing faith in one of God’s commandments or doctrines, not necessary in God itself. Usually, the person tires with a religious regulation that has to do with either sex, control, or money. The professed Atheism become the excuse or diversion from abandoning one practice and taking up another practice. Form, in less fulsome words, follow function.

My experience over the years also indicates that when a typical person becomes a typically orthodox believer in God, that person’s belief usually starts as a reaction to some sort to experience or to a belief in a doctrine or commandment. Again form follows function.

Someone once said that it is easy to get what you don’t want. It is also easy to shapes our lives and characters by we disbelieve. No amount of compounded negatives can achieve positive.