So, I would like to discuss something which I have been noticing more and more lately, the apparent need to blame things on inanimate stuff. I think I began noticing this trend back during the referendum in the UK over the AV system, both sides of the campaign were saying silly things like “AV will mean more back door deals!” “AV will make MPs work harder!” both these things being ridiculous of course as these are activities whose frequency rely solely on humans. However, that was a debate in the realm of politics a place where anyone will say what they think someone else wants to hear to get want they want, what has really begun to annoy me lately are the opinions certain atheists I have run into on-line hold about religion.
Now, I should start this paragraph by stating that I am an Atheist, though I hold to the opinion we can not know whether there are gods or not, at least with the currently available evidence. But onto that which have begun to really annoy me, the propensity for many Atheists to attack ‘religion’ for making people a certain way when in nearly every case the much simpler explanation that actually makes sense is something far different, other people made these people this way, whether it was their parents, or a particularly charismatic preacher or a friend/significant other. But I would like to address a particular case, where a person was complaining because his sister thought she was going to hell for “not feeling the holy spirit”, this person was up in arms about religion making people feel this way instead of looking to the people who were actually responsible, whoever it was that taught this woman the erroneous belief that Christianity states you need to feel something which could be attributed to god before you know you have been accepted by him/her/it.
A great many people give personality and abilities to things which simply can not influence the world beyond what people do in their names, but has humans we feel the need to place blame somewhere, blame which is preferably not on ourselves or people we are close to in order to preserve our image of ourselves as near perfect beings. It is an unfortunate situation, but besides complaining about it on little-read and little cared-for blogs there is not much I can do but wait for humanity to slowly get smarter generation by generation and hope I live long enough to have all my thoughts, opinions and general blatherings validated so that I can be recognised for the awesome person I know I am.
