I find myself continuing to laugh about and reflect on a comic strip cartoon that was first brought to my attention by Daniel Florien in which the creator, Neil Swaab, explains why god must prefer atheists to believers.
The strip below has been used with the author’s permission, but unfortunately I have had to reduce the size to fit it into the space on this blog. If you can’t read the strip below, have a look at it in all its glory by clicking on it and being taken to Neil’s original page.
Beyond the humour, the comic addresses three very pertinent issues about believing in god that don’t normally get discussed in churches. These issues are psychological, logical, and historical.
Responsibility
In the first drawing an atheist wanting to lose weight accepts that exercising is likely to be more effective than praying to god. The atheist is willing to accept responsibility rather than unrealistically depending on some magical higher power.
Religions often teach that independence is arrogant and delusional. However, it seems that the real arrogance and delusion is to invent the unseen magical power. When my own mortality hit me in the face (well the chest, actually - see The English Patient) I know that many Christians were convinced that this was god trying to humble me and bring me back to the flock. They were hoping that as I faced the possibility of death and traumatic medical procedures (see Room 101) that I would cry out to a divinity for aid.
At this time I wasn’t arrogantly thinking that I alone could solve this. I was perfectly happy to depend on the support of family and friends. I was also very happy to depend on the skill (or otherwise) of the medical practitioners and trust their scientific knowledge and practical training. I also knew that I had to a big responsibility for my own continued recovery and had to seriously change my diet and exercise practice (i.e. start the latter). But at no time did I feel the need to cry out in the darkness to an imaginary friend.
Belief in a divinity infantalizes - it keeps intelligent, significant human beings in a state of childhood. People are stopped from thinking things through and making risky, intelligent decisions because they have to know what god thinks. They protect themselves from facing consequences because they tell themselves that whatever happens is god’s will. Any parent will tell you that children grow into adults as they learn to take responsibility and face up to the consequences of their actions. Religion hinders this process and seriously stunts psychological growth.
Morality
In the second drawing the issue of reasons for being moral is addressed. It is a religious myth that people who have no faith have no morality - it is an insult, in fact. It is true that atheists may have a different morality, but that doesn’t mean that they have no reasons for doing or not doing what they decide to do. It is a logical fallacy to presume that difference amounts to nothing.
Atheists again want to take responsibility and make decisions that make sense according to reason and the normal rules that we use to operate the rest of our life. They decide because of consequences in the real world, not because of some imagined consequences in some imagined future life.
Let me put it like this. If McCain gets in and then dies would you want Sarah Palin to launch a nuclear war because she had thought it through and concluded that it was the best option from a range of other disastrous ones, or because she felt god had told her to do it and to disobey him would be immoral? Of course, having to take responsibility and think things through is often messy and lacks the certainty of a divine edict, but it is much more reasonable to do that. Doing something out of fear of an imagined torture for all eternity is seriously strange!
Murder
The third drawing looks at how so many wars have been caused by belief in the divine - in particular in relation to religious claims about territory. Millions of people have beens slaughtered over thousands of years because of religious claims over land - and that slaughter and abuse is happening even as I write.
Throughout history peoples have conquered others and taken land, but sometimes, nations are able to put that aside and move on. However, if religion is involved, the strife burns for thousands of years. In Britain, the Celts took the land from the Barrow People, then the Anglo-Saxons took a lot of it from the Celts before eventually learning to live with them. Then the Vikings reached an accommodation with the Anglo-Saxons. Then the Norman French came, and then the peaceful invasion from the rest of the world. But in Britain we don’t have groups of Barrow People now saying, “God gave us this land and we have the right to kill to claim it back and to ‘ethnically cleanse’ the other nations who oppose our religion.” But such reasoning has happened historically and is still happening today in parts of the world.
I find it strange that some Westerners who have so recently been appalled at the attempted ethnic cleansing that has taken place in Europe in recent times can still comfortably sit in churches and worship a god who, according to her/his book, commanded and justified ethnic cleansing. I can only conclude that they either don’t know their bibles or they don’t believe what it teaches.
The cartoon succeeds in opening up the box a bit.
Great cartoon and interesting points that you make on the back of it.
I always think that the minute individuals surrender decision-making and responsibility to someone else or to a group, then things go wrong. I know we do need leaders, and groups but they rarely make good decisions or lead us to good decisions. If we surrender responsibility we do not try so hard, are not so involved - we become passive and that is rather dangerous.
I have never believed in a God. As a child I suppose maybe I thought I did - well, I simply didn’t question it, just went to church and tolerated the nuns at school because they could be wise and clever and funny (as well as small-minded and humourless).
But these days I do sometimes appeal to something. I’m not really sure what it is or the degree to which I do so seriously - but I have a tendency to look to the sky when things feel hopeless or difficult and mutter “give me strength” and somehow it does help. I think it is just that it takes me out of my individual situation for a second, and faced with the immensity of the sky or sea, I can see that what faces me is not really that significant on the grand scale of things. But I would be very shocked if the sky spoke back.