If you ask most believers of the Abrahamic faiths, you will find quite a few who firmly believe their faith provides them with a sense of superiority over non-believers. They have accepted "the truth," while non-believers have not. They have established a personal relationship with the creator, while others have shunned it. They have acknowledged their sinful nature and that only the creator's grace saves them, while non-believers eschew this.
While many willingly admit to this sense of superiority, just as many will not. These folks will tell you that it is not their role to judge. Live and let live is their motto.
Personally, I think this second group is fooling themselves! If a person believes in their heart of hearts that he or she has accepted the absolute truth and yet others have rejected it, then the believer feels as if they have accepted a certain amount of protection against the unknown nature of the world. If they didn't believe this was a superior position to be in, they wouldn't be believers in the first place!
On the flip side, many accuse non-theists like me of thinking that I am superior to theists. And here's a revelation -- I do, in fact, feel that I'm in a superior position and I'm not ashamed nor embarrassed to admit it.
It's a different kind of superior position, though. While theists -- particularly fundamentalist Christians -- often believe that my inferiority to them will land me in the fiery pits of hell to burn for all eternity, my sense of superiority is only of the intellectual kind. I don't think it will impact religious believers in an afterlife that I don't believe in to start with.
No, my sense of superiority is based solely in the here and now. While we each wrestle with a certain amount of demons, I've shed the religious kind. That means there is one less layer for me to transcend. It means that I don't have to thumb through a book written thousands of years ago by nomadic tribesman in order to help me decide what movie I will watch tonight or what direction I will head when I encounter one of life's crossroads.
I have freed myself from the determination of my worth and meaning via external sources. I no longer see myself or my fellow humans as inherently flawed and fallen. I do not see the need for me to be saved from my own humanness. I take life as it comes and I never have to ask myself: What would Jesus (or Lao Tzu) do?
When I look out onto the world and I see so many people who have voluntarily and willingly enslaved themselves to the very things I have freed myself from, it is very difficult NOT to feel sorry for them. They have added an immense source of stress to their lives and, by all indications, they suffer greatly from all this self-imposed stress. Yet, when I and others try to point out that their beliefs are the cause of much of their internal tension, we are treated like evil pariahs.
Consequently, when I see others who refuse to escape through a giant hole in the fence of belief, it makes me shake my head. And yes, I do feel a bit intellectually superior because people like me have had the courage to flee the compound in order to lead lives on the outside in the world of uncertainty.
While many willingly admit to this sense of superiority, just as many will not. These folks will tell you that it is not their role to judge. Live and let live is their motto.
Personally, I think this second group is fooling themselves! If a person believes in their heart of hearts that he or she has accepted the absolute truth and yet others have rejected it, then the believer feels as if they have accepted a certain amount of protection against the unknown nature of the world. If they didn't believe this was a superior position to be in, they wouldn't be believers in the first place!
On the flip side, many accuse non-theists like me of thinking that I am superior to theists. And here's a revelation -- I do, in fact, feel that I'm in a superior position and I'm not ashamed nor embarrassed to admit it.
It's a different kind of superior position, though. While theists -- particularly fundamentalist Christians -- often believe that my inferiority to them will land me in the fiery pits of hell to burn for all eternity, my sense of superiority is only of the intellectual kind. I don't think it will impact religious believers in an afterlife that I don't believe in to start with.
No, my sense of superiority is based solely in the here and now. While we each wrestle with a certain amount of demons, I've shed the religious kind. That means there is one less layer for me to transcend. It means that I don't have to thumb through a book written thousands of years ago by nomadic tribesman in order to help me decide what movie I will watch tonight or what direction I will head when I encounter one of life's crossroads.
I have freed myself from the determination of my worth and meaning via external sources. I no longer see myself or my fellow humans as inherently flawed and fallen. I do not see the need for me to be saved from my own humanness. I take life as it comes and I never have to ask myself: What would Jesus (or Lao Tzu) do?
When I look out onto the world and I see so many people who have voluntarily and willingly enslaved themselves to the very things I have freed myself from, it is very difficult NOT to feel sorry for them. They have added an immense source of stress to their lives and, by all indications, they suffer greatly from all this self-imposed stress. Yet, when I and others try to point out that their beliefs are the cause of much of their internal tension, we are treated like evil pariahs.
Consequently, when I see others who refuse to escape through a giant hole in the fence of belief, it makes me shake my head. And yes, I do feel a bit intellectually superior because people like me have had the courage to flee the compound in order to lead lives on the outside in the world of uncertainty.
Now, you just have to free yourself of feeling inferior or superior. ;^)
ReplyDeletehttp://www.woodka.com/2005/07/25/scorn/
The truth hurts for them, they have so much invested in the belief system that to point out that their beliefs are part of the problem is unthinkable.
ReplyDeleteHmm, their desire for salvation and their frantic clutching at it is the thing that damns them to suffer. Is that irony?