Is The Pope Atheist?

Chapter 17

You pray to God for health, and he gives his wishes for a speedy recovery. What’s the difference? You’re both at the hospital. You’re both anxiously waiting to see if your loved one is okay. You both find comfort in asking some higher power for help. One of you calls himself religious, the other atheist.

WE ARE MORE ALIKE THAN WE SEEM. Let me show you…

Are Atheists Religious in Disguise?

Atheists have all sorts of practices that mimic religion using fancy wording to escape the divine. Atheists will wish for some things and really really hope for other things. Atheists have gratitude journals where they’re grateful, not to anybody in particular, just grateful. They’re grateful to… something. Atheists will all meet at a concert hall, sing together and maybe even be brought to tears.

Don’t these all sound awfully similar to praying, thanking god and congregating?

You can find dozens of yoga studios running classes all day long in any major city. Yoga was developed as a means of attaining enlightenment in the Hindu religion. Of course, it has been altered throughout history but yoga is a fundamentally religious and spiritual practice.

Are Religious People Actually Atheists?

When the Catholic Pope has a major health issue, does an ambulance rush him to a Church or to a hospital? A hospital. Everybody would call you insane if you brought him to a Church while he’s having a heart attack (God-forbid). But if we all 100% believed literally in god and his ability to intervene in human life, why would god ever allow the pope to die before old-age takes its toll?

Why do religious people today, except for a small minority, accept liberal democracies, military dictatorships and most other modern systems of health, governance, etc.? In many ways, the actions of a religious person and the actions of an atheist are indistinguishable from an atheist.

But I’m not an idiot, clearly there are differences - but those are more so in beliefs than in deeds.

Religious Words and Religious Deeds

“So we define atheism or secularism in deeds, by the distance between one’s actions and those of a nonatheistic person for an equivalent situation, not his beliefs and other decorative and symbolic matters…

Let us take stock here. There are people who are:

atheists in actions, religious in words (most Orthodox and Catholic Christians)

and others who are

religious in actions, religious in words (Salafi Islamists and suicide bombers)

but I know of nobody, who is atheist in both actions and words completely devoid of rituals, respect for the dead, and superstitions (say a belief in economics, or in the miraculous powers of the mighty state and its institutions).” (Taleb, 210)

GET TO THE POINT!!

In the modern world, people are rarely as religious as they think or as atheistic as they think. So we should really think twice before judging people in religious or secular clothing. We’re all more alike than we seem.

Question of The Day

Do you want to be happy and part of a loving family? How important is that to you? Do you think someone more or less religious than you doesn’t want that as well?

Your Friend,

Noah “BigNerd” Sochaczevski