An interesting conversation

I have had many many interesting conversations over the last year, and though most of them start and end the same way, sometimes a phrase or a question still catches me off guard. Last week in a casual conversation on religion, I was asked if I hated religious people. I pause. Truthfully, I don't hate religious people. Why then, I ask myself, do I get so passionate when the idea of religion comes up? I was never wronged by religion; I was raised without religion and am therefore a lifelong atheist. I have never been wronged by someone on behalf of religion. Why then do I say vehemently hateful things in the direction of religion?

I finally decide that I don't have any blanket hate for religious people, but I do hate religions. I hate people who do evil on behalf of or because of their respective religions, but I generally save my fire and brimstone for the establishment and not the victims. Yeah. That's it.

This is all fine and dandy, and though my partner accepts the answer and moves on, a little section of my brain sounds an alarm. I am annoyed by people who believe in any kind of god, I told myself. Why does that annoy me if such a deistic view has literally zero potential of bringing me any pain or misfortune? The truth of the matter is that I don't actually know any true Deists. I know people who use deistic arguments to support their beliefs, but every single one of them ultimately makes the ridiculous leap from deism to "Jesus" or any other theistic counterpart. That's it, I tell myself. It's the destruction of logic to leap from the possible to the ridiculous. Anyone can make a case for an uninvolved deistic god, but it's the ones who believe in a god that hears prayers, watches everyone at all times, and knows what you're thinking at any given moment... they're the ones that annoy me.

As I mentioned in a previous blog, it's the lack of evidence that truly baffles me. I can understand this idea of a need for religion, and I can even buy this idea of people being predisposed to religion and atheism, but the level of conviction that people hold for something they have never actually seen concrete proof of is embarrassing. "You have the same blind faith in science and reason," they say, usually with a venomous tone upon the utterance of science. "Science needs no faith," I smile back, "It's not a democracy. It doesn't matter who believes what and when. Science wouldn't die if all of its followers left it, like hundreds of dead, now mythological gods." They shrug. They always shrug.

"Faith is faith," they say, as they each mumble to their own respective god or gods, "I don't need proof. I know mine is the truth."

I smile and nod, letting the conversation drift to sin and the afterlife.