This is in response to the following 2 diaries: Richard Dawkins Video Collection - In Your Face Atheism and Richard Dawkins: God, He's Wonderful!
Now I realize that there are many people in this community who are atheists, and I celebrate your right to believe as you wish. I just wish SOME of you would stop being freaking pricks about it!
I will elaborate on the flipside.
First, I guess I have to tell y'all what I do believe. I have never actually heard of a word that classifies my beliefs. It is, as far as I have found in my travels as a human being, unique to me. The closest I've ever come is "deist". So for the sake of this converstaion just call me a plain vanilla deist because I'm not in the mood to go into every excrutiating detail of what I do and do not believe. I will say the foundation of my belief is the recognition that human beings are incapable of knowing, much less understanding the "Truth" of everything. Even as I have defined my beliefs I am the first person to recognize that I might be wrong. But I have taken great care and deliberation in coming to the conclusions of my beliefs and I don't take kindly to someone, anyone, telling me I'm a fool, irrational, or that I'm going to a hell I don't even believe in.
So when I read diaries, like the ones above, I get a bit angry. I have heard many atheists talk about the personal journeys they have undertaken to reach the conclusions of their belief that there is no God. They talk of their trials and their searches for an understanding of the universe and their place in it and I think they are touching and very valuable experiences. But many aren't content to stop there. Many in the very next breath imply (implicitly or explicitly) that everyone who still believes in God are mindless sheep, brainwashed into believing in a delusion for their own comfort or to exert control over others to feed into the power of massive institutions or blah blah blah. Some athiests even whine that people are intolerant of their beliefs and are completely oblivious to their own raging intolerance.
So I'm going to explain something to you, atheists and everyone else, that should be the foundation of our collective mindset as it relates to religion:
What you believe is not what matters. What you do with your beliefs matters
Now let me explain that. There are people in this world who use religion as a means of subjugating others, condemning others, or otherwise shape their beliefs around their prejudice of others. This applies to christians, mulsims, jews, and (and I know a lot of you guys are going to argue this) atheists. It doesn't matter by who's banner you follow when you do it, it's still wrong.
And there are other people, also christian, muslim, jewish, and yes even atheist, who use their beliefs to better themselves. They use their beliefs to help others and nurture the world around them, and they use their beliefs as a guideline of a journey to better understand the universe or God and their own purpose in the Whole. They use their beliefs to become better people. These are the people we want to be around, to be like. These are the kinds of people we should emmulate.
In the end it's not what you believe that makes you a better person, it's the deliberate application of your beliefs towards the goal of bettering yourself that should be the point of discussion, not that your beliefs make you inferior because they're not yours.
And another thing, I have heard many atheists assert that atheism is not a belief system, it is a lack of belief. I think it is important for some atheists to assert a lack of belief because as they systematically trashing what they consider belief in general.
I wanted to put this to rest so I decided to break out the 'ol dictionary and under the word "belief":
1 : a state or habit of mind in which trust or confidence is placed in some person or thing
2 : something believed; especially : a tenet or body of tenets held by a group
3 : conviction of the truth of some statement or the reality of some being or phenomenon especially when based on examination of evidence
Atheism can be applied to all 3 of these definitions.
And so I shall repeat, what you believe is not important in the grand scheme of things, what you do with your beliefs is. And so I ask unto you, atheists and theists alike, is to please give the same respect to others and the beliefs of others, that you would ask for yourself and for your own beliefs. I think we can get along a lot better as a community if we can just agree on that.