My religion’s “not believing”
Cos I don’t believe in god
As religions go, I have to say
That mine’s a little odd
Since I don’t believe in Odin
And I don’t believe in Thor
Is that one, or two, religions?
Cos, you see, I’ve got some more!
See, I don’t believe in Isis
Or Athena, or Nabu,
And I wonder if the Christians
Have these same religions too
Do they all deny Apollo?
Do they not believe in Kon?
Are these multiple religions?
Is it one, and mine alone?
There are thousands of religions—
Some are young, and some are old
My religion is the disbelief
In all of them, I’m told.
I’ve no synagogue, nor chapel
No cathedral, mosque, nor church
So it’s clear you’ll find my holy places
Everywhere you search
“Non-belief” is my religion,
And it’s just like theirs, you see…
(Could you pretty-please explain it?
Cos it makes no sense to me!)
Along the lines of “it takes more faith to be an atheist”, I also see the odd construction of “not believing in god is a religion, too”–which raises the question of whether, say, Christians are actually polytheists, because they “do believe” in Yahweh, and “don’t believe” (which, by their* argument, is a form of belief) in, say, Bahloo. Or Novensides. Or Mextli. Or Pangu.
It must take terrible effort to actively disbelieve in so many gods. And yet, by this strange logic, every one of us has the same number of religions–either believing or not-believing in thousands of deities.
Or maybe the whole notion is just silly.
You have hit the nail squarely on the thumb.
When I say that there is no god,
And people get upset,
I point out they believe the same
They just don’t know it yet.
By any reasonable count
Through all of history
There have been several thousand gods
All wrapped in mystery.
The Christians worship only one
The Jews and Moslems too.
So clearly all of them believe
That what I say is true.
They don’t believe in the same gods
As me, except for one.
And over such a broad sample
That just rounds down to none.
We’re statistically even
So no more righteous wrath
We all think there are zero gods
It’s simple; do the math.
I love rounding down!
I think Christians are polytheists: they worship Jesus and God. Yes, I know there is that whole Trinity thing which proves they are really monotheists, but I think the Trinity is nothing more than a truly bizarre philosophical construct designed by the early Christians to prove to the Jews they wanted to convert that Christianity was not another polytheistic faith. (I suspect that millions upon millions of Jews might have lived out their natural life spans if Christians had insisted they were starting a new religion, with a new god and a completely new bible instead of grafting their Jesus-faith onto the old Jewish faith.)
And, as far as I can tell, most of the people who pray to Jesus, who accept Jesus as their “Personal Savior” are thinking of the man-god Jesus not “God”.
In Latin America, for many Catholic women, Mary is the person to whom they pray most – which I can understand because Mary always looks beatific (sort of like a slender, female Buddha) and therefore presents a more calming image than that of a man being tortured to death. Besides which, of course, she was a mother.
I also wonder if one could not consider Christians to be semi-idolators. They don’t, unlike Hindus, believe their god and saints, etc. actually inhabit their images. But the faithful treat their crosses, their paintings, their statutes with enormous respect and would consider their loss or damage – especially if caused by a non-believer – as a grave crime or sin.
Some Muslims do, I think, not consider Christians to be monotheists precisely because of the Trinity, and I suspect that the prohibition against images may have been created in response to the proliferation of images among Christians. It was another way to distinguish the new Islamic faith.
My two cents. (I’m not a religious scholar so, no doubt, there are all kinds of arguments as to why my analysis, such as it is, is wrong.)
I love it! Please can I steal this argument and use it next time (probably tomorrow)someone says on a comment thread “Atheism is just another religion”?