Notes

"I may disagree with your lifestyle but I still love you."


I hear this often, whether it's aimed at me being homosexual or my more public stance, being an atheist. I understand the virtue religious people see in
reminding others that they disagree with you or the way you live but followed by the love they still feel for you. I get that they are taught to see certain lifestyles as "sinful", that is seeing a pair of same-sex humans in a relationship or someone who publicly rejects the idea of the existence of a deity.

I understand, we just met. You're a friend of a friend or the cousin I've never met until now. You just discovered my life-style and have to make a public gesture of disagreement. "Hey, I just want you to know: I may disagree with your lifestyle but I still love you." These words have been uttered and echo in the minds of those who receive them constantly. This gesture becomes tiresome when repeated over and over— ad nauseam. Especially when it's done by the same person.

This is something that would hurt when heard over and over from a family member but luckily my parents have only made this gesture once and never again, I'm truly thankful for this, even if I know they disagree with me, the key is: They know I know and that's enough for them. Unfortunately, I know someone close to me that has to hear this several times during a routine phone conversation with a parent that lives 1,200 miles away. I feel bad for this person. Not only do I have the convenience to see my parents in person as often as I want, they still respect me as a person regardless of conflicting world views or lifestyles. I want to make this clear, they totally disagree with my lifestyle, but the fact is— they don't feel the need to remind me every time we talk. They love me enough to put aside their uncomfortable feelings and for some reason, that feels more loving then if they were just o.k with my lifestyle.

But there is something wrong with you if you have to constantly remind your child how uncomfortable you are with their lifestyle or life choices. I'm trying my best not to write the generic message of "Why can't you just accept me for who I am". That's truly not my goal, and how boring would life be if everyone just accepted everyone regardless of their world view or life style. For me, Life is exciting when there are intellectual adversaries— those who challenge you. I've never been more close to my friends or family, especially my parents, than when I disagreed with them and had long conversations about our conflicting world views. I will say though, a life where no one hates or feels the need to try and guilt someone into seeing their way of life as "evil" or "sinful" would be nice, especially if you're telling an atheist how his/her life is sinful. If there is one thing that pushes you further away from God, it's that way of attacking people you disagree with.

If you've ever said "I may disagree with your lifestyle, but I still love you", are you not vulnerable to the same level of disagreement? I for one, as an unbeliever, truly disagree with a religious lifestyle. Unless it is one lived by vigorous intellectual exercise: the journey to understand the ancient texts the way it was originally written—Biblical textual criticism, Studying classical arguments of the christian faith—Christian Apologetics, all while having a certain level of scientific literacy, that, I can get behind. But far too few Christians live this way. You are taught to take an ideology on faith and for no other reason because the one who taught you has taken the same belief on faith, who was also convinced by someone who was told that they should take the validity of all this knowledge on faith as well. And because you believe it to be true so badly, and believed for so long, you can't imagine it being false.

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."

I wont go as far as to say Christianity is a lie, even though I strongly believe it to be false. I will say that even if Christianity is true, that's beside the point. Let's say in this universe we live in, Christianity is true. Now imagine that in some pretend universe, it isn't true. In this imaginary universe Christianity is most certainly false. Lets even say that the Mormons were right, and anyone who isn't a Mormon will burn for eternity. If Christianity is False and Mormonism is true in this imaginary universe, yet all your life and children's lives, and their children's lives- have been told that Christianity is true and share the same exact experiences you as a religious person have experienced in the actual universe (Not the hypothetical Mormon Universe) If you experience the same level of spiritual fulfillment in the imaginary world as you did in the actual universe, you're still wrong. You were still told a lie and will suffer for eternity because you didn't pick the Mormon God. The purpose of this metaphor it to hopefully shed some light on how experience alone isn't enough to know that something is true. Because Swap out "Christianity" at any moment for any other religion and you get the same outcome. You're either lucky you picked the right religion or severely unlucky.

Back to the 'actual universe', let's remove the hypothetical that Christianity is most certainly true, even though you may want to believe that to be true. Let me ask you, outside of the experiences you share with many other people from many other religions, what makes Christianity true and all the other religions false? I encourage you to try and give an answer that you think has the possibility of convincing someone who has taken the time to research these issues. Imagine someone who is familiar with Christian arguments and has spent time arguing for Christianity in a past life and now argues against the notion of it's truth. What might you tell that person? Could you attempt to convince this person outside the sensational and emotional experiences that you have used to convince yourself during times of doubt?

If it would make my point clearer, I would go as far as to say Christianity is indeed true (Again I don't believe this) But if you don't believe it to be true for good reason, outside of faith, and require your friends, family, your own children to believe in something that you only take on blind faith because you have a feeling it's true. No matter what the belief system is, you're teaching a child that its ok to believe in something as big as the Christian God with no evidence given to satisfy the child's curiosity. This is because you didn't know there was arguments available to help convince someone. This is likely not your fault. This is because you take what you believe so lightly unknowingly, After all it probably didn't take much convincing for you to believe in the first place.