God’s Details are the Devil’s Handiwork
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/02/20
The God of the Bible rested on the seventh day and was meticulously detail-oriented, even allowing freedom of the will for human beings.
Apparently, this is the problem. The Devil tempted Adam and Eve. The Fall happened. The world is henceforth cursed. Human beings with free will corrupt God’s Creation in the freedom to make evil choices and then choose evil over God. Which is to say, both God and Man say, “The Devil made me do it,” or, “It’s the Devil’s fault.”
Eve blamed the serpent. Adam blamed Eve. God blames the Devil. The Devil seems like a conceptual scapegoat when you look at it. When the authors of the creation myth of the Bible sat down and made this stuff up, they must have had this in mind. All observed errors in the world are attributed to a secondary powerful being deemed evil.
The non-theist Satanists may have the most useful interpretation of Satan in the Bible as a liberation figure for humanity. Meanwhile, God drowned the world and got the Amalekites slaughtered while setting women spiritually equal and actual servants to men.
I spent a long, long time interviewing atheists, agnostics, humanists, Satanists, and the like around the world. I can note two big trends. One, the more difficult the circumstance, then the more strident versions of non-theism found and the hardier people.
They don’t report crimes against them as much, even as basic hate crimes, but they undergo worse treatment by theists. At the same time, the theists are bigoted against each other and against non-theists. Non-theists simply want equality; to many non-theists, this removal of privilege feels like persecution.
Two, the definition of non-theists differs only in two major respects: in reference to the dominant religion and narrowness within that frame of reference. I can explain both as some qualitative trends for your activism.
For the first, people are killed for non-theism. It is a punishable offence by death. People are imprisoned in several countries for non-theism. They can lose jobs. They can lose family. They can lose friends. They can be persecuted by the larger society, up to and including mob murders of non-theists in public by adults.
The hate crimes statistics are, in fact, low. Meanwhile, the actual numbers are much lower. I suspect the numbers are artificially low, as with the ⅓ women subject to specific forms of violence, which is an understatement of the actual fact. Non-theists should make a concerted effort in legitimate cases of violence, hate, and discrimination to report them.
These statistics can provide a basis for mass activism and socio-political change throughout society. We have to make a concerted effort because the majority of the world is religious, and a significant hunk of them hold a spectrum of myths about us, where hate and bigotry are grounded in hate and fear.
Those can be combatted as other forms of hate.
Now, to the second, if someone is a non-theist, and if they are coming out of a society in which individuals adhere to the dominant religion as Christianity, the non-theism in reference, or the God disbelieved, is in the form of the God of the Bible, particularly the New Testament.
“Why would God need to impregnate a virgin to kill Himself in order to absolve wrongs? Why not simply forgive them? Oh, right, people made this up to control people. Powerful people like creating myths to control others, especially women.”
If you are a non-theist in India, you can find individuals who reject the gods of Hinduism. If they are from Iran, they become ex-Muslims like Maryam Namazie and Armin Navabi. Yet, their non-theism appeals to a wider range. They are smart people and take a broader range, but others will take non-theism if in similar circumstances, to mean rejection of the Allah of the Quran.
Non-theism becomes a cultural end-product. Many aspects of the god concept can be geographically situated, which is to say, Culturally. A belief in a god, statistically on a mass psychology basis, can be determined by geography. Same for non-theism, by the way.
On an individual basis, it can differ. Reasons become more nuanced. The most pronounced formulation of this cultural mandate of leaving religion or rejection of formal religion is in North America. Canadians and Americans leaving religion typically mean the God of the Bible.
Because of the degree of steep Christian religion and culture among all ethnic backgrounds in the countries. Although, the total numbers are declining to a significant degree. The consecutive cultural waves of influence continue to ripple, but in smaller and smaller waves now.
The most extreme forms of demonization image of the non-theist are, basically, the bastard children and slave-servants of the lowest evil found in the Devil and his fiery pits deserving of the worst condemnation of God, his angels, and agents on Earth. That becomes public reprisal in poorer, more religious societies.
What I do note across the world is that in encouraging quietly for years and years and lifting up the lesser-known voices in these communities, they’re emboldened by the attention. Christians in my hometown, some of them, used to stalk me on buses, to my home, and then be ‘friends’ to me to get information to defame and ruin my reputation.
Conservatives remain the kinds of cancel culture. Now, everyone does it, unfortunately. That told me that I am effective. Those empowered people pursue the aims of secular culture locally and show an example to everyone else. It’s my life’s privilege and honour to encourage and give voice to these people. I work on the details, in other words.
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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