{"id":473,"date":"2021-01-14T12:31:01","date_gmt":"2021-01-14T17:31:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ayling.tech\/blog\/?p=473"},"modified":"2021-01-14T13:44:24","modified_gmt":"2021-01-14T18:44:24","slug":"definitions-through-brainwashing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shortbooks.online\/blog\/2021\/definitions-through-brainwashing\/","title":{"rendered":"Definitions through brainwashing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>It was recently pointed out to me that there are ways that we are taught to categorize people. In the case of one group &#8211; evangelical Christians &#8211; they have three labels for people:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Christians;<\/li><li>People who have not yet heard the Good News; and<\/li><li>Satan worshippers.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>This sounds preposterous to me. I was raised in a legally-Christian country, went to Sunday school, and learned about God, Jesus, and Moses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Armed with this knowledge, I cannot fall into the second category.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I have also done a lot of reading on science, theories including the big bang, evolution, and linguistics, and about <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Occam's_razor\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">razors <\/a>with which we can make determinations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I do not wish to convince you that I am right (this time), but I do not believe in magic. Nothing supernatural is necessary to describe the world, and if there is a gap in scientific knowledge that allows a magical explanation, I believe that it will be filled by future discoveries, as all past gaps have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The lack of magic in my world view precludes me from being a Christian or a Satan worshipper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Ho!&#8221; says the Christian &#8220;Satan is subtle and is steering you away from a loving relationship with God.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Well, if that&#8217;s the case, then God has done a very, very bad job at making a case for faith. There&#8217;s no evidence of God (or Satan) and we do not need to prove the negative. We know that it is more likely there is not a flying spaghetti monster &#8211; you need to provide evidence of a flying spaghetti monster and I do not need to disprove it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So my point is, if you are a Christian who thinks an atheist (or agnostic) is evil, perhaps you should check the labels you have available to you. There is a fourth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>People who have heard about your religion and reject it as untrue in, ironically, good faith.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p>I could rant forever about my distaste for a religion whose central tenet is that I need another human being to be tortured and executed for my sins to be forgiven, but that&#8217;s for another post. In the meantime, I am pondering what faith is <em>for<\/em> if not the evolutionary biological explanation: community and tribalism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It was recently pointed out to me that there are ways that we are taught to categorize people. In the case of one group &#8211; evangelical Christians &#8211; they have three labels for people: Christians; People who have not yet heard the Good News; and Satan worshippers. This sounds preposterous to me. I was raised in a legally-Christian country, went to Sunday school, and learned about God, Jesus, and Moses. Armed with this knowledge, I cannot fall into the second&#8230;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"><a class=\"btn btn-default\" href=\"https:\/\/shortbooks.online\/blog\/2021\/definitions-through-brainwashing\/\"> Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">  Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70,192],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-copy","category-religion"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shortbooks.online\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shortbooks.online\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shortbooks.online\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shortbooks.online\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shortbooks.online\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shortbooks.online\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shortbooks.online\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shortbooks.online\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shortbooks.online\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}