Oh hi there, you didn’t know I still existed did you? But, alas, the ex hasn’t managed to kill me yet, and I’m here for yet another sporadic blog post.
I got a message yesterday from someone I don’t really know that well. I know this persons family pretty well, and I like this person, but this isn’t someone “near” to me by any stretch. Anyway, the person brings up a couple of things, misconceptions, really, that surround me and my movement away from belief.
1. I haven’t been burned by religion.
While there are many forms of Christianity that I take exception to, and I vocally rail against, there are incredibly refreshing forms out there. In some ways I still consider myself part of the Christian community, in the end, the ideals of Jesus are something I can completely get behind, and love. This, of course, begs the question, who’s view on the ideals of Jesus am I working from? I think I’ve done a decent enough job at categorizing my views on that point (click “Social Justice” under categories), so I won’t go into that here.
Suffice it to say, I’m not against religion in general, but will openly point out those spots which I do stand against. I think it would be a tragic loss if religion were to be removed from the world, I see that people need religion, or at least think they need religion, and that’s fine. Personally? I don’t see a need for it, and I’m not going to try to get you to run away from religion.
as a side note here, I do enjoy asking provocative questions that make you think more about what you believe, that could easily be seen as me trying to “deconvert”, but it’s not, I try to get people to think
2. Having an open mind
While many people undoubtedly believe they have an open mind about things, they don’t, and I’m not sure if I fall into the category of close-minded or not. Honestly, I don’t think I am [close minded], but I’d be hard pressed to argue either way. In this respect, I think one needs to defer to the opinion and judgement of others, if I’m being consistently told I’m close minded, then it’s probably valid.
As it stands, I’m not being told that, and I think as much honest self assessment as I can muster on the topic leads me to believe that there are only a few areas that could be construed toward me being close minded, and religion is not one of them.
side note 2: I’ll probably sit for a bit over the next few days and question myself in this regard. I doubt a lot, even the things I say, and I find it hard to believe that a doubter could be consistently close minded. Maybe. We’ll see.
3. The final comment I got was “we don’t know what we don’t know”
I’m not certain if this was more of a “understand what you don’t know,” or a “there are things we don’t know what we don’t know.”
In the first sense, I completely agree. I Don’t Know about God. I’m not an atheist, I’m not willing to stand and say “There is no god” or “There is a God,” because I understand that I don’t know.
I understand that I know very little in the great schema of the universe. I’m ok with that. And I think the converse of this statement needs to be thrown out there, “Know what you know.” In that vein, I’m always learning, always seeking to gain new insights, and only willing to fully stand on that which I know I know.
As far as the second form, “there are things that we don’t know we don’t know,” and again, I agree with this. The goal should be to continue to strive toward the enlightenment of that which we know and that which we do not know (and thereby the increase in knowledge by learning what we do not know).
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