Fringe Religions/The Void of Atheism

The majority of people in South Carolina are theists. More specifically, they are Southern Baptists with a sprinkling of charismatics and Methodists and what have you. But by and large, this area is Christian and Protestant. Atheists like me are a small minority.

I receive no persecution for being out of the mainstream. I'm not sure why this is the case. I've always been out there, so I probably don't notice. I certainly don't give a fuck. I am also the type of guy who will fight back viciously and with intense violence if someone tried to harm me. This probably comes from the fact that I am one of the few atheists that also believes in the second amendment. The bottom line is that I am not a pussy. I think weakness provokes conflict.

The problem I have is that there are people who are religious and are not in the religious mainstream who think they have common cause with me. These would be the Wiccans and the theotards and maybe a Scientologist or two. Southern Baptists hate these folks as much as they hate atheists. As for me, I think they are all nuts. I don't care who your imaginary friend might be. If you have one, you have shit for brains.

I am all for religious freedom because of my libertarianism, but that is the limit of my tolerance. I don't like fringe religionists anymore than I like mainstream religionists. I think paganism and witchcraft are worse than Biblical fundamentalism. Yet, I encounter these people who think we are brothers and sisters in some common cause. Not quite.

Religion is much like a drug. It fulfills some psychological need. Atheism is not an issue of religious freedom for me so much as the correct way of looking at the world which is based on reality. I am sober in a world of drunkards. Fringe religionists are crack addicts.

The key reason people get into shit like Wicca, Zen Buddhism, or the Kabbalah is precisely because of their fringe status. It is no different than getting a tattoo, a nose ring, or pink hair. People want to be different. They want to be unique. They want to stand out. Likewise, they think atheists are the same. They want to be nonconformists. They couldn't be more wrong.

Aside from myself, most atheists I know are conformist to the extreme. They just had the misfortune of being inclined in a scientific direction which put them at odds with a religious society. Aside from not believing in God, they endeavor mightily to fit in and not draw attention to themselves. I don't admire this cowardice, but there is little I can do about it. For the most part, atheists are atheists not because it fulfills some need so much as these are people reconciled to reality.

For myself, not believing in God is a non-issue. It is a blank. It is no different than not believing in a flat earth. Atheism has no creed. There are no religious practices. There are no scriptures. I was amused when a Christians said to me, "You are an atheist? So, what church do atheists go to?" Mind boggling true shit.

Atheism is a negative. It is a void. People want to pursue some sort of positive atheism, but this makes no sense. Atheism is defined precisely by what you don't believe in. The only reason atheists form any sort of group is merely to show solidarity in opposition to ignorance. But eliminate that ignorance and you have eliminated the cause of atheism.

People want something to believe in, and what makes me different from other atheists is that I read a lot of philosophy. There are things I believe in. I believe in happiness and flourishing. I believe in freedom and capitalism. I believe in aesthetic enjoyment and sex. I believe in hobbies and work. These things fill the void. Atheists that dabble in attending church or meditation or what have you are like reformed addicts that enjoy the occasional joint. Some habits die hard.

For me, I enjoy choral music and stained glassed windows that don't have pictures in them. But I don't go to church. I don't pray. I don't meditate. But I do enjoy the aesthetics of religious music in a similar way that I enjoy nature without becoming an Al Gore treehugger. Religion is merely an aesthetic raised to a belief system. This is where it errs.

It is not hard to understand where the pagans got their nonsense from. We see it being duplicated today. Nietzsche would call it the "Dionysian." People want a frenzied emotional state to complement the ordered state that they derive from science and reason. This is understandable. I would counsel punk rock as an antidote. You can lose your mind for a bit, and then come back to reality. People want this. I just don't see why they have to believe in bullshit to justify it.

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