victim of circumstance

I’m reading a novel (“The Doctor’s Wife”, by Elizabeth Brundage — great story so far!), where this woman is married to an OB/GYN who is asked by a former colleague to assist her at a family planning clinic that also does abortions. He gets targeted by pro-lifers during the story. Common arguments made are things like “You can’t go against God’s will–it’s up to him if you become pregnant, up to him if you lose the pregnancy”, etc.

I thought, “Well, if it’s God’s Will, then doesn’t that make him pro-choice? After all, it’s always God’s Will, no?”

I also came to a side conclusion God is a dictator. The world today places so much weight on how dictators are evil people, yet nobody cares if God has absolute dominion over all. *shrugs* But that’s a different story, so to speak.

Snippet from a conversation with my friend Sarah:

“the whole arguments Christians make for being discriminatory, the Crusades, the Inquisition, etc.

is that God made them do it

to which my friend and I say, “Well, then, God’s an asshole.””

I may be atheist, but I subscribe to “The Golden Rule”. It’s so simple, but it works so beautifully.

With some thanks to another friend, John, I paste another conversation snippet I posted which sort of relates to this post, but which was written on a different topic. He had posted on both his Facebook and Twitter this:

“The ultimate rhetorical question: Okay, so what do you Christian-hating commie-pinko socialist leftists want for Christmas, anyway?”

When I initially responded via Twitter, I said “This “Christian-hating commie-pinko socialist leftist” wants ‘world peace’. ;-)” He responded to me with “~LOL~ Hey, so did Jesus~ :) Sorry many Christians lost sight of that along the years and gave the movement a deserved BAD name!” and “As you know I’m making fun of the hate for Christ but the love of CHRISTmas … the best of Christmas is the worst of Christ.“. This segues into the response I later posted to him on Facebook, but first let me say he is head-on with his response.

“John, you’re the best example of a Christian I have seen in a long time, aside from my boyfriend. Unfortunately, it’s always the idiots and extremists who give various religions or groups or whathaveyou around the world a bad name. Your friend Teresa (Tutt) is head-on with the remark about mistaking Jesus for his followers. Too many self-described “Christians” are that way, and it’s sad.

I am pained every time I see someone make gross generalizations and stereotypes about people who aren’t like them (not saying you do, just a general observation). Muslims have such a bad rap just because the extremist minority of that religion partake in terrorist activities, for example.

People have to keep in mind to not judge a book by its cover. It’s one of many sayings I live by in my daily life. I judge people individually, rather than the social group(s) (so to speak) that they are categorized in….

I’m an atheist, and I’m not ashamed to admit it. Personally, I abide by “The Golden Rule”, a short but simple philosophy that guides me to be the good person I aim to be.”

Sorry for the tangent. :-) I ended up deviating from what this post opened with, but all of what is said here boils down to the same thing, in my view. The point is that everyone should simply strive to be the best person they can be. Nobody is perfect, the world as a whole certainly isn’t, life sucks a lot, but you know what? That’s no excuse to not try for something better, no excuse to lose hope, or… yes, ‘faith’.