We're All Assholes?

That's right you heard me. We're all assholes and I can prove it. Anatomically speaking we've all got one. Being flawed we all sometimes behave badly, sometimes very badly. So, we are as I've said. If you don't find my reasoning to be that convincing, good. I won't completely loose my respect for human intelligence.

Unfortunately, this kind of flawed and ludicrous rationalization is all too common. Huffington Post is always an excellent source for this kind of lame thinking, especially the Religion section. Rabbi Eric Yoffie jumps to this type of conclusion in his "There Are No Irreligious People" piece. Despite his own use of the statistic that "approximately 85 percent of the world's population is made up of 'religionists" he insists that religion is such a natural part of humanity that everyone is in fact religious. So what about that missing 15%? I can honestly say that I have never been religious. I know I'm not an alien. He goes on to state "that those outside of religious frameworks, even if they speak in secular language, find it impossible to suppress in their own lives the awe and wonder that religious people cherish." If you didn't catch what he's doing it is a matter of false comparisons. Even though people sometimes say that awe at the universe is part of why they are religious that is not an innate part of religion and is certainly not unique to religion. Being amazed by life and the universe does not imply religious ideas or feelings.

Personally, I have always been confused as to why people insist on connecting the two. To me, religion is in many ways the opposite of awe and wonder. It is restricting and denigrating. Rather than encourage curiosity and exploration it stifles it. The ready made answers that religion attempts to foist on us are pathetic, frequently unimaginative, and provably false. In short, I see religion as sucking the wonder out of everything it touches. According to Yoffie, that somehow makes me religious. That is some seriously fucked up logic.