50 Blogs on Disbelief
My thoughts on the book, 50 Voices of Disbelief, Why We Are Athiests, edited by Russell Blackford and Udo Schuklenk. Written as I read them in no particular order. The page number of the essay is provided at the top of each entry.
p. 165 Sheila A. M. McLean “Reasons to be Faithless”
Sheila went to church as a child, but religion was not particularly forced on her. She does not have a story of becoming atheist, but she has plenty of reasons. She covers them in just two pages.
She can’t figure out what we all would do in an afterlife. She has a big problem with religions believing they are the only right way and notes that this goes against claims of tolerance. She finds it annoying that people claim to “know” what their scripture means anyway. And while religions claim to be peaceful, there is plenty of violence to be found in their source material and in their histories. The discrimination against women that is dogmatically encouraged is also a big problem for her.
She covers the variations in the New Testament gospels and wonders why this would not lead anyone to questions them. A key factor of being Christian is accepting Jesus as the one true Son of God. She can’t reconcile this by scripture or history.
She ends with something that is either cynical, or she is joking; that she likes the part where you can repent at the last minute, and still be saved. But for now she will be fine without it.
Next week, the 50th essay. It is a very good discussion of what we should be doing.
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