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Notes -
Baphomet Has Fallen
How much good faith is required for an American state government respecting a religion's symbols?
The Satanic Temple, specifically the Satanic Temple of Iowa, put a statue depicting the pagan idol Baphomet in the Iowa Capitol, following the letter of the law allowing religious symbols. Thing is, it's explicitly an atheistic (or rather "non-theistic") religion; they have as much belief in the reality of Baphomet as they do the Flying Spaghetti Monster (mHNAty). They use literary symbols and provocative symbols to promote science and promote humanist atheist goals of tolerance and justice. It was designed to provoke a response, and it has; a Christian broke it. Deseret News reports that:
The state of Iowa finds itself in the position of avenging the rights of atheists to display a pagan idol they don't even believe in, which mocks people of genuine Christian faith with a dark symbol drawn from mythology.
Take that to its logical conclusion.
A Christian church could create a parallel object to be installed in the Iowa Capitol, a similar deliberately provocative anti-atheist symbol to be promoted as a sacred symbol of a pseudo-atheist "Church of the Human Condition" which exposes the failures and tragedies of the Enlightenment and promotes learning how to morally philosophize using the Jefferson Bible and select readings from Ayn Rand in after-school clubs. I can think of a few:
Desecrating any of these would bear the same fourth-degree criminal mischief charges, with up to a year in prison and a $2,560 fine, and exposure to lawsuits by the artists and owners of the symbols.
But aside from the turnabout, I'd like to remind that atheism is treated as a religion de facto by its adherents and proselytes, and de jure by the government in having Freedom of Religion under the First Amendment. Anyone who says it is not a religion must, by implication, accept that the broken Baphomet statue is only a violation of Freedom of Expression (under the same Amendment) so any cries of Christian hypocrisy at its destruction are inaccurate on their face due to the uneven parallel. Only by accepting that atheism is a religion can atheists claim a sacred right to offend Christians.
Your list of things to trigger and own the atheists betrays a complete lack of understanding of non-theist world views.
You are holding up a list of things that exist as though they are the same thing as a given religions idols (the cross, the prophet, the tablets, etc) when the whole point of atheism is that there is no such thing as an idol.
If you are a committed christian (or theist in general, I guess) your reality requires lots of maintenance. You have to believe in things for their own, not believe in other things because that would endanger the things you do believe in, hold things sacred for no reason other than because they are, abore things that are aborent for no reason other than that they are.
Atheists don't have to do that: they just have to not respect and privilege your personal reality over the shared reality that is the material world. Religion is the practice of having faith in things you can't deduce through empiricism, atheism is a rejection of faith, and anti-theism considers faith the be a type of negative utility delusion.
There is no special claim atheists have to uphold or special symbol they have to respect. All they need to do is shrug.
I find myself scratching my head at your own model/phrasings of my beliefs/nonbeliefs/“faith” worldview.
Idols exist; one was just beheaded. I assume I’ve misunderstood you. I interpret you here as saying atheism is about believing the events, artifacts, and entities of religions either have none of the powers imputed to them or are references to things which never existed, depending on the thing. Is that a sound reading of your statement?
I don’t believe an idol of Margaret Sanger would have real metaphysical power, nor would I ever think atheists would believe such. It would be an attack on the reverence which progressive atheists have for her, calling them idol-worshipers, a label which, by their own actions and words, they would abhor and wish to destroy.
The way I read this, I believe you assume I am trying to hold an imaginary world in my head overlaid atop the real one, contradicting it at many points of conflict and forcing me to choose obvious lies over simple truths.
Let me tell you right up front that would be far too much work for me. I try to discover reconciliations between every apparent point of conflict between the real world and my faith, and I’ve found only one which really requires me to set it to the side instead of explaining. I have every confidence that my God and Teacher will eventually reveal His answer to me.
As for faith, I hope you’re not referring to the mystical Douglas-Adamsian definition of faith that if the object of my faith is ever proven, I will have lost faith and thus I will be disqualified from gaining faith’s rewards. On the contrary, seeing the object of my faith is my goal and will be a wondrous blessing, and in that moment faith “in things not seen” will become a confirmed belief, a much better thing.
Idols in the sense of the sacred and the profane.
An atheist can erects a statue to baphomet or baal or whatever evil spirit but they can't make it into an idol because atheism is a wholesale rejection of such things.
Basically, when a christian rasis a chross, it is an idol to their god; when a roman raises a cross it is a tool to torture enemies of the state. Atheists having figures of particular note is not the same as Christians worshiping christ, or whatever the fuck the catholics have going on.
Re. Reality maintenance: you are describing maintenance in your post. Having to reconcile things at all is what I am getting at. An atheist doesn't have to reconcile shit; no atheist has ever needed to set something aside.
Re. faith: no, not really. Just that faith is definitionaly belief without proof. You won't know if you were right to have faith until you die; and unfortunately nobody gets to do a quick check in after the fact to let the rest of us know which religion had it right.
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