Against my better judgment ...

[SheilaT]

32. Thank you.

I am myself very much a non-believer, and earlier this evening I was having a discussion with a friend of mine on this very topic. As it happens, I work with her particular faith group (Presbyterians, in case it matters) to feed the homeless. Feeding the homeless is the kind of outreach I enjoy doing, and as it happens, that's the sort of thing faith groups are good at. In my city, Santa Fe, the local homeless shelter is run by an interfaith group, and I think all of the churches/mosques/synagogues here participate. I happen to have, as two of my closest friends, a pair of Presbyterians, which is why I do this - feeding the homeless - with them.

I also happen to have my very own specific and strong beliefs connected to spiritual things, but I don't find it at all necessary to convince anyone else they should believe my way. I often enjoy good dialogues with those who believe quite differently, because those conversations can help me figure out my own beliefs, clarify my own thinking.

What does bother me a lot is how many people are totally dismissive of any beliefs (and here I'm including agnosticism and atheism) not their own. It can be very, very hard to respect someone else's beliefs when they refuse to respect mine, which is at the core of so many of the anti-religion (and probably the anti non-religion) statements here.

In a similar vein, I finally figured out exactly why so many fundamentalists are so convinced there is a "Gay Agenda" out there, and that gays are out to convert everyone else to their (abhorrent) lifestyle. And that is because the fundamentalists depend on convincing people from a very young age that their fundamentalism is the only way to view the world, and they survive by imposing their Fundamentalist Agenda on everyone they know or at least try to impose it. So they cannot possibly imagine anyone else doing any differently. In their world view, everyone is intent on converting everyone else so their point of view. They simply cannot conceive of a "live and let live" attitude.

So it is with at least some people here. They have their own beliefs (and again, I'm including atheism and agnosticism) and are very, very anxious that all others believe as they do. While I am sometimes surprised that not everyone else believes as I do, I also understand that how I came to my particular beliefs is not necessarily that path that others have trod. And so, I'll happily discuss my beliefs, especially if you will talk about yours and we explain to each other why we each feel our way, without ever expecting the other to be converted.

I keep on making friends with fundamentalists Christians in this way, which always strikes me as strange, but there you have it.