Here comes the bus.
You know, you can wait ages for a bus and then they all come at once.
The British Humanist Association has got a donation funded ad campaign running that has put an Athiest message on the side of numerous buses in London and other UK cities. The campaign has spread to other countries and has exceeed its original donation target by many many times over.
Speaking from my own perspective which is both Buddhist, Humanist and secular, I think the idea is a good one. We regularly get religious messages rammed down our throats overtly or otherwise, so it’s good to see a counter point.
This challenges people’s beliefs, and as such, many believers won’t welcome this. In fact many haven’t, but if you hold a belief then it’s important that you regularly challenge it and examine it. If you hold a belief from a desire to socially conform, or out of fear, then can you really be said to believe?
This is a question I’ve asked myself before, if many “believers” hold their beliefs for a desire to conform, or out of fear, then are the worlds organised religions as stong as they seem? Or does the house of cards have no bottom card?
The world’s religions have the strength that their adherents give them, and that, in my view, does not seem to be diminishing. The strength I’m talking about is the strength of control over minds and hearts, and then by extension to governments, and affecting the lives of many people who are not adherents but then have to live within a society largely controlled and influenced by the dominant religion.
Don’t underestimate the staying power of religion. Don’t underestimate the staying power of fear and ignorance. These things have been with us from the dawan of homo sapiens, I’m sure, and I won’t hold my breath that they are going to go away or lose their force any time soon.
I enjoy your blog.
Peace to you
Basic truths about human nature hold up well, despite time’s winged chariot. Back in the 1960’s, Milton Rokeach, of the University of Michigan, wrote one of the seminal books about the mental processes of prejudice.1 In it, he noted that people who are chronically anxious, insecure or frightened cling desperately to their belief system, and are too busy defending themselves against real or imagined threats to absorb information about reality. The more upset we are, the less we are able to consider other ideas, and the more stubbornly we cling to the beliefs that give us comfort and make us feel secure in a changing world.
This is what we refer to as black and white thinking. Each of us has two frames of reference, what Rokeach called “belief systems” and “disbelief systems.” Our belief systems inform, for better or for worse, our everyday interactions with what we perceive as reality. They involve relatively fixed ideas. If racial prejudices are part of our belief systems, our behavior toward people of other ethnic backgrounds will reflect them. If we hold to particular religious or political convictions, they will illuminate our view of the world in those respects, to greater or lesser extent. It is vital to remember that we hold these beliefs because they are where we feel safest.
The extent to which we can deviate comfortably from our belief system is related to our disbelief system, the things that others believe – or seem to – that are at variance with our beliefs. On a good day, when our lives are running smoothly and we’re enjoying a feeling of well being, we may be able to consider other people’s ideas with a degree of equanimity. We may be able to see their point, if not agree with it completely, and consider ways in which it does not necessarily conflict with our own world view.
When, however, our world is looking bleak, we automatically revert to our own belief systems – the emotional places where we feel most secure. The degree to which we do this is related to things like understanding of the “big picture,” level of education, amount of lifetime exposure to the beliefs of others, our long-term success in dealing with the world, our desire to be open minded, and various other factors including peer pressure (it’s hard to be a liberal in a redneck bar). The important thing to remember is that we all do it, and we may never realize it.