I’ve said for a long time that wanting everyone to be just like you are, that’s a recipe for disaster. It just starts echo chambers where no one can ever learn anything because everyone already believes the same thing.  I am not like that. I think it’s an unrealistic expectation, but recently, someone called me out on it and I wanted to respond.

So here we go.

The context of the discussion was religion, where the theist effectively said “all atheists really believe in God, they just choose to reject him because they want to sin.” It’s really common stuff, but it’s also absurdly dumb. No one can possibly know my mind better than I do,  but the religious somehow claim that they know it, or at least their book says that they know it, better than the people who actually live there.

I called him out on it, saying that he’s just looking to make everyone fit his emotionally comforting mold. He wants everyone to be just like he is, even if he has to do it against their will and consent.

Oh no, he responds, I’m the one that’s doing that. Somehow, expecting people to be competent, rational and intelligent, I am now “expecting everyone to be just like I am!”

Yeah, it doesn’t really work that way, does it? First, you have to have some kind of standards. First off, if I’m talking about people that I am going to want to be around, then absolutely, I want people who are rational, evidence-based, educated and able to carry on a worthwhile conversation. I am not saying that everyone is like that, since we all know they are not, I am saying this is the criteria that I am using to determine who I want to engage with.

When the religious try this, they are trying to insist that everyone is like this because their book says a thing. I am not insisting that you are this way, I am saying that we’re probably not going to have a lot in common if you’re not.

I expect people to be rational. All of the people that I call friends, they are rational. They can make their case in any discussion intellectually and with evidence presented. They don’t run on faith at all, and rarely on pure fee-fees, although I think we understand that everyone has those moments where their emotional state might overwhelm them. If my wife or kids got kidnapped, I probably wouldn’t  be very rational in that moment, although I’d like to think I’d get better. I don’t want to put it to the test though. Generally speaking though, I think people can and should be rational in most things in their lives.

We have to have standards. You can’t just say “everyone is different and that’s okay!” How about the cannibals and the child molesters? Are those people okay? Do they get to play with the rest of us? I don’t think they should.

That’s why we decide that some things are illegal, some things are too unacceptable to be allowed. We don’t simply state that these people aren’t real, we acknowledge that they are, but they fall outside of the  bounds of acceptability within that society. I don’t have the slightest problem with that.

I have no idea what the problem is with these people. It’s not just the religious, there’s a lot of political morons out there doing the  same thing at the extremes of both sides. On the far right, they deny that conservative atheists even exist. On the far left, anyone that doesn’t fall for their regressive creed, those people aren’t real either. They both have their target audience and damn it, those are the only people that exist, so there!

Is it any wonder I get so tired of it all?