frustrations - episode i

Just yesterday I found myself immensely frustrated. I was engaged in a discussion with a small number of others, covering two broad topics. I shall cover only the first in this writing.

It was a short debate about atheism, with my anonymous nemesis claiming that atheists are unfairly persecuted in politics (allegedly they are widely accused of being amoral), despite the fact that they are not bound by the prejudices they believe religion advocates. I replied to the effect that I would not vote for an atheist candidate as I believe that someone who has once-and-for-all walled off all possibility of an instance, in this case the existence of a higher being, is a fool. If a man has rejected all possibility of the existence of God, then in what other areas has he dug his trenches? It is not so much a head-in-the-sand mentality as a line-in-the-sand mentality, a line that has been smugly drawn by a mortal being who believes he has accumulated enough wisdom to flatly deny the fantastic. This, for me, raises grave concerns over that man's inductional ability. I was swiftly rebuked, told that atheists do not outright reject the existence of God (forgive me for taking the word at its most vulgar!) and merely consider it unlikely. I was scolded for believing the hateful propaganda peddled by the anti-atheist lobby, who dare suggest that atheists reject the existence of a supreme being!

At this point I politely removed myself from the subject, keeping my worries to myself. If these individuals are so splutteringly indignant at the terms today's society has so cruelly attached to their chosen signifier, then why do they choose to associate themselves with it? Their beliefs seem to have crept away from what the apparent face-value definition of 'atheism' would be, and what our language has generally taken atheism to mean - a rejection of the existence of a god or other supernatural being. Why, then, do they stick with it before inevitably complaining about the stigma with which they are associated? Is it a matter of pride, a bitter and familiar pleasure in being able to call oneself an atheist, that makes them so unwilling to abandon the term in favour of something more refined?

I abandoned the conversation out of frustration, frustration at debating with an opponent who cannot see that language is a societal construct, that - whether he likes it or not - a word may take on an infinite number of meanings, so long as those meanings are accepted and used in general discourse. Instead of abandoning his sinking ship, dragged under by that darkest Charybdis of public opinion, he attempts to repaint it as it disappears below the waves.