Imagine

 Week Thirty: Imagine


Imagine there’s no heaven

It’s easy if you try

No hell below us

Above us, only sky


—John Lennon, Imagine, from the album Imagine



Bertrand Russell once said, “Atheism is what happens when you read the bible. Christianity is what happens when someone else reads it to you.”


And Mark Twain said, “No amount of evidence will ever persuade an idiot.”


Neil deGrasse Tyson asked: Does it mean, if you don’t understand something, and the community of physicists don't understand it, that means God did it?... If that‘s how you want to invoke your evidence for God, then God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance that’s getting smaller and smaller and smaller as time moves on.


I think I was twenty, fifty years ago, when I realized the lies I had been told. To be fair, I don’t think the liars actually knew they were lying. With that said, perhaps by definition that wasn’t actually lying. I’ll give you an example: God is good. 


I remember a Thanksgiving meal when everyone was expected to bow their heads to give thanks when my father quite unexpectedly said, “ Jay, you say grace.” I do not remember my response as well as I remember his. “I said, say grace.” When I again refused his demand I knew in that split second I had shoved off from the shore. I had dismissed two decades of Catholic education, and there was no turning back.


Epicurus on god, circa 300 b.c.: 

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.

Is He able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.

Is He both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?

Is He neither able nor willing? Then why call Him God?


If you’d like to know what it’s like to be an atheist, find someone who doesn’t believe in dragons. Ask them why they don’t believe in dragons. Tell them that there are loads of very scientific-looking dragonology books at the bookstore. Remind them that there are ancient paintings of dragons and plenty of literature about dragons doing miraculous things. Convince them that life itself is only by the grace of dragons. That ought to be proof enough; right?


What? Don’t believe in dragons yourself? Then try to imagine living in a world where almost everyone does. Picture your whole family mumbling in Latin seated or standing or kneeling in a temple before a statue of a crucified dragon. Imagine everyone at work, everyone you meet, everywhere you go; the world over every culture all with particular but differing notions of the almighty dragon. 


Now imagine the lengths it might take to avoid being rejected or dismissed or worse,  treated like an idiot or degenerate because you don’t believe in dragons. 


Yep, that’s what it’s like. 




Imagine there’s no heaven, it’s easy if you try. 





John Lennon - Imagine (Lyrics)🎶

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