Prove It

A good friend of mine sent me this cartoon. He was amused. And I get it. I mean, there are people like this. But it's not the way I was brought up, and I was brought up in a pretty religious family.

And I was out reading this post at Morgan's Place (The House of Eratosthenes, for the uninitiated), where he made this observation:

It has become such a convenient narrative that religious folks are bigoted and intolerant. Too many people don’t care if it’s true or not. They’re meeting people by spewing this tired trope, making friends, and that’s all that matters to them.

This pushed me the last inch into posting this, which I was thinking about doing anyway.

Morgan's observation is consistent with what I experienced myself -- the reciprocal of what this cartoon says many times growing up and in College (where, frankly, I did a lot more growing up). And I think there is often just a LITTLE projection going on here with the hard core atheists among us. And I still observe it today -- as evidenced by this cartoon circulating causing knowing heads to nod all over the place.

The thing is, it's actually a false comparison. A baseball is a physical object and if you have one, it can probably be produced. With the question of God, we're talking about something that everybody knows can't be proven ... or disproven (if we're honest). Like I said, it's a false comparison.

I decided to turn the tables anyway and re-edit the cartoon to hold a mirror up to the people who look at this cartoon and think of themselves as somehow on the smart and righteous side of the argument.

I could just as easily say "I have a right to privacy".

And someone could respond "Yeah, prove it!" Or "I have a right to life. It is wrong for you to kill me just because you want to."

"Oh yeah? Prove it!"

One can be overbearing on either side of the argument, and the ones who protest the loudest usually are.

"Oh, so might makes right? Prove it!"

"Okay."

*FOOM!*

You know, the truth of it is, I was about there myself at one point in my life. By that I mean, agreeing more with the sentiment of the first cartoon. But I'm past that now. Because I don't have a need to make myself feel smart or seem smart to others to assuage my sense of self-worth. (Dang, been listening to Dennis Miller too much ;-) )

Maturity. Pass it on.