Note: October 8, 2020, I am reposting this because I have another beloved family member who it is clear to me is falling into alcoholism. The key in this, in answer to what they said to me, mouthing the words provided to them by atheists, is
Atheists are perfectly
fine with people making the ethyl alcohol molecule their higher power,
the all consuming god that they sacrifice their lives and the lives of
others, their spouses, their children, the victims of their accidents
and violence to, but they get in a swivet if someone non-violently
recommends that God would be a better choice.
If I had no other reason to have problems with atheism, that one thing alone would be more than enough to provide me with them. Alcoholism has been a recurring problem for my family skipping my parents generation because they didn't drink. It's not skipping the next generation.
A
while back I had occasion to help move some furniture out the apartment
of a close relative, a long-term alcoholic as he lost the ability to
pay rent. He's in terrible shape with late-state liver disease, his
skin a horrible green yellow, his abdomen swollen with his diseased
liver, his legs covered with the worst angiomas I've ever seen. And
there is the terrible smell of fetor hepaticus, which no amount of
laundering and showering can rid him of, him or anything in his
apartment that the smell could permeate. Most of his stuff had to be
binned due to the smell. I look at him and think my one brother who
died of alcoholism rather more quickly than he has was fortunate it
didn't go on as long.
What brings that to mind is thinking about the reaction big-mouth
blog atheists have had to posts like the one below, either echoing
(ignorantly and incompletely) Marx's slogan that religion is an "opiate"
or in some less articulate barroom atheist form. What I thought of
was the argument I got in with one who goes by "Moe" which I've
mentioned here before, how during the event of Ken Burns' "Prohibition"
being on PBS, I said that the biggest problem with prohibition was that
it didn't work, that if they had been able to get rid of drinking
alcohol the results would have been almost exclusively positive and
beneficial. The reaction was the horrific accusation that I wanted to
deprive "working men" the chance to relax with a drink at the end of the
day. Now, I don't specifically recall "Moe" calling religion an
"opiate" or a "crutch" though I don't doubt those sentiments are shared
by him, not to mention the Larrys and Curleys who are the milieu he
hangs out in.
Think of that lapse in logic among those who won't hesitate to
tell you they are the champions of reason and scientific evidence.
Religion, which actually has been found to have positive correlations
with health and well-being (those guys are all suckers for the
social-sciences, so I don't hesitate to bring this up, much of which is
far more accurate research) is an "opiate" while alcohol, which is
associated with alcoholism, car crashes and other accidents, violence,
crimes, and general stupid behavior is a boon to humanity. I didn't
think of it till I read the reactions in today's hate-mail, that it's
the same as the stupid slogans used against AA. Atheists are perfectly
fine with people making the ethyl alcohol molecule their higher power,
the all consuming god that they sacrifice their lives and the lives of
others, their spouses, their children, the victims of their accidents
and violence to, but they get in a swivet if someone non-violently
recommends that God would be a better choice.
It's been a long, long time since an atheist said something I
haven't heard an atheist say decades ago, they follow a typical rote
series of insipid and stupid ideological holdings along with mouthing
such empty pieties as those they hold for alcohol, pornography,
prostitution, crap pop culture, Hollywood crap movies, . . . Their
gods, a whole pantheon of pathetic substitutes, almost all of them
leading to those base miseries, foolishly and weakly self-induced, often
with the encouragement of jr. high level peer pressure.
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