Nausea and Religion

Bear with me as this post requires a little bit of back story.

Recently, I have had a conversation about atheism and the feeling of nausea that religion elicits and I thought that I would post the meat of it here. To be specific, an ex-atheist (who recently had an epiphany experience) had as his facebook status something to the effect of "Guy's Name is discovering that the Word means so much more than words". We were chatting on facebook chat and I told him "no offense, but your status makes me want to vomit a little bit". Apparently, my perceived nausea caused him a bit of mental distress or at the least wonderment at what had caused my reaction, so he sent me an excerpt from an article and it reads thus:

"Why spend so much time proving the non-existence of something? Why not do something more constructive with life? I don't believe in unicorns or the tooth fairy but I really do not have the time or the energy to write long books articulating my position and ridiculing those who hold such beliefs. Something else is driving the new atheism.

I believe that what drives this new atheism is the same thing which I also regard as driving the various philosophies collectively known as postmodernism, and also that which drives so much of modern Western culture : taste.
This new atheism dislikes religion because it sees it as distasteful. It was the german philosopher, Nietzsche, who launched an attack on Christianity not from the perspective of the limits of human knowledge but from the perspective of taste.
He regarded Christianity as false not becasue it embodied a set of incoherent and unverifiable beliefs, but becasue it advocated a morality, a "slave morality" as he called it, which exalted everything that turned his stomach : forgiveness, meekness, mercy, obedience, longsiffering. Itwas all just too distateful to him."

So I responded (a bit in haste, so forgive me if my writing is not up to par):

I'm surprised that you couldn't anticipate what the arguments against this article would be, but I'll refute it anyway. First of all, I haven't read Nietzsche, but from what I've heard, he may have had one or two good points, but was utterly over the top with a lot of his viewpoints. To me, Christianity and religion being a matter of taste above all else is ridiculously silly and I don't agree with that assertion in the least.

Anyway, to answer the questions posed in the first paragraph: 1) Not to be pedantic, but is anyone really trying to disprove the existence of God(s)? I thought we (the "new atheists") were trying to prove that the idea of God(s) is not a feasible or statistically likely idea. Also, to be a little more pedantic, unless you are a number 7 on Richard's scale laid out in The God Delusion, you would be perfectly aware that we will probably never be able to disprove God's existence. What we can do instead, is prove lots of things that continually diminish the likelihood that God(s) exist. And now to answer what was intended by that poorly worded question after discussing its poor construction. The reason I and any other atheist is concerned with proving the infeasibility of God(s) (especially as compared to fairies and unicorns) is because we are surrounded by people who believe in God(s) and associated religions and are discriminated against or likely to be discriminated against (at least in the US) because of our position. Also, most of us have come to determine that there most likely is(are) no God(s) by a fairly long process of contemplation and education in multiple disciplines and we feel that we have come to the most reasonable and logical conclusion(s) whereas those who are religious proponents have not done the same kind of contemplation or educated themselves to the same level on this matter and we feel a sort of responsibility to try to educate people about it. 2)And sort of getting into the other question posed, there are many things that multitudes of people need education about and so it isn't as if this is the only thing that I would try to educate people about (or any other atheist, for that matter). But it is one of the main ideas that I and many other atheists want to educate people about since it would lead to less discrimination against us. Anything that's to do with oneself will naturally take precedent over something not so near and dear. For example, fistula is a major problem among women in third world countries and many women who suffer from it are outcasts as a result of the incontinence they suffer from it. It is a fairly easily solved problem. The surgery only costs $300 and things can also be done during labor to reduce the risk of it occuring in the first place. However, the populace of these countries are not educated about it, and the women who suffer this condition are often shunned from society, considered unclean, and even told that there isn't anything that can be done to fix the problems. This is a major injustice. However, it's not happening in our backyards, and it isn't really something that will majorly affect our lives the way it does in these uneducated places. So while we consider it extremely worthwhile to educate the people in these areas about it, it doesn't take precedence because it doesn't directly affect us. Not to mention, the sheer amount of problems like this that there are in the world is insurmountable. You have to pick a handful of issues and concentrate on them, so naturally, we pick something that could or has affected us. That's what people are as a gregarious animal anyway: we're specialists. In order to have a functioning society among our species, we all pick something and specialize in it and contribute to society as a whole by gaining as much knowledge as possible in that area so that we can exchange our expertise for someone else's. It is easy to see how this type of society benefits our odds of successful reproduction as individuals. And finally, isn't it obvious that most atheists do do something more worthwhile than just sit around a refute the ideas surrounding God(s) and religion? All of the most famous atheist writers have other careers that have little to do with atheism. You already know this, but Richard Dawkins is obviously an evolutionary biologist first, atheist second. Sam Harris is a neuroscientist and has said that he never even called himself or even really considered himself an atheist. Daniel Dennett is a professor of philosophy. Christopher Hitchens is a journalist and could probably even be called a political pundit. Aren't all of those things worthy of the title "constructive"?

Anyway, obviously I think that the excerpt you have sent me shows nothing more than that the author has completely missed the point. He's also distastefully trivialized our position into ironically enough, a matter of taste.

Also, perhaps my comments about the associated nausea that accompanied reading your facebook status reveal the cultural gap (and perhaps even generational gap). It is quite a common thing to say among young people in the US that something makes them want to vomit. It's some sort of strange trend. You know how these things go. I might have said the same thing about a particularly sappy part of a romantic movie. I've also referred to vomiting in response to an example of really poor grammar. It's just an indication of a negative reaction. But it's not nearly so trendy to say "well, reading your facebook status elicited a rush of negative feelings". ;-)