Christmas wistfulness

Once upon a time, everybody's beliefs were everybody's business. This was not maybe so good, as it led to a lot of conflict, shaming, disrespect, disempowerent, despair, and death.

For a relatively brief period of time (say, the Enlightenment to about 10 years ago), most of the time most people considered beliefs to be the business of the person who held them (or didn't, but still, no business of anybody else's).

These days, everyone's beliefs are everyone's business again, and it's still maybe not so good. Atheists, in particular, seem to be joining the bigotry party with a glee that is no less than deeply alarming. You'd think they'd be above such things, given that their argument seems to be that belief in God causes human failings. That people are greedy, selfish, devoid of compassion, spiteful, arrogant, whatever, because they believe in God. I have to say, I see people who are these things everywhere, professing and denying all sorts of beliefs. The argument does not have evidence to back it up. If it were demonstrably true, I'd be able to agree that they had a point, that belief in God is harmful to humanity, and that perhaps it ought to be minimized. But as it is, I can only go so far as to see that others' belief in God is distasteful to those who say it is distasteful. (And frankly, I wish they'd keep their distaste to themselves, because I don't think it's any of my business.)

Some people like to think that "Enlightenment" meant that people became enlightened that there was no God. Me, I think that one of the most enlightened things about the Enlightenment was respect for individual differences. Including differences of belief and opinion.