Understanding attacks

A while back, I did a few blogs on weapons of mass construction, and I’d like to follow along in those footsteps here if you’ll oblige me.  First off, I think I came up with a better term as tools of mass construction instead of weapons; but that’s what I had thought of at that time so I’m just going to leave it as that.  Anyhow, there are a ton more that I have listed on my notes where my blogs usually begin so I’m going to pursue some of those ideas here for a bit.

Understanding is another tool of mass construction.  I will point out that it’s rather interesting to see when a Christian is misunderstood by some attacking atheist.  I just saw a couple things in some major newspaper about how some major name in science had said she supports the idea of creationism and was lambasted by the scientific community.  Hmm, don’t they pride themselves on being so understanding?

Another thing that is simply heartbreaking to me is that many Christians are not understanding of others’ religious or otherwise held beliefs.  Sometimes this is a broad stereotype that we all get put in with, but other times it’s warranted in the case of a few believers.  They say hate-filled speeches after major catastrophes and all of us end up looking like small-minded bigots as a result.

If you’re an atheist or an agnostic, I think you owe it to your individual Christian friends to not lump us all together into the same boat.  Some Christians are more understanding than others surely, right?  One of the areas I’ve seen this played out is in regards to gay marriage.  Some Christians say it’s just the worst idea ever while many of their own flocks have a 50% divorce rate or higher.  Other Christians are fighting for gay marriage to be passed.  This is an issue that divides even my parents and I.  When my dad asked what I thought about passing gay marriage I said I supported it.  When I said if you’re going to prevent one set of sinners from getting married for one particular sin than you should exclude every person from marrying because of the sin in their life, he seemed utterly confused and said those were obviously different things.

So, how does understanding play itself out in real life?  Some would argue that understanding leads to embracing, but I don’t necessarily agree with that.  I can understand extreme Muslims without embracing them.  You may ask yourself how I can understand extreme Muslims, allow me to articulate here.  I understand the appeal of extreme Muslims to followers when they come back to a place that has been overrun with an occupying military and they promise that they will attack the occupiers.  Of course they’re going to flock to the extremists.

Similarly, I can also understand why a lot of people in the Middle East see our country as one of extreme Christians.  Does anybody need to be reminded of the ‘Shock and Awe’ campaign in Iraq?  Of course they see us, or at least our military, as extremists.  There’s something that I struggle with understanding I suppose, is why we see it as such a shock when ordinary Muslims view our military as extremists but we see our military as the good guys in spite of certain things that have gone down in the wars lately.