A Theist asshole

Simon, an (apparently) Theist asshole (He might be a Buddhist, but they're generally not so obnoxious) comments on Atheism, Religion and Spirituality:

Nicely poetic but when one steps back and remembers that people have different definitions of the word "love", "god", "humanity" and "spirituality" itself...this post has no practical meaning.
And that makes it kind of amusing to me...that an atheist who talks of mystical mumbo jumbo would post something as equally airy and emotional, with no concrete rationality behind it.

Carl Jung, often accused of being too mystical, said in his autobiography that in all his experience, people who talk about love generally have no idea what they're talking about.

I've been reading several posts of yours and I notice you talk about suffering once in a while, but it always seems to reference something distant...a "could happen" but generally seems to happen to other people. So I ask you this: what use is this flowery writing about love-for-all to a woman who has been gangraped and must now get an abortion? What use is it to someone born into abject poverty in a socialist regime, who struggles daily with hunger and malnutrition. What good is your proclamation of universal love for all, from your comfortable home in the United States, -to these people? Why should they care about your love? You talk the talk but how much do you walk the walk?

I meet far too many people, both atheist and theist alike, who would rather pompously contemplate their navels and throw around philosophical names than actually get into the reality. While you brag about your love and compassion, other people are joining the Peace Corps or doing other things to actually SHOW their love. Ghandi and the Mother Teresa spent their lives DOING things for other people, not just pontificating.

And there is the fact that atheists have yet to show anything for themselves as amazing as Tibet...beautiful monasteries, entirely peaceful, and inhabited by monks with a serious commitment to their faith. I remember reading about a monk who immolated himself in the face of Chinese authority, to demonstrate where his loyalty stood and how absolute that was. He inflicted upon himself, a very painful death, and even sat quiet and still as his body burned, until it gave up it's life. That's the sort of thing that shows how useless and empty postmodernism is...a pretentious, ungrateful philosophy for bored, wealthy people. Bleh.

Talk is cheap. Without personal sacrifices and concrete works for the benefit of another, nothing anyone has to say about spirituality has any meaning or value. So I ask you: behind all this talk, where are your works?

I don't spend a lot time talking about myself here, but since you ask...

I adopted my sister's children when she was unable to raise them, and I spent fifteen years of my life taking care of them. I spent five of those years also taking care of my mother before she got her lung transplant.

I used to work as a rape counselor. Special circumstances, don't ask.

I rescued the woman I love from Islamic oppression, at no small personal sacrifice.

I work every Saturday for the National AIDS Marathon Training Program, which raises money for research, education and eradication.

I vote, I contribute to charity, I work and I pay taxes. I give money to panhandlers.

What I don't do is spend my Sunday mornings praying to an invisible sky fairy.

If Simon would like to set himself on fire to prove the sincerity of his convictions, I'll spring for the gasoline. Until then, he can take his sanctimonious assumptions and shove them up his ass... sideways.