Jesus Built My Hotrod

There are a lot of situations where different people have very different attitudes and actions. Take speeding. Lots of people go over the speed limit. On highways, here in Canada, it's the vast majority. But even there, there's a lot of variations. Some just go a little over the limit. Some act as though there is no limit. Most, I think, are like me: pick the maximum speed that won't get you a ticket, and treat that as the limit. And actually feel guilty when you realize you've gone over this pseudo-limit even though it's actually well beyond the posted limit.

But the important point is that even though we all have such different attitudes to speeding, we all know that we have all these different attitudes. That's for the simple reason that we drive in public, so we can all see the general approaches we take. I may not like people who drive as fast as they can, and I may feel morally superior for staying at an arbitrary but still-illegal speed. But I'm not surprised that some people drive like that. My world view includes people who think the laws don't apply to them, both the laws of the road and the laws of physics.

Other aspects of life are not like this. Alcohol is a good one. Other than a drink with dinner in a restaurant, we mostly drink in private. Yes, there are bars, but the only people seeing you drink in bars are other people drinking in bars. The point is that people with vastly different attitudes to alcohol won't see you, and thus, may not know just how much alcohol gets drunk there. Some people drink little or nothing, some drink every day, some binge drink. But if you've only spent your life in one of those types of households, you may not know that the other types exist. Or at least, you may not know how many there are.

Of course, you may not have this problem, depending on what type of person you are. Do you talk to other people? Even people with different backgrounds? Do you listen to them? Okay, do you at least read? Or watch meaningful movies and TV? If so, you may break out of this problem. For instance, I've always lived in low-alcohol environments, but, well, I've noticed that not everyone is like that. So I'm not shocked by people at any extreme of the alcohol spectrum. But I still run into people who are shocked to find that the alcohol experiences of them and their families is not the rule.

And then there's religion. Like alcohol, it's something we do in private, or surrounded by people with the same experience. But there's also the taboo against even talking about it in public, and we tend to live around people with similar religions. So even more so than alcohol, we often have no idea that other people in our society may have very different beliefs. And that's made worse by the fact that no matter your beliefs (or lack thereof) there's people in your religious circles who are misrepresenting others.

I'm constantly amazed at what people don't know about other religious beliefs. People greatly over- or underestimate how much different religions have in common. I see theists think atheists are anything from immoral to depressed. And there are atheists think that all religious people believe the same things. In these cases, we not only suffer from not seeing how each other live, we also have people within our own communities spreading falshoods about other groups. And without the opportunity to see for ourselves, we come to believe those things. The only way out is to start getting to know others with an open mind. Only then can we make religion more like speeding and less like drinking.