Every Sunday over the coming months I will engage in irrational behavior. I will jump up and yell when a man I’ve never met carries a stitched-together, inflated, oblong pigskin ball over a line drawn in the artificial turf. Yes, I am an NFL fan. And although I have never met any of the current members of the New England Patriots, whenever something good or bad happens to them, I will feel it. (In my defense, I grew up in a town outside Boston. I guess old allegiances die hard.)
It’s crazy, I know. Maybe my behavior should be criticized. Maybe psychologists should study why I do it. Here’s a hunch: Perhaps it has something to do with the misplaced tendencies of my “tribal mind.” On some level it’s possible that I believe the men on the team I have adopted as my virtual coalition are going to bring home some of the spoils of their victory. Among these is status. (The cheerleaders I could do without. But I guess the winning team doesn’t get to keep them as the pom-pommed booty from battles won.) Is that what is really going on with me and millions of others? I’d like to know. And once I did know, I just might persist in loving pro football.
Because I am well aware I engage in what can only be described as irrational behavior, I try to be tolerant of other types of activities that make absolutely no sense to me yet other people nonetheless get passionate about. Such as NASCAR and television soap operas.
I also try to view religious behavior the same way, with one significant exception: that practitioners of religion understand what they perceive as important and are passionate about is a personal matter. Sure, go ahead and believe Jesus once walked on water and will one day return to Earth. In my semi-facetious analogy, so, in my own way do I believe that Tom Brady performed a number of miraculous feats. But not in recent seasons. For he fell and has yet to rise again. Maybe this season he will prevail over the forces of evil — such as the New York Jets.
I have no qualms with personal irrationality provided believers don’t claim that what they are irrationally exuberant about is a truth that all others need to recognize and respect if not likewise participate in.
Unfortunately, many, many believers do make those claims. They force what should be a personal matter into town square. And that is why others, like me, deem it necessary to speak up in opposition.
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Tags: atheism, religion, Sunday Un-Sermon
September 5th, 2010 at 8:54 pm
I am proud and happy to say that there are NO members of my family who are attracted to team sports sufficiently to attend or watch any sort of match on television.
Think about the multiple concussions and the brain damage! Think “bread and circuses.” If you had a son, would you want him to play? Think about the deadly zero-sum junk thought being endorsed.
Not news, of course. For me, it’s become like eating meat; just cannot go there any longer. Each act is a vote.