Trending Theophobia Therapy

Theophobia: psychological fear of G(g)ods or religion inciting irrational revulsion, rage, and even hatred against them.

Theophobes despise religious texts, artifacts, houses of worship. They are intolerant of people who believe in deities their symbols and images. Theophobes fantasize that any deity is an arbitrary, totalitarian, dictator, a menacing bogeyman floating in the sky ready to punish them. People with a long family history of religious faith or indoctrination are more likely to suffer from debilitating, delusional, and neurotic theophobia.

As a card-carrying member of the liberal-progressive-Bolshevik-socialist-theophobe-Democrats (LPBSTD), I've decided to overcome my psychological illness known as theophobia. Doing so will preserve my mental health in two divisive debates today; homosexual divorce, and Climate Change. As a bonus, rejecting the popular trend called theophobia will raise my overall consciousness. Here’s how.

I’ve always been in favor of homosexual Holy Matrimony so that more kids will be born through natural procreation by loving parents. It’s homosexual divorce that I’m against. Several reasons drive my thinking to overcome my theophobia.

1. Even though I’m a theophobe, I belong to the Blaise Pascal wing of theophobes. Pascal, you will recall. was the brilliant French philosopher (that’s redundant…I know) who postulated: “Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.”

True, the wager has its flaws as Homer Simpson points out. However, if we mix a tincture of “God is that than which no greater being can be conceived”. (St. Anselm of Canterbury), then the percentage of error is virtually eliminated. So, it’s still a good bet to believe in G(g)od even if you’re a theophobe like me.

In the event that I’m wrong and the very idea of a G(g)od is not in fact apocalyptic, then I’m opposed to gay divorce. Holy matrimony, under this condition, would be an eternal moral commitment from husband to husband and wife to wife.

2. Think of the children. Now that Holy Matrimony is Holy Writ decreed, ex-cathedra by Pope Anthony the First in his recent encyclical Obergefell v Hodges, all the children procreated through homosexual matrimony must be protected by stable relationships. Divorce is the destabilization of matrimonial relations and consequently not good for the procreated children of such unions. The theology is very clear on this issue. Therefore, applying Pascal’s wager I should be cured of my theophobia.

3. Think of the lawyers. By overcoming my theophobia in opposing gay divorce, I will not enrich the armies of divorce lawyers who just doubled the number of their potential customers. No one wants that especially an all-loving G(g)od that might exist.

4. Think of the ‘gays’. Why is there so very little gay in ‘gay’? True, homosexuals hijacked a perfectly durable and handy word that used to describe a good time, a jovial, lively, carefree, lighthearted individual. Now it only means homosexual especially the male incarnation, a decidedly bitchy group of Onanists who want to legislate punishment for anyone who does not accept them. They can be mean as an average of numbers. By overcoming my theophobia, I can fully accept homosexuals in or out of Holy Matrimony. If this possible G(g)od has revealed the sanctity of eternal homosexual connubial bliss through Pope Anthony, then who am I to object and not accept them with open arms. Who am I to judge? Let’s move on… to cross-species Matrimony.

To settle the climate change debate, there are certain other advantages to overcoming my theophobia as well.

1. Climate change cultists believe as a matter of faith that humans can control the climate of planet earth. This is a deranged belief given that humans do not yet even understand all of the factors correlated to the climate they think they can control. But if I overcome my theophobia using Pascal’s ‘wager’, then I have nothing to worry about either way.

2. If it turns out that there is a G(d)od in charge of Nature and the laws of nature, then whatever happens is not in human hands. If it turns out, however, that there is no such G(g)od, then it makes no difference if humans control the climate or not. Everything is permissible. Nothing matters since objectivity is fantasy. If Earth burns to a cinder who cares? There is no meaning to human existence. So, saving the planet from draconian climate change holds no meaning as well. We’re just Carl Segan’s tiny speck of a blue marble hurtling aimlessly through space.

Of course, this leads me to raising my consciousness if I overthrow my theophobia. Teilhard de Chardin had the right idea. Everything is consciousness. Consciousness awakens from human depravity. It’s happened many times in human history.

Usually, it happens either just before or just after a war as there are very few theophobes on battlefields. Wiping away the blood and flesh of your chum from your face so you can fire your weapon tends to make the idea of G(g)od quite reasonable and attractive.

In deference to my good friend and former student of 43 years ago, Mike Griffin, theophobia should not be confused with atheism although some atheists are surely theophobes, but some theophobes are not necessarily atheists. Thanks to the postmodernist fallacy that nuanced explanations are best, atheists now come in many flavors all not to be confused with theophobes. Commonsenseatheism.com offers “So to clear things up, here are 17 kinds of atheism, organized into 7 sets. Some kinds of atheism can be combined in a person, and some cannot. For example, it is perfectly consistent to be an agnostic, narrow, friendly atheist. But one cannot simultaneously be both a passive atheist and a militant atheist.” – (See more at: http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=6487#sthash.PBAwQ0pj.dpuf)

Right, glad we cleared all that up. Point is, unlike the atheist who does not believe in any G(g)od, the theophobe is actually fearful and hostile to the very notion of any G(g)od.

Over my 43 years of teaching philosophy I’ve seen a steady migration from the garden variety atheist, which is a respectable intellectual view, to the more aggressive, militant and hateful student theophobes. Since I've had a total population of over twelve thousand students so far, I’ve noticed some correlations to explain this migration at least in part. Here are my findings.

1. Low self-esteem: There’s been a steady increase in the number of my students with very low self-esteem and a corresponding expression of theophobia. These students freely advertize that they are not exceptional in any sense. Claiming they are only a bundle of molecules haplessly reacting to stimuli with no real meaning to their attractions or repulsions, they see no objective purpose to their life at all. They see themselves as piss ants circling a urinal, specks of dust on a blue marble space ship hurtling aimlessly through the Segan’s cosmos. Without any hope of direction they immerse themselves in pop culture, pseudo-science and game technology using social media to become even more anti-social which they reckon as ‘cool’. The very notion of G(g)od, for them, is for geezers, and fools. “Shit happens and you die. End of story”, so they say.

2. Arm-chair atheism: The triangulation of Freudian psychology, Carl Segan cosmology and ‘death of God’ theology are three major factors explaining the trending theophobia. The modern mind is conflicted by desires to ‘make a difference’ on the one hand, and the rejection of anything external to the senses on the other. The conflicted modern mind has these unacknowledged oppositions.

· Social justice without ethical foundation

· Trigger warnings without limits

· Morality without absolutes

· Free speech without dissent

· Social media without relationships

· Ethics without morals

· Security without sacrifice

· Peace without reconciliation

· Life without meaning

· Matrimony without children

· Reality without foundation

· Truth without logic

· Beauty without standards

· Knowledge without wisdom

Under the banner of ‘cultural relativism’ these contraries are not only unexamined but they are actually celebrated as ‘progressive’.

3. Finally, should anyone take this therapeutic ‘wager’ approach to conquering the debilitating effects of life-long theophobia, then they can enjoy the full and free life of a mystical "Pantheo-Stoic-acerbic-right-of-center-libertarian-Platonist” just like THE MEDDLESOME PRIEST.

Therefore, seek reality, truth, goodness, and beauty. "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield" ---Tennyson