Okay, I was gone for a few months but I'm not dead. Since my last post I have ramped up my efforts at really becoming familiar with the much expanding online Atheist, Humanist, Secularist, and Skeptic communities both online and tracking events in the real world. Not long before my first post I was not an open atheist. Back then only several trusted friends really knew and when I changed my status on Facebook one night everyone else began having different reactions. I was sometimes taken by surprise in happy or saddening ways especially as I utilised my social forums with no greater purchase than my religious acquaintances had. I am much less likely to be surprised at this point and understand more clearly what, in particular, drives me to write or speak out when so many others already do. So I am not the first to bluntly address religion but I believe I do bring my own unique view of the issues as they impact billions of lives around the world. My life is just one of countless that has felt the devastating hand of organised religion despite the fact that it was introduced and reinforced when I was young by my caring, loving parents. Let me be clear, my life has been a wonderful one and this is not to attack or lay blame at the feet of my family or larger community from my youth but to directly challenge the much larger cycle of harmful deceit that we have come to call faith.
The call for mutual respect is BULLSHIT, FYI
For generations now the various religious guilds have been going on about how everyone needs to be respectful of their beliefs and traditions. The message is a strong one often intoned on both ends of the political spectrum and carried aloft even in the modern day Sodom; Hollywood. As soon as someone speaks out about anything from the complete lack of evidence for the "historical" claims religious folk like to make, to the destructive hypocrisy carried out in the public sphere in the name of Spiritual Masters or gods, the devout scream "intolerance" and expect us to just shut our mouths.
How interesting. It may not be so insulting and pathetic a cry if at any point in history true believers had demonstrated even the occasion such respect once they crawled to power any place on the planet. Hell, they aren't even decent enough to do it now, as they cry discrimination and unfair against secular forces that are better known by the term "Constitutional Democracy".
- Marriage Equality
- Churches Promoting Political Candidates But Don't Pay Taxes
- Prayer In School
- Anti-Sex Education
- Religion In Science Class
- Anti-Women's Rights Over Her Body
- you get the point, on and on...
Oh yeah, I was making you look like an ignorant fundamentalist...
Here's just a small sample of the loving respect we can expect from those who love god so much they are willing to respectfully shove their undoubted truth straight into the secular classroom of science. And notice the serious minority position in the flock is the one guy who seems to have any real understanding of... say, SCIENCE
If it makes them happy... Happy?
Let me start into those atheists and agnostics who like to ignore the struggle for sanity and decency raging all around them while they relax and watch some good flicks or wander about thinking themselves above it all. A very prominent excuse that is given is the "happiness" card. You know the one, from the suit of bullshit and a value of zero. Yet, behold, it is played regularly and with assumed certainty. The question then becomes, what is happiness? If believing in fairy tales, responding to imagined voices, making important decisions based on a heap of bronze age stories, expecting muttered words to change the world, waiting on invisible messengers to heal serious sickness, etc etc etc is happiness to you than i agree, let the faithful stumble on without challenge to their individual and collective arrested development. But if that is how you really feel then why the hell are you dealing with the unpleasantries of the real world? The fact that those who toss this line are not currently suffering from having their head up religion's nasty ass only shows that these very delusions are inherently contrary to true happiness. We don't call the homeless guy talking to a dead bird he carries in his worn out pocket happy, we call him seriously ill. Especially if he starts getting too close and carrying on too loudly.What's the harm?
So your religious buddy isn't likely to blow stuff up in the name of the most high, what harm is there in unsubstantiated extreme beliefs? Gotta love this one. This form of tolerance comes not from a place of enlightened understanding but of superiority and arrogance. Who, in good conscience, would allow their friend or family to believe in invisible goats that whisper cosmic truths into their chosen ears so that they could share this knowledge to save us all from the destruction drawing nigh for the Earth? Apparently many non-believers. There is this unbecoming underlying attitude that the religiously minded are simply... well, simple. The non-believer feels pity that anyone should be so diminished mentally or emotionally as to think in religious terms. There is rarely, you see, any good to come from attempting to reason with the pathetic follower. After all, do we expect monkeys to speak proper English and wear suits? Besides the ones we elect. Though I find this attitude offencive it is only fair to point out that it is usually adopted without malicious intent by people who have grown up without fundamentalism forced on them or have really never experienced what it is like to be surrounded by a sea of religiosity.
Having experienced both and having been a fundamentalist for the first twenty-some odd years of my life I can only urge people to educate themselves about the reality of the phenomenon. As a believer I had zero doubts that I and my church served and were led by God almighty and was often a part of conversations we would hold shamelessly in our meetings about how all opposed points of view from non-believers were hopelessly ignorant from the darkness of sin or the evil of Satan. Regardless of what we said about coexisting with other religions, traditions, or ideas we always intended to work actively to attain our God's will for ALL OF MANKIND. Don't have faith? You still can't teach your kids in school about evolution, safe sex, or that women have the right to have abortions. In fact, the very fact that you didn't share our religious ideology only made it more important that we try to use any trick in the book to convert your children, particularly at school. To hem in your godless ways in the workplace. To take over your government and reform it to God's plan and lock out all of the undesirables possible.
The faithful simply don't talk to outsiders about it. Not you, easy go lucky non-believer. To you it's smiles, dinner, or watching our kids play together.
There is no limit where eternity is concerned. Father is dying? We'd try to send someone in to convert them as they lay suffering. Stories of nurses or doctors talking religion and hell to the captive dying behind the family's back was met with affirming 'amen's. Child just died? We send in the converters to find the vulnerable grievers when they most want to believe in an after life and heaven. Or should you become diminished in your old age rest assured they will be making the rounds, particularly if you are lonely.
Keep assuming that religious delusion is harmless. But I can tell you from inside knowledge that they will come for you, they will come for your children, your family, your friends. It causes pain, division, and will always try to strip away the most important gains of modern free society.
Let's not be so naive. Religious thought is very dangerous and in a very real way.
