In order to set the record straight, I have edited the post I wrote last December about atheist Christmas displays. As it turns out, the most outrageous of the displays was not put up by atheists at all (as I had even thought at the time) but by a local Christian. For more details see the revised post here:
What’s the point of atheist Christmas displays?
May 27, 2012
Update to the Atheist Christmas Display Post
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Feb 5, 2012
Being an atheist does not mean you have to be alone.
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I came across an article this weekend which highlight very well the difficulties with being an atheist in the United States, particularly in the small towns. I don’t have so many of these difficulties over the past few years, as I have been fortunate enough to be able to surround myself with sympathetic friends and an atheistic social circle. However, it was not aways like this for me, and I still remember the days when it was really a big deal to be able to tell anyone I had doubts about the existence of God without expecting an argument or a pitying, judgmental look. So for the last couple of years I lived with my parents I mostly tried to keep my mouth shut while these heretical ideas simmered inside of me, and the inability to express my thoughts and feelings made me very irritable. I have the strong feeling that this is where the stereotype of the “angry atheist” comes from: try living in a community where you have to keep who you are and what you think silent for fear social repercussions or other consequences, while being constantly bombarded with the message that those who think like you are, at best, abnormal, flawed, and “sinful.” It’s not a pretty picture.
I count myself as being very fortunate. When I was accidentally outed to my parents it caused some conflict, though the repercussions were not nearly as severe as I feared they could be. The worst that happened at my home was a few heated arguments and a creeping feeling that I was no longer fully accepted for who I was. It felt as if my family thought I’d gotten into something horrible, like I was an alcoholic or something as bad, because I had stepped out of their religious box in my search for the truth. But at the same time I was participating in an email list for ex-Christians, where I learned the story of one teenaged member of the list who was essentially kicked out of his home and denied unsupervised contact with his siblings because of his admitted godlessness. So I will count myself lucky.
About the same time I was discovering atheism, I was also discovering a wealth of information and support via the Internet. Websites like Meetup.com were just getting started, and that gave me the opportunity to meet with other people who thought as I did face to face. My dream of saying the word “atheist” out loud without fear was coming true. Since then I have found a priceless community of other atheists as well as people who prefer other labels but still see the world in essentially the same way.
Being an atheist does not mean you have to be alone.
I benefit a lot from living in a moderately sized metropolitan area, where it is easier to get in touch with other people who are interested in things like atheism. For people who live in smaller towns, things can be much more difficult. In the article Atheism in America, Julian Baggini tells the stories of a few atheists who live in smaller communities, which very often center their community lives around their church.
An atheist in Festus, Missouri, for example, has to deal with being brought up on the weekly prayer lists at his wife’s church even when he went with her weekly to be accommodating. If he wears his “scarlet A” t-shirt in public, he notices mothers pulling their kids closer as if he might be some sort of danger to them.
A man who was reunited with his family at the age of 46, having been a separated “GI baby” was first embraced by his family, but then rejected after he told them he told them that he was an atheist.
I don’t quite understand what it is about religion with some people, that for someone to express disbelief means that they are tainted and to be distrusted. I am currently reading the book The God Virus by Darrel Ray, who explains that for people in whom religious belief has fully taken hold, the “virus” will cause them to protect that belief at all cost…even at the cost of shunning people they love who might threaten it. I’m still thinking about and evaluating this idea, and I have to admit at times this model fits some of these circumstances.
But to me, the main lesson to be learned here is that atheists need community. Being the lonely atheist in a very religious town or family is no walk in the park. This is why I care about forming community, just simple social groups, for atheists where they can speak their minds and not be judged or feared for it. We are out there, everywhere, and the challenge is only how to bring us together. Meeting together with like-minded people is not a religious thing, it is a human thing. We are social creatures, and we all need community where we can feel at home.
If you are interested with meeting face-to-face with other atheists, check out Meetup.com, and use the search terms “atheist” or “atheism.” That is a great place to start, and as I find other resources on how to get in touch with local atheist groups I will post those as well on my “Atheist Activism” page.
Jan 29, 2012
How could a 12-year-old girl deserve hell?
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WARNING: Things will get a bit personal in this post.
I will be talking about my experiences with religion as relates to my self-esteem and self-confidence. Will I be blaming all my insecurities on religion? Well, no, though I think there are areas where religious messages I received as a child took advantage of and exacerbated my natural insecurities. It’s probably only in very recent years that I’ve realized how much some of these messages have messed with my head.
Lets start at the natural starting point, the Christian sum-up of the human condition: Romans 3:23 : “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Yes, I know there is context around this one, but this verse was very often quoted on its own so I will leave it that way. Feel free to look it up if you like.)
So, what could a 12-year-old girl (as this is about the time I started really paying attention to this) have done to “fall short of the glory of God”? This is the message I was just starting to absorb, right in the midst of developing my personal identity. I would think and think and try to remember what I had done wrong so I could confess it, because believing you had not sinned meant you were a liar and full of spiritual pride. (see 1 John 1:8) Oh, there it is. It’s just inescapable…it was almost a relief to be able to name some way I had sinned because then I would at least not be guilty of pride. Oh, and if you didn’t feel bad about your sins your repentance wasn’t genuine right? So my religious reflections were often reflections on my guilt and unworthiness.
I can just see Christians out there saying “Wait, no! You misunderstood the message!” But really, I was only absorbing what I was told and carrying it to its logical consequences, and could you blame me for taking what I was told both seriously and literally? I didn’t have a lot of extra-curricular activities growing up, so I spent a lot of my time in quite thinking and reflection and when I thought of these messages I got from church I could come up with no other conclusion.
I was told that I shared the blame for this. Something that supposedly happened 2000 years before I was born? It makes no sense. But what a guilt trip!
But, you might say, Jesus took care of that right? “God loves you!!!” Still, the idea that “God loves you” doesn’t help confidence if it is coupled with the idea of “you are sinner and deserve punishment.” What is it when someone says they love you but also tells you that you are unworthy of love? I knew I would never really measure up. And just about every Sunday morning, this message would be reinforced. Both in the weekly altar calls and in testimonies from others in church services who talked about how when they tried to take control of their lives everything fell apart and nothing was right until they tearfully came crawling back to God.
I determined I would never make their mistakes.
In the midst of trying to erase my doubts about God, I was being filled with doubts about myself. My own ability to succeed and thrive, and to get though Middle School with my sanity intact. I never did well socially at school, partly to do with my fear of doing anything wrong or breaking any rule (to step out of line was sin!). And also partly because my parents didn’t have a lot of money and it violated my sense of fairness and justice to beg them for expensive designer clothes as some of my friends advised. I feel the need to mention that my religious upbringing was not totally bad. While I never understood the stupid status games played in Middle School, and was never popular there, I found plenty of acceptance among my mother and her group of friends from church. They didn’t care if I didn’t wear makeup, or curl my hair, or wear the tight jeans that were in vogue at the time. When I was a teenager, I got along much better with adults than with my own peers. This was, no doubt, one of the factors that kept me from sinking into serious mental problems.
As you can see, the issues I had with the Christian theology was with the message itself and not with the people. The people, at least the mature ones, were generally wonderful. But this message: That I messed up because I was inherently evil and depraved and not because I was immature and still learning how to behave? And that my guilt is tied to some act of independence and rebellion that my first grandmother once committed? I now know that when a child tells a lie or behaves selfishly it is not because they are evil, but because they are immature.
This concept of sin gets in the way of personal understanding of why we do what we do, and how we change ourselves when we do things we do not like or that have bad consequences. Modern psychology (and honest reflection on one’s own mind for that matter) reveals that quite often we just don’t understand the real causes behind what we do–we do it, and then come up with the rationale after the fact. This is why people so often make the same mistakes over and over and over. It takes a lot of work and self-reflection to overcome the negative patterns. Merely attributing the wrong to “sin” and being sorry for it and resolving to repent is not good enough, and only results in believers getting caught in a cycle of “sin,” guilt, and repentance, and keeps them chained in whatever religious tradition they happen to be in.
And you know what? It’s ok to trust your own reasoning, because your mind is not depraved and sinful. The human brain is imperfect–since we are always stretching it beyond its evolutionary purpose (survival and reproduction). So we should always we willing to consider that we could be wrong. It takes courage and self-confidence to risk being wrong. But it is not a sin to be wrong, and if you find out you are wrong you can always change your mind. Don’t like your behavior? Don’t be mired in guilt, but try to understand your patterns and behaviors so you can make changes. And get help if you need it…this stuff can be hard. There are real solutions to these problems.
And one final point: there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that could make a 12-year-old child deserve hell, whether literal or metaphorical. For a trusted adult to teach a child otherwise is, frankly, abusive.
EDIT: Just to make sure I am absolutely clear on this point, no one ever personally threatened me with hell when I was a child or teenager. I did have experience one or two pastors and sunday school teachers who seemed to be fascinated with “hellfire and brimstone,” but the fact that my parents openly rejected that sort of fear tactic lessened its impact on me. However, even when it was not discussed, hell was always a part of the Christian belief system I was raised in, always lurking in the background as what was waiting for you after death if you did not commit your whole heart and soul to Jesus. So it was always an issue, even if it was not discussed often.
Here is the talk from Dan Barker from Skepticon IV. If you do not know Dan Barker, he is a former Evangelical Christian pastor and missionary who is now an atheist. His talk is not exactly what I am saying in the post, but it is very closely related and he says it so well. 
(If you don’t want to watch the whole thing, the main point starts about the 20:00 minute mark.)
Dec 18, 2011
Why I am an Atheist: Christianity’s Dubious History
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Like most children brought up in the Christian religion, I was taught that the Bible, at least certain portions of the Bible, was historically accurate in every detail. The first chapter of Genesis might be open to poetic interpretation, but everything from Adam and Eve on was to be taken at historical face-value. The battles, miracles, and exiles of the Old Testament, totally historical. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were historical biographical sketches of Jesus from four different points of view. My upbringing was not one that demanded literal belief of every word, but we came pretty close to that ideal pretty much of the time. To me as a teenager, even if I saw no other confirmation that Christian belief was true, I was certain that the Bible was a solid foundation that would bolster my belief even though the stormiest trials of faith.
Then I learned a bit about the history of the Christian church, including that of the Bible. After about two decades of Sunday School instruction, what I learned was deeply unsetting.The most disturbing thing I found out was that there were many different sects of Christianity from the beginning, and the differences between them made the most volatile disagreement between modern denominations look piddly. In fact, for a couple of centuries after Jesus was said to have lived and died, they could not even agree on who he was. Let me say that again…for about the first two centuries, different sects of Christianity could not agree on who Jesus was exactly or what his true nature was. Seriously. (Most of these differences are now called heresies, and I found the way they were determined to be heresies and how the “heretics” were dealt with to be just as troubling as their disagreements.)
Some believed that Jesus was born in the normal way, was adopted with God’s spirit at baptism, and then was abandoned by God’s spirit before he died (since God cannot die, of course). Some thought he was a special prophet of God, but totally separate from God in being. Others thought he was totally a spiritual being and not really human at all! Didn’t Jesus clearly reveal what his nature was when he was on earth? How could there be such discord on this very important point among the early Christians so very soon after they had met him in the flesh (don’t forget some didn’t even think he HAD flesh)? And if there was so much confusion back then, how are we supposed know what to believe today?
Actually, a unified Christian view of the nature of Jesus was not nailed down (no pun intended) until about 325 CE, with the Nicene Council. By this time, some of the Christians had gained some clout with the Roman government. It was declared church dogma that Jesus was “one substance” with “God the Father” and was therefore 100% God and 100% man at the same time. All who taught otherwise were persecuted or killed as heretics, and their books were burned. In other words, the winning view did not win because it had evidence on its side, but because it had the power to censor and destroy opposing ideas on its side. With the full approval of God’s Holy Spirit of course, if you take the council leaders at their word. How someone would go about confirming this with the Holy Spirit is not exactly clear. Also suspect to me was the idea that it was of utmost importance that everyone believe exactly the same way…where was the idea of religious tolerance in those days?
Consider the time frames here as well. Assuming Jesus lived from about year 0 to 30 CE (give or take a few years) and the orthodox view of Jesus was officially decided in 325 CE, that means the church didn’t come up with a unified belief about the nature of Jesus until 300 years later! Is this not like a group of people who claim authority in historical matters getting together to decide on some nuance about the American Revolution, and then declaring that if anyone henceforth questions their pronouncement, that person shall be declared a heretic and their research burned?
There is a lot more to the the dubious nature of Christian history, but this early disagreement over the nature of Jesus is the one I found the most worrying when I learned about it. If Jesus so clearly revealed himself to his disciples, who then immediately passed his teachings on to the rest of the world, how could there be such confusion and disagreement over who he even was or whether or not he even had a physical body? And what about Paul, from whom the modern church gets the bulk of its theology? He never even met Jesus, but claims (and we have the collaboration of his servants to back him up) to have had a vision. Consider this is in light of the his severe disagreements with the leaders of the church in Jerusalem, who had supposedly had personal ties with Jesus himself. There are also known forgeries and serious inconsistencies in the biblical manuscripts themselves, and the inconvenient fact that we have no idea who wrote any of the Gospels (they were written anonymously, decades after the events they claim to describe). It goes on and on.
Small caveat: I am not a historian myself, and no kind of authority on historical matters. I have only taken a couple of classes in Christian history and read a few books. If my blog post has piqued your curiosity and made you want to read more, then my goal has been accomplished. If you would like to read it from people who have actually done the research, I recommend the sources below.
Anything by Bart Ehrman, especially Misquoting Jesus regarding forgery in the New Testament, Lost Christianities regarding early Christian sects that are little known today, and Jesus, Interrupted. Click on his name for more information on the author and his books.
Not the Impossible Faith by Richard Carrier. An earlier version of this work can also be found for free online at The Secular Web. See Was Christianity Too Improbable to Be False?
For a pretty quick read of the arguments that Jesus never existed as a historical character at all, see Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed at All by David Fitzgerald.
To clarify the point on Christian persecution of so-called heretics, is this passage from the Wikipedia article on Christian Heresy. According to this, the Christians who deemed themselves “orthodox” were not able to really persecute the heretics immediately after the Nicene Council, but they did so when they gained the power.
The first known usage of the term ‘heresy’ in a civil legal context was in 380 AD by the “Edict of Thessalonica” of Theodosius I. Prior to the issuance of this edict, the Church had no state sponsored support for any particular legal mechanism to counter what it perceived as ‘heresy’. By this edict, in some senses, the line between the Catholic Church’s spiritual authority and the Roman State’s jurisdiction was blurred. One of the outcomes of this blurring of Church and State was a sharing of State powers of legal enforcement between Church and State authorities. At its most extreme reach, this new legal backing of the Church gave its leaders the power to, in effect, pronounce the death sentence upon those whom they might perceive to be ‘heretics’.
Within 5 years of the official ‘criminalization’ of heresy by the emperor, the first Christian heretic, Priscillian was executed in 385 by Roman officials. For some years after the Protestant Reformation, Protestant denominations were also known to execute those whom they considered as heretics. The last known heretic executed by sentence of the Roman Catholic Church was Cayetano Ripoll in 1826. The number of people executed as heretics under the authority of the various ‘church authorities’ is not known, however it most certainly numbers into the several thousands.
Nov 20, 2011
Skepticon Wrap-Up
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This was my first year coming to a Skepticon and it was a blast! I meet some cool people, and learned a lot of great stuff. From what I had heard prior, I knew Skepticon was an skeptics convention, though I didn’t know how much it would be about atheism (which I thought was great). Then again, most of the talks had nothing directly to do with atheism–which is great if you have been doing this long enough that the basic atheist arguments and discussions are old hat.
David Silverman set the tone for the entire weekend on Saturday morning with his speech “Skepticism, Atheism, and our Common Movement.” He pointed out, and I agree, that while “atheist” is not synonymous with “skeptic,” the two categories of people have an incredible overlap of people and that skeptics play a large and vital role in the secular movement. He also encouraged the crowd at Skepticon not to be afraid to use the word “atheist” in public whenever the question of religious affiliation comes up. When friends and family know that someone they love and know personally is an atheist, it’s less likely that they will hold negative stereotypes in their minds about atheists. This has worked for other movements, and it can work for us.
Most of the talks were not directly related to atheism, but had to do with science, rationality, and clear thinking in general. There were two talks addressing cognitive biases (Eliezer Yudkowsky) and how our own thinking can go wrong (Spencer Greenberg), a couple of basic and interesting talks on molecular genetics and addressed popular misunderstandings of genes (P.Z.Myers and Jen McCreight), a speech on undercover paranormal investigations (Joe Nickell), the need for critical thinking in math education (Hemant Mehta), and the crazy history and beliefs of Mormonism (David Fitzgerald). There was also a talk on the “Straw Vulcan”–ways in which logic and rationality and misrepresented in popular media (Julia Galef), and I may write more on that later as I have thought about this a lot before and find the topic fascinating.
One of the more unusual speeches was from Darrel Ray on “Sex and Secularism” presenting the results of a study that queried how leaving religion had affected their sex lives. I think I had even participated in that survey some time ago, but I had forgotten about it. A major theme that Darrel Ray has proposed is that religion roots itself in people’s lives by generating a great deal of guilt about normal and healthy sexual (and other) behaviors, and then also promotes itself as the cure to ease that guilty feeling. That is a bit of a simplification of his thesis, and one day I need to read his book “The God Virus” and examine his idea more throughly.
Without a doubt, the most fun presentation was put on by the “Atheist Evangelist” Sam Singleton, which was in part a parody of a charismatic style church service, and in part a (semi) serious sermon to secular people about giving thanks to the people who deserve our gratitude. At least, I took it somewhat seriously, because I think it was a great message. Thank you Brother Sam!
The final presentation was the most powerful and incredibly personal of them all. The title of JT Eberhard’s presentation was “Why the Skeptic Community Must Concern Itself with Mental Illness.” In which he came out as someone who has struggled silently for years with anorexia. The whole experience was so heart rending and emotional I find a difficult time describing it. There is such a stigma attached both with admitting that there is something wrong with your mind, and also with seeking help and taking medication to treat it because of a fear that that means you are weak. He delivered a heartfelt plea to the skeptical community to address the incorrect and non-scientific views on mental illness just the same way as the community exposes the frauds of homeopathy. And for those who have mental illness to come out and help remove the stigma in the same way that we are calling atheists to come out and remove the stigma of nonbelief. Mental illness is not an issue I have had to deal with personally, and he presented a view of this problem that I have never been able to see before. The reception from the crowd was also amazing. We all love you JT!
Nov 12, 2011
My New Christian Friends
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Today I rode about 35 miles on my bike with the Louisville Bike Club, the farthest I have ever rode in a single trip. I almost missed going on the trip altogether because when I arrived at the meeting place to start the ride, I realized that in my hurry to get there on time I had forgotten to grab my helmet and my bike gloves (though the gloves were not a deal-breaker the way the missing helmet was.) I considered giving up and driving back home, but decided instead to hang out and wait for the others and see if anyone had a helmet that I could borrow. As it turned out, someone did. The first people to show up at the ride (and the only ones I saw at the time, since we were not aware that the time had been pushed back an hour to avoid running into the mini-marathon also scheduled for that day) were a very nice married couple who did indeed have a helmet and pair of gloves I could borrow at their house about 4 miles bike ride away. So I rode back to their house with them, feeling a bit naked with only my Buff on my head and no helmet, and got the helmet that I would be wearing for the next few hours. Fortunately, it was a perfect fit and worked well for the rest of the day.
I spent the ride mostly with this couple, since our ride was out of sync with the others in the group due to the change in start time (though this was really no problem at all since the route is the same every Saturday.) There was one little thing about the couple that took me aback just a bit right before we rode to their house to get the helmet. The guy informed me that it was their usual custom to say a prayer before starting the bike ride and asked if this was alright with me. This took me totally off guard, I have to say… at that point I was just so happy that they were helping me out and lending me a helmet for the ride that I was not even going to consider rocking the boat by voicing any kind of objection about prayer. And really, it didn’t matter that much to me at all, so I said that if they wanted to say a prayer that was fine with me.
We didn’t discuss religion at all other than that, though it did come out in discussion that they are members of Southeast Christian Church (for those who are not familiar with Louisville, this is the most famous massive Evangelical megachurch in the city.) I wondered for a while if they were going to try to discuss religion for me, or ask me where I went to church, or if I went to church but they never did. And I wondered what they would think if I told them that my husband and I organize the Louisville Atheists and Freethinkers Meetup, or that I have volunteered as an escort outside the local abortion clinic. I really liked these people and enjoyed riding around town with them, even with the knowledge that we were probably on complete opposite sides on some issues I hold very dear to my heart. Though today it did not matter, and I was perfectly prepared to be straight with them on what my views are if they were to come up in conversation.
After the ride I went to lunch with them, and it did start to get slightly annoyed (though I didn’t show it) when they informed me that they say grace over meals and would this be alright with me? Meh. I’m still fine if they want to say a prayer, but the conspicuous Christianity tactic does get on my nerves a bit. And I wonder if this behavior has anything to do with the Darwin Fish that they probably saw on my car. At any rate, I will still be happy to ride around town with them on future rides.
Aug 21, 2011
The Atheist Booth at the Kentucky State Fair
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For the second year in a row, there is a atheist-themed booth at the Kentucky State Fair. Last year, there was a billboard sponsored by the Coalition of Reason posted right outside the fairgrounds though the entire month of August that declared “Don’t believe in God? You are not alone.” The billboard is what prompted the idea for us to have a matching state fair booth at the fair, along with a banner to match the billboard (now being displayed in our current booth at the front of the display table.
Last year we got some media attention, mainly around the billboard but also with the fair booth as a followup story. But don’t think we are saddened by the lack of media attention this year–when people are no longer shocked at the “atheist booth” and get used to the fact that we are here, that is a sign of progress.
My first shift at the booth was on Friday evening, from 6-10. The way the shifts are scheduled, there are 2-3 people there for each shift. Just as last year, we have had no trouble at all finding members who are willing to step up and volunteer, and the shift schedule was filled out just about a week in advance of the fair’s opening date. Having multiple volunteers there makes it a lot more fun than if there were only one person, and it is invaluable for moral support and input in case any debates arise, and they always do. There is one main purpose to the booth, to reach out to our fellow secular citizens and let them know we are here. However we also make the most of the discussions with those who disagree with us. With Kentucky being a majority Christian state, we always have people coming by our booth who are not so pleased at our message. The responses have ranged from a puckered facial expression after they read our banner to declarations that “one day every knee will bow!” And of course, we do get asked from time to time if we are worried about hell, to which I would say “there is no hell.” We also have had long and frank and civil discussions about everything from where morals and values come from to the reliability (or lack thereof) of the Bible to whether or not America is a Christian nation. And the way I see it, regardless of the outcomes of these discussions it is a very positive thing for the religious to be in discussions with atheists in person, rather than only hearing what the preachers and the media have to say about us. We are putting a live, breathing, speaking human face on atheism in Kentucky.
And the discussions are great, but the best reward that we see daily are the surprised “thumbs-ups” and the grateful expressions of someone coming by and saying “I thought I was the only atheist in Kentucky.” This is the prize that makes all of the effort and debating worth it.
If you are interested in meeting with atheists and freethinkers in Louisville or in other areas of Kentucky, take a look at The Kentucky Secular Society and Louisville Atheists and Freethinkers.
Jul 30, 2011
Offensive?
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The YMCA where I go to take exercise classes has Bible verses up on the walls throughout the building, and has a big nativity scene in the lobby at Christmas. As an atheist, does this offend me? It does not, in fact I feel very little emotion of any kind about it. The YMCA is a traditionally Christian organization and a private establishment. (FYI: I mention this mainly to head off dismissive comments from Christians that any display of Christianity in public view is offensive to atheists.) As long as I am not getting discriminated against or actively preached at while I am there, then it is all fine with me. I am the same way about people posting up Ten Commandments signs or crosses in their own yards, even though for personal safety and sanity reasons I would think twice about moving into such a neighborhood. At any rate displays that are on private property are mostly to the discretion of the property owners and maybe their neighborhood association.
There is a billboard that you might see on northbound I-65 between Elizabethtown and Louisville that proclaims in big and brash letters “HELL IS REAL,” perhaps as a warning to heathens going to Louisville to get drunk at 4th Street Live. I was in Bardstown, Kentucky yesterday and saw a church sign with the rhetorical question “You think it’s hot here?” attributed to God. If I were a theist I might be offended by those who presume to put words in the mouth of God. As it is, I am no longer offended but just simply horrified that there are people out there who actually still believe in such things as a place of eternal fire and torture for those who die not believing in Jesus as their “personal lord and savior.” (Sorry, dear reader, if you are not familiar with fundamentalist Christian beliefs, because I don’t intend to open up the whole can of worms of what that previous phrase actually means. That could take quite some time…)
There are some things that do offend me. Recently I was offended to the very core of my being by the audacity of that terrorist in Norway who wanted to turn his trial into an opportunity to declare to the world that what he did was right and justified. Big kudos to the judges in Norway to opted to deny him the opportunity.
Another thing that boils my blood is any kind of joke about rape, or even the hint of bringing up what a woman was wearing when she was raped as if this made any difference whatsoever. I’m even getting tensed up I write about it.
And, yes, I do get offended when people who make claims that atheists are “attacking America” or that secular philosophies cause the problems of society or other such nonsense. Not just because I know it is nonsense but because it perpetuates a very real prejudice towards people like myself who are atheists and not ashamed of it.
The thinks that most offend me are the things that violate my sense of justice and fairness, such as both of the items above. Things that seriously hurt people. Overloaded rhetoric and actions that has the potential to lead to real fear and violence.
I might feel offended at times from hearing statements where that I strongly disagree. But I take the view that the mere fact that I am made to feel uncomfortable, or even angry, by some act or statement does not in and of itself mean that this statement ought to be censored or punished. I may be justified in standing up and yelling “I don’t like it!” but not justified in demanding “That should not be allowed!” There must also be some case in terms of legality, justice, and other higher principles that come into play other than “that makes me mad!” In the case of the American Atheists suit against the World Trade Center cross, I believe there is such a case in legal terms and in terms of equality and justice, and it is not merely the case that the cross offends my sensibilities. (See my previous post Opposing the WTC Cross.)
What about stuff like this? (from http://www.unofficialgervais.com/2011/07/27/rickys-rejected-rolling-stone-cover-photo/) Offensive? Why? What do you think his point is?
And here are what I think are the most important questions: If you are offended by this, do you think that it actually does real harm to people and that it should be blocked from all public view? Or do you see your offense as a personal matter of ”I don’t like it” for your to deal with in your own private way?
Jul 26, 2011
Opposing the WTC Cross
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I remember 9/11, and I remember it well. I was still in college, though on Tuesdays I had no classes. After I got out of bed, I went into the living room where Dad was watching the television, saw the smoking images of the World Trade Center, and thought at first that it was a movie. After watching for a few minutes I realized in horror that this was an actual news report.
I remember the shock and terror of that moment, and for the next few days I felt numb. I remember wondering if the world was coming to an end, or if the United States was going to be taken over by…well I had no idea who at the time. I realized with a shock that if the USA were to be taken over, our revered Constitution would become nothing more than an outdated, historical piece of paper. And then, after a few days as the shock wore off and I realized that neither the world nor the USA was about to end, I noticed a few other things.
There was a great surge in Christian religiosity in the months following the attacks. Not that this didn’t make sense—turning to the sense of certainty and comfort of religion is a normal response for people who suddenly feel frightened and helpless and uncertain of their future. I was right in the middle of it singing “God Bless America” with all the other people I knew…even though there was one factor of the 9/11 attacks that would forever mar my view of religion. It was the fact that the men who flew those planes into those buildings, killing tens of thousands of innocent people, were motivated at least in part by a strong religious faith. I was also deeply disturbed by the reports of attacks against peaceful Muslims, and others who looked like they might be Muslims (including one Coptic Christian man from Egypt), by Americans who were driven to a fury of prejudice and hatred by the actions of a few terrorists.
And I remember the hubbub about this particular piece of rubble from the buildings that just happened to be in the shape of a cross. Now, the state of New York wants to include this broken portion of building support, not as a remnant of the building to help us remember, but as a Christian cross. And not only in its original configuration but carefully air-lifted and placed upon a pedestal. How convenient is it for Christians that their symbol is in the same shape as a common building support?
At any rate, it was not only Christians but all Americans from many religions and backgrounds and ways of life that were affected, directly and indirectly, by the events of 9/11. To me, 9/11 is a reminder of how faith, even though it is a comfort to some people, can also be a force for incredible and tragic harm. I imagine that faith comforted the hijackers as they rushed toward the towers at around 500 miles per hour.
So, should we have a Christian cross, a sectarian religious symbol, as the attraction of the World Trade Center? Does this make the site more comforting, more inviting, more consoling to Christians and less comforting, less inviting, and less consoling to everyone else who may wish to go there to remember? I can’t see how it could be otherwise. This memorial should be something that is for all Americans, not something that divides us by religion or by anything else.
So, for this reason, I stand with American Atheists in opposing the WTC cross.
For more information see http://atheists.org/law/Ground_Zero and http://www.examiner.com/humanist-in-national/american-atheists-object-to-wtc-cross-ask-for-equal-treatment.
