*Wordpress says I wrote this December 31, 1969 at 7 pm. …I just found it in a random spot in my wordpress and thought I’d publish it. I dont really remember writing it*
Ask and ye shall recieve. A while ago on my own blog I wrote about Ron Luce and his militant army of evangelical 15-20 something year olds. The quotes from their website at the time were terrifying. They were literally acting like an army for religion. Part of me was absolutely disgusted by this utterly horrible display of militantism – but then another side of me was oddly jealous. The one thing I’ll give Ron Luce is that he’s successful. He’s managed to make “god” and “praying” and “worshiping” fun.
Living with a minister I was pretty much pushed into church every week until I was 16. I continued to go for a while, but it was horribly boring. Where else was I supposed to go to praise god? One year a friend of mine invited me to Acquire the Fire, so I went. And I had a fantastic time. Yes I was saved, prayed, sang the songs and all that jazz – but it was a really good time too. I was with friends, we were dancing, we got to hang out at night… etc. It was just really fun. If there is anything that is bringing down churches like the United Church and the like its that they’re very stuck in their ways of doing things. I do understand that tradition and ritual is a vital part of some people’s religions experience and essence. However, young people aren’t connected to that ritualistic method of praise, and thus the youthful presence in a church is often extremely low.
Acquire the Fire got it right. They found a way not only to make young people want to come to their events – but they want to take what they learn home with them too. And then they want to go next year, and the year after that, and the year after that. I envied the way he could suck people is. I wanted a voice like that for my groups!
And I got it.
Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, et al. We got em. They’re loud, they’re proud, they make everything seem fun, everyone wants to rally up beside them and shout to the …lord? …Oh wait, they hate the lord.
Anyway, now that I’ve got what I was asking for – I don’t want it. I find that the one thing I have in common with these people is that we all happen to be atheists. In my early years of “atheism” I was very much like Dawkins and the like. But now I just see it as naive and narrowminded. There is a whole world of interrelations with religious groups that get cut off too quickly because they’re just that – religious groups. When in all reality the most eye opening discussions of my life have been with my parent’s “progressive christianity” group.
I find that too many non-religious people have stopped asking questions and more importantly have stopped listening. I will be fair in saying that until now (well, until the publishing of the top-selling atheist books) there hasn’t been a voice for those with critical comments towards religious claims. Time and time again, even in my academic career, I’ve been hushed on the subject of atheism, I’ve been fired for being one and have been shunned for talking about it as if it’s as ordinary as the weather. These “radicals” opened that door, and that’s good. But I don’t want to be associated with them, really.
There are horrible things that have come out of religious traditions such as repression of sexuality and urges, war, genocide, censorship, denial of science and the reign over women. And in the same way horrible things can come out of the hard non-religious outlook on life like considering people to be less intelligent, repressing people’s opinions, dividing the population, being completely intolerant and as I said before, the worst of all, not listening to anyone else. On the other side of all this a lot of religious organizations do really honourable things like donating to charities just as non-religious people donate to charities. There are also organizations of all faiths that work together. Multi-faith center (albeit generally on campuses) come together to do fundraising, vonlunteering and discussions. These are productive uses of faith and intelligence. Continuously attacking the other side is not.
I know that I am more or less speaking for myself in this case – but that is not my intent with my writings on this site. I know that we all have different intentions on terms of what we’re “passionate” about and who we think deserve certain levels of “respect”. As much as I love having a loud voice for people to follow, for people to look up to and more or less for people to follow – it’s not the point of this movement. A freethinkers movement isn’t a movement where we should be lying down and solomly listening to poeple who happen to write fancy books. Espeically because these books look at so few things – they tend to focus on one area of things and just continuously attack that area instead of branching out and learning new ways to incorporate skepticism and freethinking into discussions and society.
Until the freethinking movement becomes something that can be added into everyday conversation without it seeming like an attack on people then it isn’t going to be effective or useful. It will just be another opinion for people to ignore because it doesn’t take into consideration the views and opinions of others, and isn’t that what we’re really against? Shutting out/down the opinions and views of others? Why follow in the footprints of people who are creating a voice that is just going to be ignored, because it ignores everyone else? When instead we can create a cooperative voice with one another and really start figuing out why the hell people believe in weird things.
As a memeber of this progressive and freethinking movement and as a nonbeliever I still respect, listen and (more or less) tolerate the opinions of the other side. When it comes to science I understand that it’s hard to tolerate something that is just flat out false but that’s another topic all together. This is opinion, philosophy, morality, love and the soul I like these discussions, and hearing all sides as to incorporate a wider view of what people believe into my life and studies. My problem is not with these religious people, especially progressive ones, it is with those who elimiate reason based on unsubstantiated claims, and likewise it is with those who eliminate religion based on unsubstantiated claims.
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