Missing Christmas

I'm an atheist.


And now for the half of you remaining on this page, I'd like to get to where that applies to anything right now.


If you're an atheist, or agnostic, or even just news-literate, you've probably heard about the Reason Rally that met in DC beneath a rather foggy silhouette of the Washington Monument. I was unable to attend, as I was visiting family at the time and frankly did not have the $600-800 I would've needed for plane tickets and hotel accommodations. I'm really hoping to attend next year though.


This brought to mind a lot of things that have been churning within me for a while. I'm originally from a small town in Kansas--population of about 1000 if you include cats and dogs. This town was almost completely homogeneous in terms of race and religion, which led to an odd sort of tolerance toward the one or two minorities. There was a Jewish family there, if I'm not mistaken, and a Mormon family that everyone got along with pretty well. There was a single black family, and one family that had recently immigrated from Polynesia. Other than that, the population was consistently white and either protestant or catholic.


Don't get me wrong, it wasn't a horrible place to grow up, at least not for my early teenage years. The people were that sort of quaint, small-town friendly that said "I may not know everyone in town, but I'll treat everyone like I do." It was pleasant to walk down the streets and have people wave to you while mowing the lawn. Everyone waved to each other while driving. Norman Rockwell would've loved the place.


Then, somewhere around the time I turned 15, things changed. Well, that's probably not true. The truth is that nothing changed except me. I came out of church one day with my head buzzing. I'd started to think about everything the preacher had said, and things weren't adding up. It's the same story so many atheists tell. I gradually put aside faith in a god in favor of a firm belief in reason.


At that point, I had ceased to be a part of my little 1000-person community.


I never quite had the crap beaten out of me for daring to question these peoples' god, so I should feel lucky. I was never arrested on false charges by a corrupt sheriff. I can probably count the death threats I received and still not quite have to take off the second shoe. My coming out wasn't as rough as it could have been.


Nevertheless, the suddenly-less-than-friendly environment provoked me to leave very quickly. By 18 I was practically leaving smoke trails out of town toward college, and frankly the thought of looking back has never occurred to me.


A lot of atheists share similar tales. Unfortunately, many atheists have stories with a much harsher plot. I is not uncommon to hear of atheists who WERE assaulted, and it is with a disturbing frequency that atheists are persecuted by the authorities that are supposed to protect them.


But I'm not here to complain about being persecuted. Don't get me wrong, we ARE. Atheists are one of the few remaining groups it is socially acceptable to hate. Any time someone speaks up about this, they're called a whiner who doesn't understand what real persecution is.


But I'm STILL not here to do that, so I'm not going to draw myself into it.


No, my message here is for atheists, and for anyone who's ever questioned their religion. You don't have to be ashamed of not believing in the christian god, or any other religion for that matter. Atheism in America is rapidly expanding.


Brad Pitt (And Angelina Jolie), George Clooney ("I don't believe in Heaven and Hell," he says. "I don't know if I believe in God. All I know is that as an individual, I won't allow this life -- the only thing I know to exist -- to be wasted."), Natalie Portman, Jodie Foster, Hugh Laurie, Warren Buffet, and many, many others are all open atheists or agnostics.


This is not to say that because they are celebrities (or in Buffet's case, really rich) their opinions on religion are more important. But it made me feel better to realize how many people in the public spotlight are willing to admit their atheism--a topic that, a few years ago, might've ended one's career.

And then Reason Rally, which I missed, showed the kinds of numbers atheists can assemble in. I get conflicting counts--20,000 seems to be the most widely accepted number, but I've heard as high as 30,000. Either way, that is tens of thousands of atheists assembled in one place. It's only 10% of those who assembled with MLK for his March on Washington, but it's still a wonderfully high number for any rally, especially one for atheists.


And around the country, twenty million more are throwing off the shackles of a religious society. That's a number I can only hope will grow.


For one of the most hated minorities in the United States, a long battle remains. But I hope that with so many in the public eye joining us, and with rallies that draw these numbers, we are sending a message to those who still reject us. We are here. We are going nowhere. And we will receive the respect any human should expect.


My favorite quote from Reason Rally was the conclusion of Adam Savage's speech. 


"I have concluded through careful empirical analysis and much thought that someone is looking out for me, keeping track of what I think about things, forgiving me when I do less than I ought. Giving me the strength to shoot for more than I think I'm capable of. I believe they know everything that I do and think, and they still love me, and I've concluded, after careful consideration, that this person keeping score is me."


PS: Fred Phelps's crew was there. Morons. I hope they all step on a LEGO.


~GK

Well Now

It would seem that there's a new blog on the internet.

And I think there might be a new weed in my front lawn, too. Not exactly an uncommon occurrence, but I'm hoping to make this an exceptionally uncommon blog. A "mission statement" seems cliched, but I think I'll have one anyway. In brief, I started this blog to provide a balanced perspective on the issues of today, yesterday, tomorrow and maybe, if I'm feeling really dangerous, the day AFTER tomorrow.

 "Balanced" doesn't mean  what you think it means, of course. I'm not neutral, and you should be ashamed of yourself for thinking that a blog could manage to be neutral. No, I will of course be injecting my own views (which tend to lean libertarian-but-not-psychotic) into everything. What "balanced" means is that I will also feel the responsibility to acknowledge the merits of other ideas when they have their successes. If you're looking for another blog to show how Obama is the devil incarnate or how Reagan walked on water, you are in the wrong place. The right place for you would be the bottom of a well. (Reverse the positions above, and I will gladly reverse my well-sentence. You can go head-first down the well instead of feet-first.)

You will disagree with me at some point. Most of you will disagree with me most of the time. I have odd beliefs sometimes. But unlike some, who would say "I don't care what you believe," I do care what you believe, especially if it's patently ridiculous. Not because I'm actually going to start believing your way, (Although that is possible, I'm not THAT hard to sway.) but because I actually want to convince you. A novel concept, and one that probably has no merit on any large scale, but it seems worth a try.

I'm not going to set a schedule for updates. Bloggers who set schedules only do so in order to break them three days in. (Rather embarrassing if they only update once a week.) But I'll post whenever I get riled up about something in the news, which should keep a healthy supply of everything flowing in here.

So sit down and have a cup of coffee. Not on the house, you have to make it yourself. Welcome to Thinking Out Loudest.

~GK