Ocassional Thoughts of an Independent Progressive Atheistic Humanist
White conservatives, led by FOX ‘news’, have tried to spin the Charleston shooting as an attack on Christians. It continues their effort to marginalize and trivialize African-Americans and their experiences. Of course the issue this time isn’t debatable. Don’t let white conservatives try and distract from the real reasons for the shooting.
The evidence for this being a terrorist attack on blacks comes from the mouth of the shooter himself:
The massacre at the Charlie Hebdo magazine office in Paris this week showed the breadth and width of views and comments on ridiculing religion. A lot of Muslims think that killing someone who ridicules their religion is a good thing while other Muslims and non-muslims don’t think that is rational. Of course you have some people who want to blame the victims for their own deaths or complain that Charlie Hebdo was being racist. Ideas should be allowed to be expressed even if those ideas are stupid and need to be ridiculed.
Comedian and atheist Bill Maher said in a recent interview:
The news came out the other day that Leelah Alcorn, a transgender teen in living in the Cincinnati area had died after getting hit by a truck on I-71 near her home. Later it was found out that Leelah had committed suicide. I have never been able to wrap my head around the use of suicide as a solution for change. The real sad part for me is she didn’t have to die to bring attention to the issue of support for transgender teens.
Leelah’s story is heartbreaking even without the suicide. She wanted to transition to female and her parents, who were very religious, resisted Leelah’s wishes. They even sent her to Christian therapists to force her to live the way they wanted her to live. In her suicide note she said she had no real friends and no escape from her depressing life.
I remember the time when I revealed to my family I was a Humanist. It was at our family Christmas shindig. I wore my Humanist Community T-shirt. My Grandma asked me if I was a heathen and some cousins asked how could I celebrate Christmas if I was an atheist. Holidays may have strong religious ties but atheists can enjoy them if the believers work a little harder to include us.
Herb Silverman wrote a couple of posts about the interaction of atheists and believers on the holidays.
A new book titled ‘Atheist Mind, Humanist Heart: Rewriting the Ten Commandments for the Twenty-first Century‘ by Lex Bayer and John Figdor, included a set of 10 ‘non-commandments’ for the non-believer. The authors also held a contest to crowdsource an alternative set. I was pleased that I agreed with a majority of the items judged the winner. They are good guidelines for living as a non-believer.