This month is the anniversary of my birth. Part of our life cycle. Birth, living, then death. All simple, neat and tidy. Millions have done it before me and millions more will come after me. Why am I so special? What is my purpose? It may surprise you to know, I know the answer to those questions and I’m both thrilled and scared about it at the same time. Whenever my birthday comes around, I get this sick feeling of dread that I try to hide from my friends and family. (Oops! LOL) But I don’t want to ignore the date. We can celebrate growing old.
Someone, I can’t remember who, described life as a roller coaster. From birth to a certain point in life, we’re moving up and up like going up the big hill of a roller coaster. After that certain point it’s all down hill. I do feel like I have started that down hill trip. Or I’ve flipped over the hour glass and the grains of time are slipping slowly to the other side. Whichever sad depressing metaphor works for you.
You Don’t Have A Right Not To Be Called An Ass
Political correctness is where one tries to think about the words one uses before speaking. It’s about diplomacy and tact. You also try to keep in mind if you would like it if someone used offensive words at you. On the other hand I don’t support censoring people who sound like assholes. They should be able to say what they want when they want. What I don’t support is when the assholes get angry and complain when their assholeness is pointed out to them. That isn’t censorship. It’s making an observation and if they can’t take it then maybe they need to shut their pie hole.
Another Reason Not To Believe In God
After yet another mass killing at a school, the religious right comes out of the wood work to explain that such killings wouldn’t happen if we just let prayer back into the schools or God let a tragedy happen because we moved away from Him. What a bunch of stank rubbish! I know that the religious right are unreasonable and shun logic but equating a school shooting with not being able to pray in school is a load of crap.
I’m White And Have A Penis – So What!
Not since college have had been immersed in gender politics like I have recently. It’s weird that in the twenty plus years since I experienced diversity debates in college, the arguments haven’t changed. I think it’s because the young people who come up in the freethought movement discover biases based on gender and feel that this is one injustice they can overcome. I have to admit that I’m white and I have a penis – so what! I think we all need to work on those issue we can solve together and acknowledge that we can’t be perfect. I’m not going to pick a side and I’m not going to apologize for being white and male.
What sparked this blog post is the STILL burning Atheism+/gender identity storm in the freethought community. Each side of the debate are doing purity checks and using extreme gender politics in an effort to make a utopia in their own image. Instead of using our tools to make a better world all freethinkers, both sides want to burn down our own house and rebuild it how they assume it should look – opposing view points be damned.
Isn’t Atheism Plus Another Name For Humanism?
In the wake of some very public and nasty debates about diversity and lack of respect for women in the freethought community, Jen McCreight, author of the blaghag blog on the Freethought Blogs Network created what she is calling a “new wave of Atheism” whose name evolved into Atheist+. Her goal was to move Atheism from just dealing with the god question – Atheists don’t believe in a god – but to also deal with issues like diversity and social justice. It seems to me that Humanism addresses all the issues McCreight feels is missing from Atheism and Humanism is non-theistic. One question I have is why not be a Humanist?
Some of the issues Jen McCreight sees Atheism+ dealing with include Racism, Sexism, Homophobia, Transphobia, Ableism, Classism, Ageism, Neurotypicalism, Animal welfare, environmental issues, and political issues (Health care, crime, drug laws).