RE: America is Tragically Soul-Sick
January 12, 2015 at 2:57 am
(This post was last modified: January 12, 2015 at 2:58 am by NathanHawks.)
(January 12, 2015 at 2:30 am)robvalue Wrote: Okay, I kind of get what you're saying, but again with the atheist bashing. I'm not insulted, hammer away, I just find it confusing. I agree that especially in highly religious countries, being atheist is very hard and finding community and support can be different. This could understandably cause some people to lose hope somewhat. But from my experience, this is far from a general case. I've seen and heard plenty of atheists standing up and being counted, and I've noticed a significant trend in my life that the less religious someone is, the nicer they are. That's simply my experience over 37 years (most of which I wasn't shitting in my own pants).
No bashing here. I am an atheist and I know self-reflection and mutual discourse are the only things which keep any group of people, honest. I'm not calling atheists the source of any problem - I'm calling atheists out for stopping at being "nicer" instead of plowing forward to be better people - or, indeed, for becoming less-good people, on accident, as an unhealthy artifact of the contextually-necessary healing process.
(January 12, 2015 at 2:30 am)robvalue Wrote: People who grew up with religion and relied on it for nearly everything are going to find a big void, and it can be hard to craft your own future and routine. Also indoctrination often leaves mental scars which may take some time to heal.
Sure, if religion didn't exist, we wouldn't even need the word atheist. Even if religion was relegated to the hokey superstitious nonsense that it is, comparable to avoiding black cats or whatever, we wouldn't need a word or to fight for our rights.
I'm sad to see you experience has so far been negative, but on the whole I have not seen things to be as bad as you describe. But then I live in a very liberal country where religion isn't a big deal, so that's probably the reason. Where do you live? Sorry if I missed it.
I live in the second most terrifyingly-brainwashed violent theocracy on the planet; a paranoid engine of religious terrorism which we inflict on ourselves and the rest of the world. United States.
(January 12, 2015 at 2:30 am)robvalue Wrote: I agree atheists need to band together when isolated, and support each other through religous withdrawal and persecution. And if we don't push back against religious oppression, it's not likely to stop. The internet is a God send (hahah!) for atheism, since a 5 year old can now do a quick google and find out that the bible and Quran are utter garbage, and find all religion's dirty little secrets. It also makes it easier for atheists to communicate.
I agree, but that's only the beginning. Churches provide a community - they instill a habit of being a community. Atheists need, in my opinion, to embrace some communal habits. So when you say "need to band together when isolated" I say "are isolated by default until they choose, and do, secular ways to band together, and specifically ways which include the whole community, in the same way churches attempt to do". Otherwise the communities will become insular and clannish, and that's a real-life, really-happening horror story I don't even want to talk about right now.
(January 12, 2015 at 2:30 am)robvalue Wrote: So I think there will be a period of post-religion adjustment for any society that is heavily built around it, but I feel fairly confident that the good people will keep being good. And the arse holes, well, they'll probably still be arse holes.
There's certainly a degree to which this is true, but I also think there's a degree to which (please forgive me) that using this position as a conclusion, amounts to an attempt to do exactly what I'm calling out here - an attempt to hide from moral obligations to humans, to avoid or recast those conversations that call us out of our self-sufficiency bubbles as suddenly irrelevant to us because we are atheists.
That is exactly my point. "We're atheists - don't talk to us about moral obligations, community imperatives, or the implications of our attitudes." This does not follow at all. Atheism is the rejection of gods - yet some want to act as if it is, by extension, also the rejection of community, solidarity, discourse, or civic responsibility.
