Should more atheists be involved in activism? Sometimes I think that we depend too much on organizations to take the lead for us when there’s a question concerning separation of church and state or any other that might be considered violations of our Constitution. Don’t we, the ones at ground zero in our various communities have an obligation to stand for ourselves, taking the lead on issues that affect us directly?
Something I discovered a while back is that as an atheist, I’m very much supported by others that I’ve either met online or in person. No one that I’ve come to be familiar with seems to have a problem that I’m a conservative, or even thinks that being a conservative, I cannot possibly be an atheist. That’s been my experience overall. Sure, there are always naysayers but those people probably wouldn’t accept me no matter what.
I was recently tagged into a conversation on Twitter concerning the bankruptcy of the far left, specially those we have often referred to as Social Justice Warriors. When ?I began this blog in 2012, I wrote a lot about them , notably a few from one specific blog site. there’s was so much to criticize there, at that time, that it was almost impossible to not find some ridiculous position taken by one or more of those bloggers on any single day.
On occasion, I am asked how it is I live without belief. What’s meant is belief in God. My response has mostly always been that I don’t really ever think about it and proceed to ask the person, if they go around all day thinking of their God? Well of course they don’t, but for some reason, not believing in any gods or spirits or demons is a strange way to go about life. What difference it makes has always puzzled me, and that there are those that cannot imagine a life without some sort of metaphysical belief, is sometimes beyond my ability to grasp.
I don’t recall exactly when I became an atheist. It isn’t like there was some sort of sudden revelation or anything, and when I did come to that conclusion, there was nothing special about it for me. I never referred to myself as an atheist, at least not initially. If anything, when asked, I would just refer to myself as a non-believer, or sometimes, as someone who was skeptical concerning the existence of gods. I think it wasn’t until I was online, not that many years ago, that I finally called myself an atheist.
It seems to me that most atheists consider believers as poorer and less educated than they are. That may be true, but I have never found any statistics to verify that claim. Are there those from less privileged homes more likely to believe in God? Who’s to say. Polls indicate that atheists are more educated but what does that really indicate?
How many gods are there? Well, of course an atheist would say that number is zero, but there are those that worship a variety of deities, some, like in Hinduism, much older (depending on the scholarship) of either Judaism or of course Christianity. There are still practitioners of Zoroastrianism in the Middle East, which is over 3,000 years old. It seems that even in ancient Israel, the land of one god, in the 8th and 7th centuries BCE, people were still worshipping other gods, as have been found in archeological excavations and described in The Bible Unearthed.
I don’t know about everyone else out there, but I’m often asked by people about what social issues I support or don’t support. I know it’s probably common, but in my case, these are atheists asking. My first reaction is it’s none of your business, but I never actually say that, I usually deflect as I really am not interested in those conversations. It seems though that a lot of atheists are; That’s okay, I don’t begrudge anyone anything, but I fail to recognize the relevance in relation to being an atheist.
When I was a Christian, I was always taught that as a Christian, when I died, I’d go to be the Lord. Maybe others reading this were taught the same but where is that in the bible? I used to look for it, but never found anything I could actually point out that actually said specifically that we’d all be going to Heaven upon our death. Yet, it seems to be taught as an actual fact, even today.
Something that has always bothered me, even when I was a Christian, is the idea that our rights are “God given”. No, it’s not your government that determines your rights as a person, but “God”. If that’s true, why are rights of people so different in the various countries around the world?
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