After a number of my friends and family expressed deep concerns over my leaving the faith, I have been thinking about how to communicate the need for all people to think critically, to investigate the evidence, and to accept the conclusions to which the evidence points. This, in a nutshell, is how I've not only become an atheist (practically, anyhow), but also how I've become more and more convinced of how wrongheaded Christianity's claims to exclusivism are. So, I thought this parable below might convey the point best:
One day, in a small town, someone murdered a well-known citizen (more after the jump...)
Showing posts with label freedom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label freedom. Show all posts
Friday, August 5, 2011
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
No TV
About six months ago, my wife and I gave away our television.
We came to the decision one night, while we were rearranging our apartment. We looked at the wall that was dominated by our TV—not that it was large; I'm still in school, after all—and realized that we were trying to organize our living space around this one thing neither of us thought was that important. Then, we realized that we were spending hours at a time just watching the damn thing, letting our impulsiveness and laziness get the better of us. So, we did the only reasonable thing and promptly sold it. (I admit I was ambivalent, though, about the person who bought it from us: a fellow student who could use the TV to entertain his two-year-old. Start 'em young, right?)
Life changed the next day. Suddenly, we had time to do a number of things we'd simply never made time for when we had the TV. My wife took up knitting, I read about twice as much, we both worked more effectively, and (of all things!) we began to talk a lot more. (Full disclosure: we still use Hulu and Netflix on demand, but we severely limit our time with these to under 4 hours/week.) What's more, I believe this rather insignificant change (in the grand scheme) made possible two key changes for us.
We came to the decision one night, while we were rearranging our apartment. We looked at the wall that was dominated by our TV—not that it was large; I'm still in school, after all—and realized that we were trying to organize our living space around this one thing neither of us thought was that important. Then, we realized that we were spending hours at a time just watching the damn thing, letting our impulsiveness and laziness get the better of us. So, we did the only reasonable thing and promptly sold it. (I admit I was ambivalent, though, about the person who bought it from us: a fellow student who could use the TV to entertain his two-year-old. Start 'em young, right?)
Life changed the next day. Suddenly, we had time to do a number of things we'd simply never made time for when we had the TV. My wife took up knitting, I read about twice as much, we both worked more effectively, and (of all things!) we began to talk a lot more. (Full disclosure: we still use Hulu and Netflix on demand, but we severely limit our time with these to under 4 hours/week.) What's more, I believe this rather insignificant change (in the grand scheme) made possible two key changes for us.
Friday, May 27, 2011
"Tomorrow"
I've been mulling over an old Scottish proverb lately: "Fools look to tomorrow; the wise use tonight." Ironically, it's been on my mind for some days, but I've put off actually writing about it for nearly a week. So what does that make me?
The notion of doing something "tomorrow," or postponing life for just a little while, isn't all bad. But what's struck me lately is the way that so many people—in religion, politics, advertising—utilize the idea of "tomorrow" to keep people from doing anything meaningful today. How many of the religious faithful have managed to avoid improving our world or tending to the poor, etc., because they were so confident that "tomorrow," that someday-paradise, a god would step in and make things right (or would remove the "righteous" from this wicked world). I think many religious leaders (though not all) intuit that if people realized they could do the work that they had assigned to God, then people would soon depend less on any god for their salvation, i.e., the health and welfare of our lives and planet.
Politicians use "tomorrow" very slyly, too, and usually to win political office. Look to Barack Obama. (Note: I'm in no way unappreciative of the things Obama has done in office; I'm more disenchanted with many of the promises on which he hasn't followed through. He's still the best option we've had in the U.S. for a while.) Obama's campaign, like so many other politicians at every level and from every party, was about getting voters to believe that with him in leadership, "tomorrow" would be a better place than today. Yet, for Americans at least, this has resulted in a dependency upon government to change the world that looks strikingly similar to that of religion. So now, many Americans sit and wait for government to improve their lives, to make a better "tomorrow," while the world around us begs for change today.
The notion of doing something "tomorrow," or postponing life for just a little while, isn't all bad. But what's struck me lately is the way that so many people—in religion, politics, advertising—utilize the idea of "tomorrow" to keep people from doing anything meaningful today. How many of the religious faithful have managed to avoid improving our world or tending to the poor, etc., because they were so confident that "tomorrow," that someday-paradise, a god would step in and make things right (or would remove the "righteous" from this wicked world). I think many religious leaders (though not all) intuit that if people realized they could do the work that they had assigned to God, then people would soon depend less on any god for their salvation, i.e., the health and welfare of our lives and planet.
Politicians use "tomorrow" very slyly, too, and usually to win political office. Look to Barack Obama. (Note: I'm in no way unappreciative of the things Obama has done in office; I'm more disenchanted with many of the promises on which he hasn't followed through. He's still the best option we've had in the U.S. for a while.) Obama's campaign, like so many other politicians at every level and from every party, was about getting voters to believe that with him in leadership, "tomorrow" would be a better place than today. Yet, for Americans at least, this has resulted in a dependency upon government to change the world that looks strikingly similar to that of religion. So now, many Americans sit and wait for government to improve their lives, to make a better "tomorrow," while the world around us begs for change today.
Monday, May 16, 2011
Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath"
Today, I watched John Ford's adaptation of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. Only a few minutes in, I could see why the film is frequently in the top fifteen of a wide number of "greatest films" lists. Yet the beauty of the film aside, what struck me was the degree to which I found myself resonating with many of the not-so-subtle political and social critiques leveled by both film and novel alike. It's probably my synthesizing mind—which finds things from disparate sources and weave them together into a more cogent whole—that makes me aware of some of the most important ones, critiques that are no less apropos today than they were in 1939/40.
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