The World Beyond BetterMost > Anything Goes

Atheists: Come out, come out, wherever you are

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YaadPyar:
No - I'm not an atheist.  I'm not going to try to define or defend my own reality here.  Just wanted to comment about something Barb mentioned.


--- Quote from: ednbarby on May 31, 2006, 08:21:20 am ---
You get up to north-central Florida - what we call "the I-4 corridor," you do get up into some real Deliverance-type locales.  :shudder:  I shoulda known I was in trouble when it was the first thing one of my new neighbors in the neighborhood we moved to two years ago asked me, and when someone who just moved in a few houses down a little while ago asked me in our first conversation.  Oh, and Big Surprise - they have a "Bush/Cheney 2004" bumper sticker, a fish emblem AND a "Choose Life" license plate on *both* their cars - the Trinity.


--- End quote ---

I moved to Chicago after 12 years in Tallahassee, which Barb will know as the deeper south part of Florida.  In my first job there, we had a special luncheon event.  Everyone was asked to hold hands as we thanked Jesus for the meal.  I was stunned.  I grew up in Kansas, which is pretty hard-core Bible belt anyway, but this was a whole new level of discomfort for me.  But I also came to understand that praying publicly was about culture and community as much as it was about religion and belief. 

Anyway - the thought that got me posting is this: notions about G*d and religion have turned into a philosphical battlefield, each one taking a stand in opposition to another, daring the other to prove/disprove the truth/reality of their belief.

My own experience with the issues raised in this thread is that truth doesn't need defending.  Truth doesn't need proving.  Truth doesn't need me to proclaim it to be so.  It exists beyond me, and maybe in spite of me, but certainly not because of me. 

I know folks on all sides are wounded from the violence done in the name of G*d.  But I'm stepping off the battlefield here myself...

ednbarby:
Oh, God.  I've lived in suburbia now for - eek - nigh on 20 years.  Well, 33, if you count my childhood.  Grew up in suburban Rochester, NY - Gates, to be exact - until I was 13, then lived in a very rural, small town - albeit a "bedroom community" of Rochester on a lake (and LOVED everything about it) for 9 years, 4 of which I was in college in another very rural, small town in Northern New York.

And it's in suburbia where I'm seeing fish emblems, "Support Our Troops" yellow ribbon magnets (funny how the two so often go together), and American flags adorning more cars than I could shake a stick at.  Actually, as conservative as Dayton, OH, is, where I lived for six years right out of college, I didn't see them then.  But that's because Bush, Sr. and Clinton were running the country for all those years, so those ninnies kept their views where they should be - to themselves.

When I go back up to Rochester, I see that sort of stuff on the expressway, but not so much in that rural, small town I lived in and loved so much all those years (I try to drive through there at least once a year).  People who live there have pretty much always lived there, so, while it's clique-ish, they keep their beliefs to themselves.  I guess because they all know what's what and who's who, so they don't feel the need to advertise it.  I think the suburban sprawl makes people feel disconnected, somehow, and so they feel much more compelled to affix such things to their cars, I think, to say "Here I am!  This is what I'm about!"  It's just disturbing to me that more and more of them seem to be about spewing their religious beliefs in my general direction on the highways and byways.

I'm trying to sympathize with them, but there's an inherent arrogance to it I can't abide.  It's the same reason I can't keep my own in-your-face bumper stickers on my car for very long.  As angry as I am at them, I can't stand the thought of inflicting my views on others.

serious crayons:

--- Quote from: Ellemeno on May 31, 2006, 03:11:41 am ---
--- Quote ---Quote from: ednbarby on May 27, 2006, 06:44:10 am
When churchies ask me where I go to church now,
--- End quote ---
Barb, I haven't been asked that since I left the South.  It sure was one of the first three questions people used to ask there.

--- End quote ---

When I was searching for an assisted living apartment for my mom a couple of years ago, the manager of one place asked me, conversationally, if she belonged to a church. I said yeah, she used to be active in the Unitarian Church. He gave a puzzled look and said "Unitarian. Is that a real religion?" He almost caught himself in time, but didn't (he stopped mid "religion").

That was in suburban Minneapolis, a pretty liberal city. When I lived in the South, no one ever asked me where I went to church (answer: nowhere), but then again I lived in New Orleans.

ednbarby:

--- Quote from: YaadPyar on May 31, 2006, 10:52:58 am ---My own experience with the issues raised in this thread is that truth doesn't need defending.  Truth doesn't need proving.  Truth doesn't need me to proclaim it to be so.  It exists beyond me, and maybe in spite of me, but certainly not because of me. 

--- End quote ---

Amen, sister.  :)

ednbarby:

--- Quote from: latjoreme on May 31, 2006, 03:59:55 pm ---Barb, I haven't been asked that since I left the South.  It sure was one of the first three questions people used to ask there.

When I was searching for an assisted living apartment for my mom a couple of years ago, the manager of one place asked me, conversationally, if she belonged to a church. I said yeah, she used to be active in the Unitarian Church. He gave a puzzled look and said "Unitarian. Is that a real religion?" He almost caught himself in time, but didn't (he stopped mid "religion").
--- End quote ---

Now, asking that in that context isn't a bad thing.  But to editorialize her choice - GAH!  THAT'S the arrogance I'm talkin' 'bout.

What Celeste has said has struck a nerve.  Makes me think of a line from The Eagles' "The Great Divide" - "We satisfy our endless needs and justify our bloody deeds in the name of Destiny and in the name of God."

Every time I hear that song, I can't help but sing out loud the words "... and in the name of God."  So true it isn't even remotely funny.

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