IN THE PREVIOUS POST ON THIS TOPIC I responded to the question, "If you're an atheist, why do you spend so much time talking about God and religion?" in three ways:
- I outlined the types of writing about those topics on the daily mull by listing the actual posts on God or Religion within the last thirty days.
Those posts only constituted about a third in all—less than I would have guessed, but still more than someone might expect from an atheist. - I gave some of the reasons that I write this blog at all—reasons I started with, before realizing I had become an atheist, which haven't changed since, and which bear on the question.
- I promised to explain, in this post, the specific reasons that I wrote each of the groups of posts which I had listed.
Those reasons follow, in detail:
- What the Bible Says about Abortion is part of an ongoing effort on my part to urge Christians, especially conservative Christians, to approach the Bible with more openness to what it actually says.
When I was very religious, and very conservative, this was one difference that I had with my fellow conservative Christians. It may have been due in part to the fact that I was an English major in college, and that I have always cared deeply about treating texts with respect—putting in the careful work and thought to understand them on their own terms, and not simply yanking sentences out of context to support ones own theories.
For whatever reason, it's still important to me that any ancient text be read respectfully. This is, of course, easier from an atheist point of view. I can, for example, point out that the Bible doesn't seem to give children (let alone fetuses) any of the rights or even value of personhood until a full month after birth—since I am free to disagree with the Bible on that point. Believers have a more difficult row to hoe.
Those posts are also an attempt to let my fellow atheists see that some Christians are more consistent than others about their beliefs. By explaining my own struggles with my beliefs when I was a fundamentalist, I hope to educate some of my atheist friends who are too quick to believe that all, or most, Christians are completely phony.
Also, I would not be at all upset if I were instrumental in helping some fundamentalists to become pro-choice. - Atheism and Religion: A False Division? This was an attempt to address an issue that is important to me personally, but which I also believe is very important culturally at the moment.
While I happen to think that my theist friends are making a mistake, I don't think that they are the enemy. The cultural battle is not between religion and non-religion, or between atheism and theism, but between reasonable people on one side (both theist and atheist) and irrationality, bigotry, and hate on the other.
Show me a gay-bashing, authoritarian, racist, anti-intellectual atheist, and I'll show you a dangerous person who, like all dangerous people, needs a mommy really, really badly.
Show me a deeply religious person who respects the rights of gays and women, understands the importance of science and critical thinking, and judges others by their character rather than the color of their skin or their national origin, and I'll show you an ally. - I posted Evolution, Religion, and Atheism because I thought the results of the Pew poll demonstrated some very interesting things about the relationship between religious and political world-views in this country.
- The posts on The Legend of the Cherokee were only incidentally about religion. I've posted regularly on propaganda emails of all types, mostly non-religious. (see here and here and here)
My interest in these is about how the bizarre political rhetoric operates, twisting reality so subtly that the reader hardly notices.
This particular email used the story of a rite of a Cherokee rite of passage as a kind of parable of Christian theology. The problem was that if you actually read what the story said, accepting the metaphors which the email assigned, it said the exact opposite of what the email claimed.
My post was only about God, in this case, because the email was. - The series on Emerging Spirituality is my attempt to tie some of these themes together—to explore the larger pattern in the themes that have emerged as I've written about human nature, politics, rhetoric, atheism, Christianity, values, models, world-view, and the nature of knowledge over the last couple of years.
These themes seem to me to dovetail to tell a larger story about who we are as humans, the struggles we're currently facing as a nation, and the way forward we must find if we are to survive without killing each other, enslaving each other, or simply committing global suicide.
Part of this larger pattern is the fact that there's a lot of propaganda out there, helping people to act against their own best interests. It encourages hate and fear and love of ignorance. It's dangerous, not only for the people it's aimed at, but for the rest of us as well, as the last eight years testify.
And, unfortunately, a certain brand of conservative, anti-intellectual, authoritarian, and bigoted religion is part and parcel of that propaganda effort.
In these circumstances, even atheists need to talk about religion.
At least, that's what I think today.
