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I get the impression that most Christians these days think Faitheists (Atheists who are open to using religious faith to accomplish common, usually humanitarian, goals — who aren’t as interested in deconstructing religion) are on their side more than Antitheists (Atheists who are not as open to using religious faith to accomplish common goals and who are more overtly interested in deconstructing religion) — probably because Antitheists have the “anti” in their title.

The reason I am an Antitheist, though, is because I genuinely care about Christians.  I was one for a long time, and the last thing I wanted as a Christian was someone who didn’t believe it using the religion to manipulate me.  This was because I wanted to ensure that if someone was giving me spiritual advice, they were doing so from a place of honesty and consistency.

If God is not real, then He was made up,  And the question to ask, if you think He was made up, concerns why He was made up.  To that question several answers may be given, but I think one of the most possible answers is that God, if He was made up, was made up to manipulate or otherwise coerce people.  I think most Christians can probably understand that — they may not concede that God is not real, obviously, but they may concede that if He were not real, He was probably made up, in part, to get people to behave a certain way.

One common attack we Antitheists hurl towards Christianity is that, to us, God appears to be a God of the Gaps — He is the placeholder for knowledge we don’t know.  This can lead, it seems, to premature conclusions.  I have had many debates with Christians about this, and will likely have many more; we can definitely debate this point.  But if God is a God of the Gaps, that’s problematic in several ways.  Take the view one has of humanity, for example.  When you meet someone, you don’t know all about them at first glance.  You have to get to know them, and even after a lifetime of doing so there are likely still mysteries in that individuals that you haven’t grasped. But that’s important, right? You shouldn’t be too prejudiced against people from the start.  You should try to get to know them and who they actually are, rather than make up stereotypes about them.

Now, the Bible says we are all sinners, according to many Christians (likely there will be a Christian reading this thinking, “I don’t think ANYONE is a sinner — straw man” — and my response  is that it’s not a straw man if there are people who believe it; if you don’t believe it, you’re not one of the people I’m addressing). Isn’t that a tremendous prejudice against ourselves as a human race?  I think that if God doesn’t exist and, thus, is in no position to declare anyone a sinner, it would be healthy to get to know people first.  Filling in that gap of knowledge with information from a God who doesn’t exist really closes people off from each other.

In addition, one would need to ask — why would someone want to create a God who said we were all sinners?  To myself and other Antitheists, it’s clear that such a concept of God could be a way to manipulate people — if you can break down someone’s self esteem by saying they are a sinner and then make them dependent on a being of your own making if they want to get it back, you have tremendous power to manipulate them.  So, long story short, if God is not real, then He seems to be a way to manipulate people that is kept alive by pastors and other religious leaders.

I’m an Antitheist because I don’t want to manipulate you with a version of a God I don’t believe in.  I don’t want to endorse the view that you’re a sinner in need of grace if that’s not true, because I don’t want to help others control your sense of self esteem like that.  And I don’t think you’d really want me to, if I didn’t believe it.

This doesn’t mean I’m not interested in trying to develop a relationship with you or trying to get to know you in ways outside of our disagreements with religion.  Just the opposite.  It’s because I genuinely care about you in other ways that I care about the religion you practice. In my view, a true friendship is one in which friends are open and honest with each other, so I’m openly honest about the fact that I don’t believe in God.  That’s why I’ll tell you straight up that I don’t want you to be a Christian, because I hate you thinking you need a Savior I don’t think you need. Because I’m open about where I stand, you won’t have to worry about my using our relationship to, like, manipulate you into leaving your religion or anything.  I’m going to tell you straight where I’m coming from in regards to religion.

As I speak my mind, I invite you to speak yours.  I’ll be honest and straightforward, and I hope you feel you feel you can be honest and straightforward with me, as well. I’m not going to endorse views I don’t believe in, and I’m going to be clear that I don’t think belief in God is healthy.  I think civility gets in the way when it polices conversation so much that we can’t be honest with each other, or that we appear to endorse views that we don’t, actually, endorse.

I also think my honesty here can make us better friends.  A friendship that expects us to be silent about the most important parts of our lives somehow seems less genuine to me than one in which both sides straightforwardly speak their minds.

Hopefully that clears some things up.

During the pain and turmoil of Baltimore, the site that I’m blogging on, Patheos, saw fit to feature on its main Facebook page four articles out of several published on the incident from its 500 blogs. Three of them — one by a nun discussing her witnessing of racism among her students, another written by a Baltimore native, and a third with extensive Martin Luther King, Jr. quotes — provided interesting perspectives.  But an article written by Kathy Schiffer entitled “Where is America’s Black President While Baltimore Burns?” also made the main Patheos Facebook page.

I felt a bit embarrassed, to be honest with you, when I read the contents.  Normally I wouldn’t see such an article fit to respond to. But this was chosen, for some reason, to grace the Facebook Page for Patheos at a time when many were in the most pain from the incident, and as this Facebook page has become more of the public face, in ways, of Patheos than its website’s home page, I thought it best to respond to it directly.

Neither am I the only one, for that matter. Michael Stone, from The Progressive Humanist Examiner, commented: “Reads like propaganda from the KKK.”

Other comments were also damning.  One commentator stated, “Because Obama is responsible for the actions of every black person everywhere, duh. I can’t remember the last Patheos article that wasn’t horseshit. Time to unlike and move on…” 

Another stated, “I don’t trust this blogger and have little respect for the article.”

Still another remarked, “Patheos becomes more of a joke everyday. If he speaks out he is an opportunist using the race card, if he doesn’t he is ignoring the situation. Do you people remember when he spoke out on the illegal arrest of a college professor for breaking into his own house? The press hounded him. Patheos has become a joke. Where is the old page admin?”

And so on. And normally I wouldn’t really care — except I genuinely care about what’s happening in Baltimore, because I’m a black man who wants to walk the streets safely and who feels solidarity with other individuals who have the same desire.  Featuring articles like this — especially when Baltimore was  at its most intense — radiates from a site I write on a fairly disturbing message.  If people blamed Kathy Schiffer alone for the article, that would be one thing.  But when they see it as reflective of a site I write on…try as I might, I can’t keep my mouth shut.

First, there’s the problem of the title.  Why does the fact that Obama is black need to have anything to do with him, in particular, responding in a certain way?  No one said during Bush’s presidency, “Where is America’s white President in the Boston ruins?” back in 2004 when thousands of fans rioted after Boston won the World Series.  And if anyone had said that, it would have clearly been seen as racist; those riots were not seen as Bush’s fault.  And Bush put no policies in place, that I’m aware of, to stop this kind of thing.  He didn’t come out and condemn them, and if he had, people would have probably been pissed at him, because sports.  They would have been more upset if he saw himself as responsible for this because he was white, because it’s not white people’s fault when other people riot.

“Racism” is the reason the pattern of holding all black people responsible for the worst things a small group of black people do has no analogy among white people.  And not only that — we have to be held responsible for things, it seems, that white people do, as well.  When someone commits injustice against a black person based on race, it’s up to us to march respectully.  If #alllivesmatter, why aren’t white people in the streets as much as black people?  I’ll believe that all lives matter when those who toss that hashtag around demand justice loudly for Freddie Gray instead of just looking at us black individuals to do it, and stop sitting in distant judgment when we choose to give the shit they should be giving themselves.

Second, Kathy Schiffer blatantly and jaw-droppingly ignores what the President, like, actually said.  Schiffer said:

Do you hear his plea for the criminal activity to stop, for arsonists and thieves and bullies to go home, or to pray to God that law and order will prevail, that justice will be served?  I didn’t hear it, either. What I heard was more fuel for the fire–another black politician agreeing that yes, there is good reason for citizen revolt.

This couldn’t be further from the truth. In the speech she referenced (which actually appears to be an off the cuff answer to a question) Obama said:

Second, my thoughts are with the police officers who were injured in last night’s disturbances.  It underscores that that’s a tough job and we have to keep that in mind, and my hope is that they can heal and get back to work as soon as possible.

Point number three, there’s no excuse for the kind of violence that we saw yesterday.  It is counterproductive.  When individuals get crowbars and start prying open doors to loot, they’re not protesting, they’re not making a statement — they’re stealing.  When they burn down a building, they’re committing arson.  And they’re destroying and undermining businesses and opportunities in their own communities that rob jobs and opportunity from people in that area.

So it is entirely appropriate that the mayor of Baltimore, who I spoke to yesterday, and the governor, who I spoke to yesterday, work to stop that kind of senseless violence and destruction.  That is not a protest.  That is not a statement.  It’s people — a handful of people taking advantage of a situation for their own purposes, and they need to be treated as criminals.

Point number four, the violence that happened yesterday distracted from the fact that you had seen multiple days of peaceful protests that were focused on entirely legitimate concerns of these communities in Baltimore, led by clergy and community leaders.  And they were constructive and they were thoughtful, and frankly, didn’t get that much attention.  And one burning building will be looped on television over and over and over again, and the thousands of demonstrators who did it the right way I think have been lost in the discussion.

The overwhelming majority of the community in Baltimore I think have handled this appropriately, expressing real concern and outrage over the possibility that our laws were not applied evenly in the case of Mr. Gray, and that accountability needs to exist.  And I think we have to give them credit.  My understanding is, is you’ve got some of the same organizers now going back into these communities to try to clean up in the aftermath of a handful of criminals and thugs who tore up the place.  What they were doing, what those community leaders and clergy and others were doing, that is a statement.  That’s the kind of organizing that needs to take place if we’re going to tackle this problem.  And they deserve credit for it, and we should be lifting them up.

These are three points that Kathy Schiffer completely and totally ignored that came from Obama’s mouth.  And there were only six points — of the six points, three were about nonviolence.

That seems dishonest. At a time when Baltimore is in mourning…we need to make greater strides towards honesty.  We need to look at ourselves and diagnose what, exactly, the problem is, and to have people walk away from Patheos with the impression that this, out of all the views presented at that time, was the one we most represent was deeply embarrassing.

I hate giving more time to do this, but Kathy Schiffer, as if the former wasn’t enough, went on with this load of bull:

“I have consistently preached,” Dr. King said, “that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek.”  The National Endowment for the Humanities explains that King appealed to the local black population to use the courts and not the streets to secure civil rights. He counseled “law and order and common sense,” not demonstrations that “incite to hatred and violence,” as the most prudent means to promote justice.

If you follow the link in that quote, you’ll realize quickly that this is, perhaps, the worst possible thing she could have said, because the phrase “law and order and common sense” was actually a statement made by white clergymembers against the actions of Martin Luther King, Jr. In 1963, they wrote a letter in reaction to the sit-ins and demonstrations that, at the time, had landed MLK in prison.  The relevant parts stated (emphasis added):

Just as we formerly pointed out that “hatred and violence have no sanction in our religious and political traditions,” we also point out that such actions as incite to hatred and violence, however, technically peaceful those actions may be, have not contributed the resolution of our local problems. We do not believe that these days of new hope are days when extreme measures are justified in Birmingham….

We further strongly urge our own Negro community to withdraw support from these demonstrations, and to unite locally in working peacefully for a better Birmingham. When rights are consistently denied, a cause should be pressed in the courts and in negotiations among local leaders, and not in the streets. We appeal to both our white and Negro citizenry to observe the principles of law and order and common sense.

Those bolded quotes were written in critique of MLK’s actions.  They were the discussion that MLK was fighting against.  They were the words MLK was speaking against when he responded to them in his Letter From A Birmingham Jail, which criticizes Schiffer’s attitude far better than I could myself when he says here:

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace, which is the absence of tension, to a positive peace, which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

In your statement you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But is this a logical assertion? Isn’t this like condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn’t this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical inquiries precipitated the act by the misguided populace in which they made him drink hemlock? Isn’t this like condemning Jesus because his unique God consciousness and never ceasing devotion to God’s will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion? We must come to see that, as the federal courts have consistently affirmed, it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest may precipitate violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber.

And, famously, although King said that riots were a destructive course of action, he emphasized that, “a riot is the voice of the unheard” and encouraged us to listen.

It is difficult to realize that Kathy Schiffer cares so little, it seems, for the actual stance of MLK that she will take the very words he gave his life to fighting against, put them in his mouth, and turn them against the cause and concern of those protesting in Baltimore.  It’s a terrible, offensive decision that perpetuates racism. The last time Baltimore rioted was in response to MLK’s death, and it looks like this article is trying to kill his viewpoint all over again.

At one of the most sensitive times of black experience with racism in this country.

And then, to add insult to injury, she continues:

[President Barack Obama’s] job is not to give voice to the “wounded blacks” and to increase sensitivity to perceived “racial inequities,” continually harping and thus encouraging further division. He was elected by the entire United States, and his job is to represent all Americans and to work toward greater unity.

No — encouraging division is letting it stay there, grow, and fester, not bringing light to division that exists so we can deal with it.  And furthemore — regardless of your skin tone, if racism exists, if people are wounded, it makes sense to highlight that. The thought that, by doing so, you are endorsing riots is fairly offensive.  If black individuals in this country are wounded, and if racial inequities exist, then it is the job of a unifier to encourage equality and heal the wounds, instead of allowing the division to worsen and the wounds to fester.

Finally, she ends:

I am not–I repeat, NOT–advocating that we turn a blind eye to police injustice, if and where it exists. If mistakes were made, then extensive reeducation and training must ensure that mistakes are not repeated. If crimes were committed, the criminals (even if they are police officers) must be brought to justice. But it is more than time for the American President to quit bitching about racism and to be the leader this nation needs.

If police injustice exists against black individuals — and places like the DOJ report for Ferguson and an article on Baltimore written in September of 2014 are among many indications they exist in spades — then, um, “bitching about racism” is inseparable from engaging in “extensive reeducation and training.”  As for the declaration that Obama should be “the leader this nation needs” — it is hardly worth rebutting, seeing as how she ran roughshod over what the President stated.

In fact, the entire article is hardly worth rebutting, and I would not even bother, except, again, it was on Patheos’s main Facebook page — which, again, I wouldn’t care about, but it is, more or less, the most visible face of the overall Patheos site, it seems.  Hopefully this post serves to distance myself from those sentiments as much and as directly as I can.

Thanks for reading.

Let me tell you what this is not.

This is not a several part series trying to explain to you, as Rachel Held Evans and other progressive Christians do, that the straightforward reading of the text is not quite true, or should be seen differently, or that conservatives are ignoring the Bible’s nuances, or not getting to the spirit of what is being taught.

This is not here to shame fundamentalists, primarily, in order to applaud progressive Christians.  And I’m not going to be doing a lot of thorough exegesis, or recommending several thick books that state God is kosher with same sex marriage, or any of that.

I’m also not interested in telling you a lie that will make you smile.

Why?  Because when you’re trying to engineer an egalitarian society, messing with nonexistent variables doesn’t seem all that helpful.

Here’s my interpretation of the Bible’s opinion on Same-Sex marriage:

Anything derogatory it says about same-sex marriage is nothing more than prejudice against gay individuals by primitive tribes.

That’s it.  It’s prejudice encapsulated in the time-bubble of the Bible.

So, what I’d like you to do is throw your Bible away.  Because, honestly, this is ridiculous. Why the heck would you hang on to that ancient rulebook crafted by bigots?  It’s time to look past that to people who exist and who love each other.

I guess that’s why I’m an anti-theist.  I see progressives and conservatives and fatheists arguing over what God supposedly “REALLY” said, and I’m standing here like — can we move pass this?  Can we move past trying to get to the “true” meaning of texts and start looking at, like, the flesh and blood people right in front of us?

Why do people have to make this complicated? I mean, get past the Bible, and there’s really no logical reason to keep people of the same sex from getting married to each other. None. If people love each other, they should be able to show it, as long as it’s consensual.

I mean, this doesn’t seem complicated. Why am I still writing about this? I feel like we should just close the book on this thing and move on.

It absolutely ridiculous and embarrassing that there are lgbt youth who are suicidal and forced through ridiculous therapies because we see them as having some kind of deformity. People.  They love someone and/or identify as a certain sex, just like many of us do. It’s time to get the fuck over it. It’s not complicated.  If the book is in the way — just throw the damn thing away.  Seriously. It’s a book. That’s all it is.  There’s no God, no hocus-pocus anti-gay or lgbt ambivalent deity here to smite people who want to share their love with each other. Can we just move on from that?

If you’re in the way of love because of, like, your religion or whatever — look. This is love two people share. Making them a goddamn cake to celebrate their love for each other ain’t gonna kill ya, and if the only reason you give them grief by refusing is because of a goddamn book — seriously, get over it.

Here’s my interpretation of God’s opinion in the Bible — I don’t give a shit. Like, I care about it because it’s impacting culture, but beyond that I don’t care.  Because I care about people who actually exist instead of fantasy figures who…don’t.

I mean, this is absurd.  I’m tired of being trapped in a stone age when there are people in the current age who want to show their love for each other.

Let’s quit making this so damn complicated.  Two people love each other. They want to get married. Awesome.

Let’s move on, guys.  Throw that book away, loosen up and cheer a gay wedding, support lgbt individuals and then, like, let’s get some ice cream or play ping pong or something.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ybAlFrV8f4[/youtube]

So…um…yeah. There’s my grand exposition.

Really, seriously, pretty please with a cherry on top, throw away the fucking book.

Let’s make your “Bible” the heart you see through your neighbor’s eyeballs, not hundreds of pages of outdated superstition.

Goddamn.

Have you ever known what it felt like to be a problem?

It’s a question WEB Dubois asked once in The Souls of Black Folk.  I think it’s this question that is driving people to ruin their own neighborhoods.

Here’s a secret you may not know:  A lot of us black people hate ourselves.

We are told by a country that enslaved us for hundreds of years and segregated us for a hundred more and sidelines us in every area from the court system, to the education system, to treatment by law enforcement, to just about every conceivable way in culture…that we’re second class citizens.  This is a problem brought about by our own doing, we’re told, and if we had the courage to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps, we would be out of it.

Don’t blame anyone else for your problems, we’re told.

Blame yourself.  And so many of us, in spite of ourselves, see our worlds as prisons.  We are not in a position to demand respect and a sense of dignity from other people.  When we do, we are demeaned, rejected, killed.

We start to internalize the pain.  We become frustrated with the problem.  We become angry.

What you don’t know is that, for several days before the violence in Baltimore, there were peaceful protests.  Thousands strong — think about it — thousands strong cared enough to stop what they were doing, brave traffic and inconvenience to their lives, and march, peacefully, to show the United States they were hurting.  Because it was their fault, you understand.  It was their fault Freddie Gray died, in many of their minds.  If they had marched longer.  If they had been more insistent.  If they had demonstrated more, maybe the powers that be, the great media gods, would look down on them and find them worthy and do something.  Perhaps the police could care.  Maybe, unlike the days of Martin Luther King, Jr., they did have to sacrifice broken limbs and concussions and lives to get people to care.

But the media gods did not care. They hardly blinked.  From their great white throne they mostly ignored the calm protests and sacrifice.

And so the people wondered what they were doing wrong.  And they looked at their broken down communities, and their hate of their broken down communities extended to themselves.  They looked at their paychecks and saw the low numbers reflect hatred.  They looked at the assistance checks they needed and were hated for needing because they were unemployed, and saw themselves as problems.  They looked at the police who had damaged their lives and ruined them with criminal records and treated them unjustly for as long as they could remember and beyond.

And this was all their fault.  Theirs.  And nobody cared, because why would they?  Those others weren’t the problem.  They were the problem.  Their neighborhood was the problem.

They knew that going into the rich white neighborhoods would result in strong censure — they would probably be killed there quickly, and — another secret — inside, they may have believed they would have deserved it.  That’s what we taught them.  It was not the fault of the rich white neighborhoods.  It was the fault of their own care of their own neighborhoods that this happened to them.

They were the problem to hate.  Their neighborhood was the problem to hate.  And there was frustration, because the enormous responsibility they felt to care, to give a shit, to plead to the power of America was unredeemed.  They must be the problem.

Not all rioted. But even many who didn’t, many who protected the stores and shops, understood what it was to hate your given identity so much that you couldn’t bear the sight of its cultivation.

Because it all insults you.  It all reminds you that you’re a problem.  You haven’t traced it back to white America, because everyone has said that the problem is right in front of your face.  It’s your kids you can’t control — and if you were a better parent who stayed home more instead of working long hours or getting locked up, that problem wouldn’t be there, so that’s your fault.  It’s your job that doesn’t pay enough — and if you had learned to read in the subpar-schools, you might have gone to college.  It’s your corner store that taunts you day in, day out, full of food while your children are starving and reminding you, day in, day out, that the reason you can’t go in there and get food is all your fault, it’s completely your fault, because you’re lazy, worthless, and nobody gives a shit about you nobody gives a shit about you NOBODY gives a SHIT about you, because you don’t deserve it, because you have children living on top ramen and that’s your fault, too, because what kind of parent feeds their children that filth, and if you’re trying to find work to feed them something better then you aren’t spending enough time with your kids and that’s why you’re ruining the black community.

It’s your fault. It’s your fault. It’s your fault.  And nobody feels any empathy for you that could do anything about it and if you want them to feel empathy for your tears that means you’re not stiffening your chin and that’s your fault.  You’re not a strong black man if you cry and you’re another mad black woman if you complain so you don’t embrace those stereotypes that you could become at any moment, that maybe deep down inside you feel you ARE because you’re the goddamn problem…and you see your kid look at you in anger because he hates you, too, because you’ve taught him that you hate yourself because the media has taught you that it’s right to hate yourself — but that’s not the media’s fault either, it’s yours because YOU’RE the problem — and he hates that he didn’t choose to be born here and he doesn’t deserve this and his hate boils over and he realizes that he won’t get heard and maybe he decides he won’t be another person who just shrugs and takes it like you do.  He hates his home and his neighborhood and the begging and pleading and scraping it takes to survive and he doesn’t want it to define him so he  and it doesn’t define him but the trapdoor is glued shut.  He feels the shame when his mother struggles to pay the court costs from yet another expensive traffic ticket (as happened in Ferguson) and gets thrown in jail and he feels she deserves it because that’s what she is taught — while the mothers on the other side of the track don’t even care, pay it without a second thought, and she feels that maybe she deserves it, too, inside.  And it’s not really the fault of the drastic racism in employment rates and the racist police and the hundreds of years of subservience the blacks had to endure while the white individuals built up wealth — it is this situation, here, and now.  It’s because his mother is a problem and he was born a problem and there is no penance, no way out, of being a goddamn problem, except there is except he isn’t finding it because the problem is him..

It’s pain. It’s deep pain that sears one’s conscience, because it says the conscience isn’t worth the attention of the great white media or the police or the government when yet another dead friend is on the street.  Your conscience does not matter unless it becomes ours and if it can never become ours you are an unresolved Problem.

You insist over and over and over again that black lives matter– black lives matter– black lives matter but the marches are getting old and the slogans seem empty and the cameras don’t care and “blacks lives matter” seems like a punchline to a joke and “all lives matter” insistent insisters say that even saying your life matters is selfish and wrong; you can do that but shouldn’t because it’s wrong because they don’t care about your selfish sentimentalism, and you can march and you can toil and you can be “good “all you want but no one cares and the doors to your neighborhood and the prison of self-hatred are slammed and the iron of resolve meets the heat of hate and welds the doors shut and………………..

Blind with rage, you ban against the prison walls.  You’re not going to play the game anymore.  If you want to feed your kids something better than goddamn top ramen, you’re done begging. They’ll call you a criminal, but they have already criminalized you so much that now, you don’t care; your conscience is seared and taken and gone and invalidated and a problem. The ones who constructed your morality can beat you in the streets.  Morality doesn’t exist here. It does not matter.  If you are going to be forced to die because you’re so terrible that that’s what you deserve, then, you decide, you’re going to feed your goddamn kids something halfway fucking decent first.  It cannot make you any more guilty than you already are.

And the focus is not, at this point, on the white individuals.  The focus is on you.  It’s on what you need.  What you’re desperate to have.  You’ve played by the rules most of your life, and you’re done.  Or you’ve watched your elders play by the rules for most of their lives, and you’re done because you don’t want to be them, you need to be more than them, and so you go out to the goddamn streets and you start a fire to remind yourself you’re here and that your life fucking matters even if they say your soul does match your skin.

And then the mother meets her son in the street and the hatred of his eyes meets the shame of hers — not of each other but of themselves — and she sees a dead son who police would think deserves to die and he sees a woman who is so terrified of the world around her that she keeps her son indoors against the ever-present background of the ongoing self-hatred of violence outdoors and he sees that as indicative of second-class citizenhood because that is what they have both been told and in their hate they fight in the street and America calls it beautiful love and continues the cycle by putting it on the news because that’s what we care about that’s what we want, the love of self hatred that has kept that neighborhood alive and dying for as long as we can remember and beyond…

I’m not sure…but maybe that’s partly why the protestors in Baltimore tore up their own neighborhoods.  I’m open to other suggestions, though.

Thanks for reading.

 

So.  There was a riot awhile ago that is lauded by most Americans.  Respected. The same people who say today that Baltimore was a crime against innocent shopkeepers tend to think this riot was awesome, even though it completely destroyed hundreds of thousands of dollars of property.  Which is, obviously, an outrage.

And it was put on by smugglers.  These individuals smuggled goods here in the states, and then gave them to shop owners who sold them.  Only, the government got smart about it and made it so that the smuggled goods got taxed and what it saw as the legitimately obtained goods did not.

This angered the smugglers.  So they went to a location for the delivery of the legitimate goods and completely ruined them.  They meant to make a statement.  Served the government right, they figured — trying to ruin their lucrative smuggling business.  Jerks.

All told, they ruined about $1.7 million worth of merchandise.  And the aftermath started an even greater era of violence that ended in millions more in destructive consequences, when the government sought to retaliate and the people fought back.

And yet, today the rioters are not only respected — they’re celebrated.  That’s right — celebrated.

I get why, though.  Even though their actions eventually contributed to an escalation that resulted in the loss of thousands of lives…I think, in a way, they managed to get some semblance of justice.  And that’s recognized today, it seems, because people choose to recognize it.

I’m talking, of course, about folks like Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and Paul Revere, the — what’s the word we use for them?  Oh, the “thugs” who participated in the Boston Tea Party, which led to the the Boston Port Act, which, arguably, led to the Revolutionary War.

Which we celebrate every July 4th.

So…that riot seemed to, like, totally matter to many of us; its causes were anything but ignored.

Here’s the question I’m having trouble getting past:  Why didn’t the riot manage to not matter?  I mean, if Britain had its version of FOX News at the time, they would have interviewed the protesters, talked about the damage, and King George would insist that this was not the way to respond to problems with taxes.  He would condemn the violence, saying that it wasn’t helping in the least.

And yet, it clearly did have what have turned out to be highly respected effects.

What is the difference between The Boston Tea Party and the Baltimore Riots, in principle?  Why did one take off while the other, people insist, fundamentally undercut the voice of blacks in this country?

I’m glad that we finally have an opportunity to hear Jenner tell us Jenner’s story.

For decades, Jenner has been unable to express who Jenner actually is.  And much of the reason why is us — Jenner played a part, for decades, largely because of us.

Now, a lot of you know, if you’ve followed my blog at all, that I’m an anti-theist and a liberal.  Jenner is a conservative and a Christian.

If this were about my story, I would probably rail against religion — and I have, elsewhere, and will again.  I would probably insist on liberal interpretation — as I’ve done several times, and will do again.

But this is not about my story.

This is about Jenner’s story. So all our obsessions and self-consciousness about gender boundaries, all our selfish desires to force Jenner to be someone Jenner is not in order to stroke any sense of cis masculinity ego, and much of the desire to press Jenner into service for our individual agendas…even I have to admit that doesn’t really matter here and now.  What matters is Jenner’s story.

Not because Jenner has all the answers, or knows how to solve all the prejudice against transgender people, or because Jenner is the end all and be all of how to solve our problems with views on gender in society.  The mere fact that you are a prisoner does not mean that you have the knowledge to bring justice to the system that locked you up. I mean, if Jenner does have all those answers, then awesome, but that’s not why  I’m listening to Jenner.

For 65 years, Jenner didn’t get to tell us Jenner’s story.  Jenner told us Bruce Jenner’s story, a story of a hypermasculine man who served as the symbol of masculinity for us.  Jenner’s story was silenced and, then was pressed into service for years as a punchline for cheap jokes.  Jenner hasn’t really been able to tell us Jenner’s story for a long time.

So let’s listen.  Apparently Jenner hasn’t got all of life figured out, to hear Jenner tell it, and although Jenner talks about Bruce Jenner, who Jenner refers to as “him,” in the third person, Jenner is not completely ready, it seems, to publicly reveal the version of Jenner’s self that is “her” yet, fully, for fear of how the media will react.

But Jenner is finally, after 65 years of telling us the story we wanted to hear, excited to tell us Jenner’s own story.  Even if Jenner hadn’t given us Bruce Jenner, for a time the greatest athlete in the world and the ultimate poster-child for a masculinity Jenner did not feel, we would still owe it to Jenner to listen to Jenner’s story.

But given the added fact that Jenner told us, through tears and personal anguish, our own story of Bruce Jenner because of how much Jenner was concerned about our opinions…given the fact that Jenner gave us the mike to define Jenner’s life, in spite of tears and anguish…given that we insisted on holding the mike as Jenner began to reveal Jenner’s own self…

After greedily grasping onto the mike of someone else’s life for so long, we are way past due in giving it up.  However hard that is, I’m sure we can all agree that it is not as hard for any of us as it was for Jenner to tell a story that was not Jenner’s own for all those years.

The least we can do when the Jenner finally steps out from behind the curtain, worn out from a lifetime playing a part to entertain the millions even through tears and anguish, torture and fatigue and shame, is shake Jenner’s hand in profound respect, give Jenner a hug, and let Jenner finally tell us a story that is Jenner’s own.

And where we can set up amplifiers, open ears and minds, improve clarity to the watching world, silence hecklers, we should do so, I think.  That’s the job of us bloggers, as I see it.

But right now, we’re not on stage.

Finally, after 65 years, we’re getting to see Jenner enter, out of character.

At the least, that deserves a standing ovation as Jenner takes the mike:

ABC Breaking US News | US News Videos

I am persuaded that the phrase ‘child abuse’ is no exaggeration when used to describe what teachers and priests are doing to children whom they encourage to believe in something like the punishment of unshriven mortal sins in an eternal hell.

— Richard Dawkins

I’ve noticed something really weird over my time as an anti-theist.

When I state that I’m disturbed about children being told about hell, more often than not, the overwhelming response from Christians is, “Why are you so upset?”

The assumption is that there is something wrong with me.  If I were a rational, mentally healthy person, they seem to assume, I would look at children being taught about hell and think, “Oh, that’s just gravy.”

When I get that reaction, I’m a bit flabbergasted and confused.  What I want to say is: What the hell is wrong with you, that you aren’t upset?

Look, I get that you might be “uncomfortable” about hell.  I also get that many of y’all look at hell as like a buffet counter and you can kinda pick and choose what you like and don’t like about the concept.  And believe me, if you’re about to give me that hands-off, “I’m not God, so I don’t know who is going there, if anyone, but it’s gonna be justice, whatever it is” line, I’ve heard it a zillion times before (and almost every time it’s from a Christian who thinks they are brilliantly reinventing the wheel — newsflash, after 20+ years in the church, to say I’ve heard this before would be somewhat of an overstatement).

Whatever.  That’s all beside the point.

The point is that children are taught about a hell, terrorized about it for life, on slim to hardly any evidence, by parents they trust.  And the hell doesn’t even exist.

To those who ask me why I’m upset about this….

Why aren’t you pissed off at that? Why doesn’t that make you angry?

What the hell is wrong with you?  Seriously.  These are kids.

Imagine if no one else in the entire United States taught children about hell as a place of torment except for one family, who said that if you don’t follow God you’ll go there forever. You read that in the news.  We would all probably agree that this would be a horrendous thing to teach a child.  And if you weren’t disturbed by the news story, we would wonder — what the hell is wrong with you?

So it would be bad if it were just one family.  But it’s worse than that.

According to a recent survey conducted in the United States in 2013:

 Against a backdrop of horrific crimes and devastating natural disasters, 56% of Americans surveyed believe in the devil, 53% believe in hell and 43% believe in hell as “a place of suffering and punishment where people go after they die,” according to a recent poll of 1,218 Americans conducted over Memorial Day Weekend.

And that’s just in the United States, where church attendance is going down.  It’s growing around the world.  Which means, increasingly, more and more people are teaching their children about hell.

Look, I don’t like God, and this probably makes you think I’m irrationally angry.  I know this because we’ve done studies on it.  Like this one, published last year.  Here’s the abstract (emphasis added):

Atheists are often portrayed in the media and elsewhere as angry individuals. Although atheists disagree with the pillar of many religions, namely the existence of a God, it may not necessarily be the case that they are angry individuals. The prevalence and accuracy of angry-atheist perceptions were examined in 7 studies with 1,677 participants from multiple institutions and locations in the United States. Studies 1–3 revealed that people believe atheists are angrier than believers, people in general, and other minority groups, both explicitly and implicitly. Studies 4–7 then examined the accuracy of these beliefs. Belief in God, state anger, and trait anger were assessed in multiple ways and contexts. None of these studies supported the idea that atheists are particularly angry individuals. Rather, these results support the idea that people believe atheists are angry individuals, but they do not appear to be angrier than other individuals in reality. 

So it’s no surprise that you think we’re irrationally angry.  But if you think that, it seems you’re wrong.  Our anger levels seem to be normal.

Which begs the question:  What the hell is wrong with you? Why the heck wouldn’t you be angry that children are taught about a place of eternal torment that has no real evidence for its existence?  Why, when it comes to this and other issues, are you so interested, it seems in just patching the “angry” title on me and walking away smugly?  How heartless would you have to be for this not to upset you? What’s wrong with you?

I don’t get it.  I don’t have the answer.

But, best as I can see it…I don’t really think I’m the one who needs an attitude adjustment here.

As an antitheist, I find myself daydreaming about what the world would be like if nobody loved God.

I don’t want to do away with love altogether, obviously. I’d just like to live in a world where more people loved and respected other people as much as they seem to love and respect God.

Maybe one of the reasons why is that God seems to take up a lot space in our hearts that could be overflowing with love for the world around us.  It’s a shame.

What if the adage “it’s not about religion, it’s about relationship” were true?  What if it’s not about a relationship with Christ, nor one that tries to see Christ in others or needs to save them from sin? What if it’s one that, instead, tries to understand actual people.  One where we were dedicated to each other like the most devout religious people dedicate themselves to God.

I have heard it’s impossible; that some people are too evil to love.  Maybe.  But then again, I have seen Christians worship a God who has the history of the Old Testament…

…and most of us have not committed genocides…

It might be possible.

I do think it might make for a beautiful world if it happened.

Maybe part of the reason I get sentimental about this kind of thing is that I’ve been told by people close to me, through tears, that they will always love God more than me.

It’s tough to be told by someone close to you that they’ll love someone who doesn’t even exist more than they love you, and it’s hard to see the pain in their eyes of them wanting to love you, but unable to because the block of childhood fears or the weekly drumming of their pastor has locked their heart.

Some of them think I’m going to hell for eternity and still love this God more than they love me.  Some of them think they can only love me THROUGH this God — me, by myself, am not good enough, so they need to see me through the eyes of someone who will judge me as possibly going to hell.  And it’s so basic to the way they see the world that they’re confused about how I can love people without believing in God.

It wouldn’t matter to me if they were, like, random people on the internet.  But these are people close to me.

For many of these people, it’s not really their fault they believed in God — at least, not just. They were at a low time once and desperate, or they were taught it as children, or it was beat into them and they are bound to carry it their entire lives.

That’s really sad.  It reminds me why I’m an antitheist — someone who doesn’t want to perpetuate the cycle.

I mean…It just seems to me like a bit of a waste to dedicate your entire life to loving something that doesn’t exist.

Especially when the entire universe is in front of you, waiting….

It would be a shame to miss it.

Isn’t it?

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keKxDae_PMI[/youtube]

Photo taken from Epsos under Creative Commons License

 

Christians have frequently stated that we were founded as a Christian nation.

There are a lot of problems with that, but one of the many is that the Revolutionary War itself went against biblical principles.

The “endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights” bit in the Declaration of Independence — that’s borrowing from John Locke, not directly from the pages of scripture. The New Testament doesn’t focus on how to govern.  It basically says that, as much as you can, when you’re governed you should basically try to keep your head down and just go with it.  Which is part of why we have a separation of church and state that most Christians on the right seem to agree on when we discuss things like wars and such.  Jesus may say turn the other cheek, so the argument goes, but that’s in your personal life.  War, on the other hand — that’s at the secular level.  Obama was right when he doubted that our current Department of Defense would survive the entire Bible being strictly enacted (to thunderous applause — see video below).  So we say, “No, that’s the secular side,” oftentimes.  And thank goodness.

[youtube]https://youtu.be/YUbf3purr_E?t=1m16s[/youtube]

But that’s not being a bible-based Christian nation.  That’s being practical.  I mean — I’ve noticed that the same Christians who insist that gay marriage should be illegal are often the ones who seem most interested in saying the “turn the other cheek” principle is irrelevant when it comes to our foreign policy.  Seriously, people — we spend more on our military than the next 7 countries on the list COMBINED, and every time I turn on FOXNEWS, a talking head is on there arguing that Obama is a coward.  So, many Christians in this country are pretty darn selective when it comes to application of biblical principles.  A more cynical person might just say that they were more interested than being selfish than being Christian….

Anyways…back to the American Revolutionary War.

The Bible says in Romans 13:1-5 (NIV):

Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended. For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also as a matter of conscience.

Usually I write longer blog posts, but this seems to be an open and shut case to me. Did the revolutionaries submit to the governing authorities?  No. No, they didn’t.  There’s a reason they called it “The Revolutionary War.”

So it was unbiblical.  Like everyone else does these days, they started thinking practically, separating many straightforward readings of the Bible from government decisions to justify the war.

“But the taxes were high,” someone might protest. “They were intruding on their freedoms!”

Well, it wasn’t all that bad, actually — probably not as bad as Rome.  I mean, taxes weren’t being used to imprison people for being Christians back in the day, were they?

And Paul addresses this whole taxes issue, too, in the next couple verses (NIV):

This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing. Give to everyone what you owe them: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.

And Jesus, when asked if people should pay taxes, agrees with Paul when he says, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar, and to God what is God’s.”

I could cite a ton of sources to try to hammer the point home, but perhaps this point is best made simply.  Did the revolutionaries, in making war, owe taxes?  Yes.  Did they pay them? No. They basically started a huge war, costing thousands of lives, because they didn’t want to pay taxes.

So even if I DID admit they were all fundamentalist Christians — which I’m not, but even if I gave you the point for the sake of argument — the fact remains that in setting up the very foundations of our country they were playing fast and loose with Scripture. Same way they do today.

And if you, member of the Christian right, can do it to send hundreds of thousands of troops overseas so that you can read this post in peace, doesn’t it seem hypocritical not to bend things a bit so that two people who love each other can get married without having to worry about who is going to bake their goddamn wedding cake?

Or you can do like I did, notice Christians are horrendously inconsistent because it’s a ridiculous book to follow in the first place, and throw the whole thing away.  A bit less hypocritical and a lot more honest.

Anyways…just a little something to think about next time the Star Spangled Banner is playing or you see those 4th of July fireworks…

Just sayin’.

Thanks for reading.

P.S. I have a Patreon, if you want to help me do more of what I’m doing.

First, let’s talk definitions.

Atheists are normally defined as individuals who think that God and gods do not exist.  According to this definition, the implications of this lack of belief are completely up for grabs.  For example, you can, like Patton Oswalt, think the idea of God is a wonderful thing, or even wish that God did exist, or even identify with religion as a Christian Atheist, and still proudly claim the title “atheist.”

The atheist subcategory of anti-theism, at its most basic level, is the stance that God or gods not only do not exist, but that their influence in culture is, for whatever reasons, fundamentally a bad idea.

The longer I’ve been an atheist, the more I’ve realized that I have to clarify that I’m not just an atheist — I’m an anti-theist.  What I mean by that is that I think belief in God or gods is a fundamentally bad idea, and I’m generally unwilling to remotely promote it.  To me, personally, I don’t see why the word should mean anything beyond that.

However, the powers that be, who think that belief in God or gods is an excellent idea, have a vested interest in making anti-theists look as bad as possible. I’ve noticed, for example, that the moment I begin to appear to object to belief in God or gods, no matter how politely I do so, I am often seen as a belligerant anti-theist.  I have come to accept this characterization so that we don’t have to go into a back-and-forth word war and can get down to what we’re discussing.  I also think that anti-theists have concerns that are worthy of strong, strident expression.

Anyway — because of the attempts to discolor the atheists who think belief in God or gods is a fundamentally bad idea, anti-theists are known as belligerant, angry, evangelistic, and as bad as fundamentalists of religious sects.  Some of us take an “I am whataver you say I am” mentality — basically, instead of denying the way people are going to define us anyway, we embrace several of the stereotypes, as we see them as reflections of what Christians themselves are afraid of, and dwell within those stereotypes without fear.  Several of us were convinced by others who did this for us — like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins (although many of us later became disillusioned with them)– people who embodied the stereotypes we were terrified of being associated with and still managed to thrive and live decent lives.

Although I do not see myself as consistently belligerant in my discussions on religion, I have no interest in denying the rather frequent charge that I am.  I see the accusation that I am as the Christian’s fear of who they would be if they left the faith projected onto me (this hypothesis has been bolstered by the fact that Christians frequently quote Bible verses characterizing my lack of belief in God in ways that seem out of place unless my hypothesis has some truth to it), and I try to live a life that shows there’s nothing to be afraid of.  One can be angry at religion for good reasons and express it honestly without hiding, and survive.  And, in addition, I think there are good reasons to be angry at religion.  It annoys me when people wear their anger at religion in embarrassment — I think honesty and straightforward clarity as to the objections to religion, along with the requisite emotion such honesty and straightforwardness entail, to often gets a bad rap.  So, due largely to this viewpoint, I identify as an anti-theist.

In being an anti-theist, I’ve noticed that those of my colleagues in organized atheism who have an anti-theist bent seem to take on two sides, overall.  These are not the only sides to be had in antitheism, but they do seem to be the most dominant tendencies on a continuum.  Perhaps they can best be understood as responses to fear and desire for respect.

In almost all cases of antitheism, there is opposition to the unsupported rules claimed by a deity. One of the reasons antitheists tend to think that belief in God is a bad idea is because these restrictions pose an undue hardship to people the antitheists care about (this group includes, of course, the individual antitheist his or herself).  I’d like to emphasize here that, as an antitheist, I DO think that theistic religion routinely places undue hardship on individuals simply on the basis of “God said it, so believe it.”

Although it is impossible to summarize all the objections to God, the basic one, it might be said, is that most conceptualizations of God or gods implement an authority that people are expected to follow — an authority that is not based SOLELY on science, empathy, and reason, but includes faith in a being that is beyond those restrictions and who can thus veto any scientific, empathetic, and reasoned proposals.  Now, as an ignostic or progressive religious person will hasten to add, the definition and influence of this God or these gods may vary, but the fact that any of them have the potential to have power over others is innately problematic or dangerous to many of us.  What we antitheists seem to have in common, for the most part, is the impression that God or gods hold wildcard opinions that have, to varying extents, veto power on more scientific, empathetic, or reasoned proposals.  Many of us also think that fear of what it would mean to be against belief in God or gods keeps many people captive to these God or gods, so we embrace some of the stereotypes unabashedly instead of denying that we embody them so loudly that we make them even more troublesome and become more, instead of less, captive to religious ideology.

You may disagree that the antitheist position is valid, and that’s OK for now — I have and will argue that it is in more detail in other blog posts.  Here, I’m forced to write in broad brushstrokes.  But I think it helps to recognize exactly WHY we are antitheistic.  Basically, it comes down to not wanting ourselves or others to be held captive by religious ideology, and a desire to instead base decisions on science, empathy, and reason.

The problem, the split, happens, when we try to figure out what it means to escape from religious ideology.

At that point, everything goes haywire.  The voices are shrill.  The fingers start wagging.  The blog post-punches begin flying.  The accusations are myriad….