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| smiling-atheist.blogspot.com http://thesmilingskeptic.wordpress.com/ |
Pessimism
and or Atheism? (spoiler alert! - yes, Atheists are actually optimists usually)
I
don’t believe in “isms” – as words they’re useful but
otherwise they’re just buckets of terminology that our lazy minds
like to shove things into.
So
yeah, a lot of Atheists are colored in a negative light, for obvious
reasons by the religious, but I’m only interested in discussing the
less obvious right now: the association of the atheist with
negativity. Atheists might use the word “no” when asked about
their belief in God, they might negate or belittle pathetic evidence
supporting the existence of a god, but this doesn’t necessarily
mean that all Atheists are negative nannys full of active hatred for
the religious and religious things. Many Atheists don’t even call
themselves “Atheist” because it has a pejorative flavor to it,
and they don’t wish to evoke that reaction in the people around
them.
Most
Atheists live out their lives the same way the religious do except
they avoid the time sucking waste of going to services in church or
other religious time sucking nonsense. Some of these Atheists don’t
even think to use the word Atheist to describe themselves – but
even those who do won’t necessarily do anything a religious person
needs to be afraid of, like violence or criminal acts. Atheists
won’t come a knocking on your door to try to push their ideas down
your throat. If they gather in large groups, they’ll probably be
very civil about it and only engage religious who engage them first
in some manner, such as making ridiculous claims about hell or some
such other BS.
There
are no Atheist brain washing boot camps for troubled teenagers, but
there are for religion. There are no cults of Atheists. (No Cult
of Dusty https://www.youtube.com/user/CultOfDusty
doesn’t count, sorry! get the definition of a cult
here: Defining traits of Cults ) As of yet, I’ve not heard of any Atheists picketing
churches or synagogues, or any other places of worship in the name of
Atheism, Reason, or Logic, – but maybe we should. There may be
some Atheists or secularists protesting in government office
buildings or other public places but we don’t seek to defile your
supposedly sacred spaces.* There are no Atheist churches, or a pope
of Atheism, and though there are famous Atheists, none of them has
the conceit to dictate how other Atheists live, love or vote.
Atheists don’t tell women how to treat or display their bodies, nor
do they disdain the use of family planning options like birth
control. Atheism has non-profits certainly, but there is no belief
that a tithe is required to earn anything. If an Atheist donates to
a cause, it is out of a real desire to help, not to build up points
with a “God” or a religious social circle.
In
all our negations, in all our “no’s” we live lives of
positivity, optimism even. We’re embracing our doubts instead of
hugging the sad deflated life preserver of “truthiness” to our
chests, or worse the full body condom of faith. We seek to clarify
and refine our thinking by removing fallacies and wishful
rationalizations. We’re like cotton picked clean of annoying seeds
or a fillet of fish plucked free of bones, we each live our lives,
our No seeds, No bones lives, in the best state that we are
able to have in that moment, and always with an eye to improving it
even more if we can. What could be more positive than seeking to
make ourselves and our world a better place?
Most
Atheists confine their activism to promoting separation of church and
state – for so many reasons we do this, but when we do this we
aren’t trying to eliminate religion, just keep any one religion
from turning our government into a despotic theocracy. No Atheist
wants to live in a tyranny, and history, something more religious
need to read up on, has shown us that if you want freedom you must be
vigilant in your protection of secular authorities and separation of
civil and religious powers.
There
are of course some Atheists who actively try to refute and weaken
religion’s hold on our culture through education or other seemingly
more aggressive means. This is our active display of Humanist Hope,
it is out of a sincere hope that Humanity is worth saving from
itself.
A hope that an apocalyptic end to our species doesn’t
really have to be our story. What could be more optimistic than the
belief in the value of humanity itself as a whole? Rather than
damning us all, rather than infecting us all with feelings of
insecurity derived from the idea of “sin” - Atheists want to save
us from ourselves. We want to show you what beauty and value
humanity does possess and that we do deserve to go on and enjoy life.
Each and every one of us deserves to have moments of happiness, joy,
contentment, a sense of achievement, and the knowledge we have all
participated in the betterment of our world just by being who we are.
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| http://blog.ninapaley.com/2012 /10/01/this-land-is-mine/ |
* We don’t because it’s
rude and intrusive; intrusive like showing up at someone’s door to
sell nonsense. Besides, most Atheists know they don’t have to
because there are plenty of religious pontiffs who find ways to
violate those places all by themselves.
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