Choosing a faith

Now you know how I feel when any religionist speaks.

All you need do is add in extreme segregation, constant proselytizing and burning at the stake, and you have just defined a church.Very good, Reverend.

What's he going to do? Stomp off in a fit and go haunt some other life's nightmares?That'd be good. When does he leave human consciousness?

Well, Tany hit it. In reality, nothing would change since it's just a fantasy.But, since THEY get to have theirs I claim the god-given right to mine.I say if the religion memes finally left the human meme-pool then there would be peace, glorious peace. All war and all acts of barbarity would cease and an era of enlightenment, intellect and social humanism would flower forever after.Or at least we'd have taken a step in that direction.Alas, alack, this universe will not conform to my fantasies any more than she does to theirs.

How would you know? You abandoned her for this bad boy Satan of yours.

You are so close to being a humanist. The love of humanity is there as is the compassion for the human condition (the good and the evil) and the desire, the need, to address and alleviate that suffering in others.Now lose the excuse. This love is human. It is of and from you. You do not need to credit anything or anyone else.That is the understanding that you should be sharing with this world. Life, the universe and everything is what it is. How we react to it, what we do in this reality, shows our value, if not to some uncaring universe, then, at least to ourselves.It seems a god is not necessary for life to be. History shows humans evolved in the cauldron of a vicious evolution. Our burden as Humanists is to overcome the bloody killing instincts, the hateful feelings against “them”. Knowing that these are deep survival instincts born of millions of years as both predator and prey, as conqueror and conquered, that cannot be easily overcome. We can do so in this population but such requires intellectual and emotional enlightenment. Strong critical intellect honest in its rigor.GDR, a major part of that intellectual enlightenment is to eschew fantasy and acknowledge reality. Religion only stymies progress with unsupportable and manipulable fantasy. There is no little voice. There is only you.You are here, my brother. The Hitchens Bridge beckons you to cross. Join enlightened humanity. Free membership, secret decoder ring and tickets for our next annual baby-eating gala dinner in November, on me.

It seems to be a one-way bridge. Not that there are any laws or rules or anything, just the natural usage of the thoroughfare appears to be consistently in the one direction. But I say this from anecdote not from personal experience. I never had to make the trek myself. Oh I was given a book and some lectures, and I did voluntarily attend the Christian Youth Association weekly meets with attendant teen shenanigans but only because that’s where the girls were.I read Nietzsche, the bible and Heinlein early. When I became aware I was already deep into reality and the fantasies held no interest. Had the scales lifted from my eyes quite early. Seems I was intellectually born on this side.Regardless, GDR, you are a humanist. Which is good, but, would be better if you walked in the sunshine of photons instead of in the shadow of priests. Reality cannot be denied.I can't promise I'll be around to fulfill an obligation to walk with you if you do decide to cross but there are a half-dozen friends here who will step up in my place. You won't be alone.

But what else besides your perception of increased secularism also changed in the preceding years? Did the disparity in wealth lessen? Did the population grow tremendously? Did the christian society fragment into deeper fundamental divisions?What else changed about society besides your perceptions of the religion? Why do you seek to place "blame" for this perception change on secularism?

You think secularism caused the society to turn nasty? I blame the growing intolerance of white American christianity to accept difference, fear change.Not secularism ... I blame you and your religion.