Famous
last words: “Things could get worse!” Being
the cynic that I am, my own famous last words as I went offline back in 2005:
“Things couldn’t get worse!” People should stop uttering famous last
words. And I couldn’t have been more wrong.
This column, The Happy Heretic, was born in November 1996. For those of you who remember, I used to write monthly columns, posted faithfully on the first of each month. For those of you who don’t remember, well, I just told you! I plan to continue that same pattern. I’ll be here on the first of every month. I may also write more often, but I will definitely write monthly.
This country’s inexorable march towards Christianity is frightening and not a little astonishing. Other countries are not infected in this way and my friends in the UK and Canada really do not grasp what has happened here. In the race toward the 2008 presidential primaries, candidates elbowed each other aside in their bids for being The Most Christian Candidate. Shamelessly quoting Scripture, as if that somehow makes them qualified to lead the largest nation in the history of the world, they wouldn’t give it a rest.
I used to have two categories that I discussed on this site: religion and politics. The two are now hellishly blurred. In this country anyway, you can’t talk about one without talking about the other. Awful. The only bright spot on this gloomy horizon is that the Internets with wireless access and YouTube and all things related have made the world smaller. Anyone, anywhere, can now know instantaneously what’s happening everywhere else. Politicians instantly spring to mind as their gaffs zip around the world at the speed of light. But religion is also suffering from this brisk pace of information exchange. If the Pope belches we know about it now just as we hear about any fatwas issued by any fanatic Muslim leaders. As a result, The Faithful have dug in their heels in defense of their particular brands of religion, and their strident blasts accompany suicide-bombers and saber-rattling. Religion, as always, makes the world less safe. However, The Faithful can no longer hide behind the cloak of distance and time as their predecessors did. We can now all see the man behind the curtain—if we choose to look with our eyes wide open, devoid of blinders.
My target audience is, and always has been, fence-sitters and closet atheists. Based on some of my recent mail, though, I think I’ll include outraged atheists. Our number is legion. There are more of us than anyone realizes. The true number would startle most Americans and would definitely frighten evangelicals. And now more than ever, it is truly politically incorrect to say you are an atheist. That’s why I won't say it. I will SHOUT IT!
Over the years I have received thousands of messages from people all over the world. In this country I heard from every state, and I do wish I had a dollar for every time someone wrote, “I thought I was all alone!” Interestingly, from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon, they all referred to their location as smack in the middle of the Bible Belt. That speaks to the intense intolerance toward nonbelievers we find in the USA.
As I bemoan the lack of tolerance from True Believers I also bemoan the lack of camaraderie and unity of purpose between nonbelievers. We are an eclectic group and often have trouble agreeing on anything except our lack of religious beliefs. Should we criticize religion? Absolutely yes! Absolutely no! The key word is absolutely. There is little middle ground in this argument and tempers flare. I do wish we would speak with one voice on this one issue: religion is divisive and not a Good Thing.
As long as there is religion there will be bigotry. Unless we water down the doctrines in all religions to the point where you have little left but “it’s nice to be nice,” there will be conflict attached to all religious belief and children will continue to be raised with a jaundiced view of those with different beliefs. Intolerance will continue to win the day. For decades this has bothered me; but over the years as I sought comfort in the literature I found that there was little out there that was not boring and/or condescending. It seemed to me that we can read and think without references to Nietzsche! So I began writing. In plain old English. And I will continue to leave it to others to write about the epistemological and metaphysical ramifications of the empirical evidence for the neo-theosophical aspects of casuistry as it relates to postmodernism. And stuff.