A united movement

In recent months I’ve noticed how my own definition about religion has hardened. I used to be most comfortable calling myself an unbeliever but I’m beginning to think it was more a cute semantic game than anything else.

Reading various religious or non-religious blogs as well as the opinion of their commentators certainly informed my opinion, but it’s not just that. It’s about politics. In a saner political climate you could certainly argue about the differences between agnostics, skeptics, atheists, humanists and every other shade of the rainbow. And they’d all be instructive discussions well-worth having because defining who you are is the most important thing there is.

In a sane world, we would also be able to have these discussion with our believing friends, of which many fight the same daily struggles that we do

Sadly,these aren’t sane times.

There is a real crisis threatening to redefine christianity and more I read, the more I’m convinced it’s bullying.

It’s adults allowing teenagers to harass and intimidate other teenagers under the coverage of freedom of religious expression.

It’s the presumptive republican candidate to the presidency intimated into firing a gay member f their staff.

It’s legislators denying women control over their health and body,and in some cases forcing them to bring the child to life, all in the name of Christianity.

It’s multiple cheaters denying gays and lesbians their happiness on the grounds of a certain religious definition of marriage

It’s a certain vicious strain of religion allowed to prosper and grow stronger and halt change to a grind and given free reins to encroach on a secular nation. It’s a strain that’s so noisy that has made discussions between liberal lbgt-friendly believers the exception instead of the rule.

A movement quabbling on the differences between a agnostics and theists, as philosophically important as they may be, isn’t an effective movement against this strain. Thats why I propose we take a cue from christianity for once and embrace one term under which there still may be many shades and colors. Because  unless we do it, that strain will always win out.

What it takes to fight this virus is a strong, cohesive movement.
want, N

open letter to gop lawmakers

Dear congressional lawmakers,

In recent weeks I’ve heard, among other lawmakers, your former republican candidate John McCain and your House Speaker John Boehner make the argument that there is no war on women. That all this war on women business is is just a big distraction from the main issue at the heart and in the minds of the americans, namely the economy.

In a big speech recently Mitt Romey said the admittedly cute line about how it was about the economy and you weren’t stupid.

War on Women? Nothing to see here, move along, move along!

I’d like to beg to differ.

The war on women isn’t just some concoction a liberal strategist thought of to drum up anger and fundraisers. The war on women affects real women and for a year there has been ample proof that you indeed wage a war on them and their health.

When you suddenly take funding cuts super seriously, you don’t HAVE to go after a bill that affects women’s health in particular.

You don’t HAVE to pass laws that restrict access to abortion.

You don’t have to go after Planned Parenthood like it’s the second coming of the antichrist, yet your presumed candidate has sworn to “shut it down”

You don’t HAVE to tell women to keep their knees tightly closed, yet that’s what your rethoric ultimately boils down to.

You don’t HAVE to make the victims of rape and incest go through hoop after hoop to get their legal abortion just to cater to the whims of your most rabid constituents – and yet, here you are, doing exactly that.

And I think we all know how Bob “Ultrasound” McDonnell came to his unfortunate nickname.

But I think the real reason why you think this war on women was created to build up fake indignation is because you make up wars on whatever pleases you to drum up fake indignation all the time. It’s how you guys roll, and whatever, that’s fine with me.

But just because you’ll never get to meet the constituents whose lives you’re so royally fucking up, doesn’t mean they’re not still your constituents. And they can and will vote you out of office the first chance they get if you don’t do something besides mutter vague phrases about how mothers have it toughest. No argument there, they certainly do, but that’s a topic for another time.

After reading this, it might surprise you that I want you guys to stick around. Well, a saner, less bible-oriented version of you anyway. I like to think you’re going through a tough phase, you obviously aren’t very fond of your presumed candidate and who can blame you for that. Your vote with women is down. So is the Latino vote. And the president is BLACK. So you’re waiting for your next reagan, and, oh, fuck it, maybe nixon would do too.

I’d like to see you have a stronger candidate, even one I wouldn’t agree with, because I like a healthy, thriving democracy as much as the next guy.

I want to see a debate on ideas and principles, and with the GOP of 2012 and their anti-choice, 9-9-9 and plain crazy candidates it just isn’t happening. “The other guy sucks so much” isn’t a good reason to vote.

Yet instead of opening up, you’re still clamming down, catering to the only constituency who can be reliably counted on to vote for you: the rich white dudes who can shovel 500 million dollars worth of attack ads down the tubes. And the bible thumper constituency, with their hysterical cries for the good old days. This isn’t a party with a healthy look for the future. This is a party that desperately clings to the past and takes everyone along on the way down.

So please. Respect women, with actions and not just with words. For your own good.

On the alaska shooting

In the wake of the massacre, there was an urge to put the killer in a box and shove it into someone’s, anybody’s lap. He’s a liberal! He’s a republican! He’s a marxist! a communist! a right-winger! a tea-partier!

I never saw the interest in that.

Because frankly, it doesn’t matter who this guy was officially affiliated with. Saying he’s mentally unstable and so the kind of rethroic tea-partier enjoy had no influence, doesn’t cut it either.  Play it like you want, say there’s no direct link between Sarah Palin and the massacre, but words have consequences.

Especially the kind of rethoric filled with references to the blood of patriots needing to be shed and 2nd amendment remedies. And especially with mentally unstable persons, such as the killer himself.

But even if he wasn’t listening to Palin or one of the countless others voices on the right: so what?

The way I see it, americans face two choices right now: they can ask themselves hard questions like:

Isn’t it this the perfect opportunity for reflection?

Isn’t it time to critically discuss the role of gun rethoric and cowboy mentality in american mythology?

Isn’t this the perfect time for a discussion about the role of the NRA in regulating the access and control of guns?

And while we’re at it, shouldn’t we also wonder about how a mentally unstable person fell through the cracks and how he got access to the kind of ammunition he used?

I think these are all discussions necessary and worthwile having.

Or they can bury their heads in the sand, refuse to aknowledge the need for a discussion, the need for reflection, the need to tone done this explosive rethoric and do business as usual. Which they’ll probably do.

Violence is as american as apple-pie though; the next massacre is doomed to come. You owe it to the dead to at least reflect.

“I’m liberal and proud”

Taking control of who you are. Isn’t that the first step, after all?

Remember the jock in school who tried to shame and ridicule you because you were too tall or too small, because you were too thin or too fat, because you had glasses, because you had pimples, because,  god forbid, you read ?

Well, the Republican Party is like the jock at your school. Except with, you know, infinitely more resources and subtlety.

It all began when the very term liberal started to become something democrats were ashamed to be,  as if admitting you were a liberal was admitting you had a skin disease.
Think I’m exxagerating? When is the last time you heard a politician say ‘yes, I’m a liberal’, besides a few notable exceptions? And those who aren’t afraid to say they’re liberals don’t matter much in the longer distance, because they’re not election material. And they’re not election material because, well, they’re not afraid of being a liberal.

Imagine the typical liberal. Imagine three values he might stand for.

Pro-Choice.

Pro Gun-Control.

Pro Gay Marriage.

Now imagine a Republican and imagine in turn three values he might stand for.

Fiscal Conservatism

Limited Government

Praying in School

Now imagine them in a Debate.

Can you imagine our fictive Democrat say ‘yes, I think women should be free to chose what they want to happen to their bodies.’

When is the last time you have heard one say ‘Yes, I think gun control should be tightened.’

When is the last time you’ve even heard one say ‘Yes, I think Gays should be allowed to marry each other.’

If you have, it probably wasn’t in your life-time.

It may be they think so in their inner heart, but they wouldn’t dare saying it out loud, because even saying so out-loud would be controversial.

Discussion is supposed to be about finding a common middle ground, but nowadays, democrats do everything they do to seem as conservative as they can, because the middle ground has been subtly shifted to the right for decades.

But go on msnbc. Do you hear Rachel Maddow excusing herself for being a gay female liberal? Rachel Maddow hasn’t been afraid to

call a spade a spade and a crazy a crazy for some time now, and she never fails to do so civilly and with a smile.

Do so out of pure survival instinct. Voters in general see the result, not the process,  they don’t see a republican party doing everything in its power to obstruct and hinder, they see a historical majority that let them down. These are not the kind of voters you want for 2012.
Grow a fucking backbone, democrats. Republicans have been nabbing at your ground for decades and if you do nothing, they’ll keepnabbing until the only difference is a (D).

If you do nothing, if you keep on being shy and fearful about your values, the victim won’t a high-schooler getting food stuffed in his face anymore.  This is Democracy slowly beaten to death.

Why Unbelief?

You may wonder: Why do I chose to call myself  an unbeliever? Why not an agnostic or atheist?

I don’t call myself an atheist, not because I believe in god, but because I happen to think there is no real way for us humans to properly understand god as he is described in the old and the new testament. In  the unlikely event that there were to be a god that and should he chose to manifest himself,  I just don’t think our human brains would be evolved o thinenough to process

So my main point of divergence with Believers isn’t so much about the existence of God, though I will have to add that too much blood has been shed about that question.

Neither do I have problems with people who chose religion as a way to comfort themselves in a world that is often uncertain and incomprehensible, even though it all too often gives one the illusion of certainty that just doesn’t reflect the way our world works nowadays.

But again, this is not the real problem I have with organized religion, the real reason I call myself an unbeliever. My problem is that religion doesn’t tolerate doubt, that religion even only works under the exclusion of Doubt.

Here’s a personal anecdote I’d like to share in order to illustrate my point: Some years ago we were supposed in our class  to showcase a book or magazine we gave importance to for whatever reason. So this guy comes up and shows us a holy bible.

He didn’t tell us anything about it I remember except the usual things you’ll hear these people say, but the thing I do remember is how afterwards some of us tried to engage him in a discussion about certain aspects of the Bible we had problems with and how he blocked all our attempts. He kept insisting that we not challenge his faith and I remember thinking how his faith can’t be especially strong if mere questions are powerful enough to show cracks in this armor he liked so much to hide behind.
He wasn’t a bad guy really. But if you’re trying to sell me something, you better have some answers for my questions , and if you don’t have ones I like, I won’t buy what you’re selling.   As I understand it, that’s where faith comes in, where you overlook inconsistencies in certain arguments, but when logic is butchered that way, no amount of proselytizing will make me change my mind, because you either have faith or you don’t.

No, sometimes Doubt isn’t comforting, sometimes it makes you ask uncomfortable questions and gives you answers you’d rather not hear.

Belief makes you act as if you’re right and those who happen to not agree with you are wrong.  Belief makes you walk a narrow path of moral certainties in a black or white world. Because of a morbid concern with the fate of my soul,  it even gives you the moral authority to push me into a Leap of Faith if I’m unwilling to do it by myself .

This is just not the world I’ve experienced though.

In my world,  I have muddled through. I have made questionable moral or ethical decisions. Sometimes, I haven’t been a very good person.  I have doubted.  But you know what?  It’s ok.  Because in my world, you never stop making mistakes, you never stop learning, you never stop growing.  In my world, life is made of all kinds of color shades.

Belief  never lets you stop and wonder ‘hey, is what this guy said really valid?’

Belief has you under such a tight grip that it doesn’t allow for adjustment or change in behaviour.

For all these reasons, I cannot believe in belief. Because questioning my own principles, my own set of moral values,  my own ideas of what is right and wrong can only make me a more complete person in the end.

Always doubt.

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