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Kylyssa Shay

Ask an Atheist - 0 views

www.squidoo.com/Ask_an_Atheist

atheist atheism religious tolerance religious politics religion American atheism American atheists

shared by Kylyssa Shay on 16 Jul 09 - Cached
Kylyssa Shay liked it
  • Kylyssa Shay on 16 Jul 09
     
    Once I could read I had access to hundreds of religious texts and religious books as well as books on philosophy and nature. I read them voraciously, trying to figure out this mystery called belief. After reading many books about beliefs and belief systems written by brilliant people and talking with a few pastors and a minister, I came to the conclusion that God was probably not real.When I was ten, I was outed as the child of an atheist by a teacher who then made an ignorant remark that set the tone for years of abuse both physical and emotional. She said, '[She] is an atheist and that means that she hates God.'If the teacher had known what an atheist was or if the children's parents had, I would have been saved years of suffering. As an adult, I have found that many people in America still don't have a clear idea of what an atheist is and it bleeds into society. It affects the way atheists are treated to this day.Most people in America learn about atheism, not the way I learned about belief, but by word-of-mouth from religious parents and peers who learned the same way. Most of the things I've heard when religious people discuss atheists come from fear and speculation. The lack of understanding makes people hate and fear atheists.To educate people about atheists and spread tolerance through education I'm offering to answer your questions. I'm hoping that instead of basing your opinion of atheists on hearsay you'll choose to ask an atheist instead.
Bakari Chavanu

Uncertain Humanism and the Water of Whiteness - TheHumanist.com - 4 views

thehumanist.com/...ism-and-the-water-of-whiteness

humanism racism

shared by Bakari Chavanu on 04 Jul 15 - No Cached
  • Uncertain humanism is not just about how we approach “facts.” It involves how we approach our very identities and who we think we are.
  • It’s about asking: Who are we, as humanists, and will we let ourselves become more uncertain so that we might more fully realize that black lives matter?
  • My major point is this: race (and especially racism) has developed largely as a response to feelings of uncertainty that get rationalized away.
    • Bakari Chavanu
      Bakari Chavanu on 04 Jul 15
       
      Racism has developed to justify oppression and protect privilege. 
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • In what follows, I intersperse several quotes and paraphrased wisdom from Wallace with commentary directed at white humanists
  • Therefore, determining if black lives matter to (white) humanists might require determining the direction our humanism is oriented: towards certainty, security, and facts; or, uncertainty, compassion, and attention to the limits of what is possible as humanists, and as humans.
    • Bakari Chavanu
      Bakari Chavanu on 04 Jul 15
       
      This part is not clear to me.
  • But we tend to toe a fine line between experiences of our own ideological alienation, and expressing tolerance (of other beliefs) precisely because of our own feelings of having been alienated.
  • Rationality is this process of faking it, and it is always secured through violence. Rene Descartes, one of the fathers of rationalism, even defines it as transforming intellectual uncertainty into certainty. But this certainty is only ever an idea; the social world is never certain. So when people like Michael Brown, Eric Garner, or Trayvon Martin­—or places like Ferguson, Missouri; Baltimore, Maryland; or Cleveland, Ohio—cause a person to feel uncertain, when black bodies trouble the “rational” order of things, they get killed.
  • If humanism is used to procure a sense of certainty—that God doesn’t exist, that humans can achieve whatever we set out to accomplish, or to procure certainty of self—then it will at best capitulate to a mentality that allows racism to flourish. And at worst, it will directly reinforce racist ways of thinking and acting.
  • Do black Christian lives matter to humanists? Do black Muslim lives matter to humanists? Or are we so hung up on not believing that our concern for all humans grows cloudy?
  • For instance, couldn’t the American Humanist Association (AHA) organize a group of humanists to march alongside community folks who are declaring that black lives matter?
  • When will black lives matter as much as humanist lives? All of us, and I’m including myself, could do more to put our ideological freedom to work in the service of those who face the brunt of a social world where God has really only ever been a proxy for power, anyway. In this respect black lives are atheist lives. They are humanist lives.
  • At what are our efforts directed? Are we trying to change the world through some sort of self-righteous (and ironic) messiah complex? Do we think we have all the answers and lament that others will not follow us? Or are we holding conversations about how we might change so that the world might be changed—becoming fish that finally feel the full weight of water?
  • Many white humanists still fight the notion that black lives matter to humanists, and that such mattering requires intense self-reflection. If you think I’m simply constructing a
  • But the highest rated comment is this: “I am fully a humanist, and will always fight for equal rights and justice, but putting Michael Brown’s name on this meme is divisive and reactionary. As the evidence comes out, we are seeing that he committed several serious crimes. It cheapens our movement to look at this as a non-gray issue.”
  • Are there still so many of us who are more concerned with securing our own (humanist) identity and increasing our numbers that we’re willing to be complicit with a social arrangement where certain identities are not simply facing various modes of marginalization, but literal death? As a humanist, these perspectives are embarrassing. And as a white person, I am ashamed of them.
  • Or will we worship at the altar of full humanity where #AllLivesMatter only once #BlackLivesMatter? Let us be uncertain, using our relative freedom to choose not to wallow in selfish indifference or guilt-ridden stagnation, but for the sake of imagining new, uncertain possibilities of social life where black lives matter more than a god that doesn’t exist anyway.
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