Hard To Attack Someone You
Understand To Be Human, Too
Brian
From: "Brian"
To: "Positive Atheism" <editor@positiveatheism.org>
Sent: September 27, 2001 6:15 PM
Subject: Promote Understanding
Welcome to the world, America.
This letter is not an I-told-you-so, it is an insight to the rest of what the world goes through. It would be a grave mistake to say that we, as Americans, have not suffered through terrorism. Timothy McVeigh is the most notable of American terrorists. The Unibomber is another. Columbine High School and office shootings around the country are all examples of American terrorism.
The reason we are hated so much is because we tend to forget the world around us and only promote God and the United States. There is nothing wrong with religion or patriotism. However, this country does very little to understand other cultures. We raise our kids we teach them only one religion and promote it as the only true solution to the world's problems. We also teach an idealistic world in which only the Judaeo-Christian god will reign supreme and is the only god which can provide us with peace. The intentions of teaching us this Idealistic world may have good intentions. But, it has one very negative side effect. It may cause an unintentional isolation and intolerance. I see very little balance on the Christian American's part in teaching their children about the other religions in the world.
Telling your child not to hate someone because they are different is not enough. We need to spend more time getting to know other cultures and religions. We need to learn about the similarities in the world's religions.
We need to make those connections. We can only serve to improve the dialogue between cultures if we understand them. It is hard to attack another human when you understand that they are human too.
Too much of religious history is shrouded in the blood of piety. Every religion at one time or another has been oppressed by another. Every culture has suffered at the hands of hate and misunderstanding. We are only doomed to fuel this hate, and repeat it, if we simply retaliate without getting to understand why America is hated so much.
Every honest human in the world wants the same thing, peace. They want to go to work, provide for their families, and only want the best for their families. The sooner we realize that we all want the same thing, the sooner we can accept and understand others. The only way to do that is to get to know others.
From: "Positive Atheism" <editor@positiveatheism.org>
To: "Brian"
Subject: Re: Promote Understanding
Date: September 27, 2001 2:51 PM
We don't know what it's like because we haven't had to -- until now.
It's too bad that the price is so high, but Americans just got "baptised" into knowing what it's like for most of the rest of the world.
Cliff Walker
Positive Atheism Magazine
Six years of service to
people with no reason to believe
From: "Brian"
To: "Positive Atheism" <editor@positiveatheism.org>
Sent: September 28, 2001 12:34 AM
Subject: Promote Understanding
We as Atheists have been helping out with this disaster. We have donated money and blood. But we can do more. Not to convert others to our belief, but to set a standard that all religions can follow.
We cannot cut ourselves off from the rest of the world, nor should we. But, I think we can do our cause a service by reaching out to religious communities and teach them the one major similarity that all theisms have. Atheists along with all theists, preach peace. While governments and religious organizations do little to understand each other, we as humans, need to look beyond our own world to promote understanding.
While I believe that Atheists have a strong and solid argument , I do not believe we should be come militant in our cause. We should stand up and fight for our voice. But, we need to respect those who disagree with us. If we can make that connection of peace with other religious organizations, we can improve our chances of truly having a voice.
It is time to act as humans first and reach an understanding of each other. The promise of peace should be a standard that we demand from all religions and believes. Lets challenge local religious leaders to reach out to each other. Lets ask Christians to reach out to Muslims. Lets ask Jews to reach out to Muslims. If we can lead the way to understanding we will be respected.
I have been to a Jewish Synagogue and a Unitarian Church down here. I have asked them to reach out to those different than them and make a connection as a human first.
We all want the same thing in the end. We want our voice, respect and a place to live in peace. It doesn't require a dogma to understand that. I have told other religious and political leaders to stop being selfish and I expect the same from Atheists. Do Atheists justice and promote understanding.
Sincerely,
Brian
From: "Positive Atheism" <editor@positiveatheism.org>
To: "Brian"
Subject: Re: Promote Understanding
Date: September 27, 2001 11:43 PM
While I believe that Atheists have a strong and solid argument , I do not believe we should be come militant in our cause. We should stand up and fight for our voice. But, we need to respect those who disagree with us. If we can make that connection of peace with other religious organizations, we can improve our chances of truly having a voice.
I think we both are on the same wavelength, with only very minor differences.
Where We're Coming From
Most theists think of atheism as militant anti-theism. This is not true. Most atheists rarely if ever even think about religion or atheism. This is what atheism means: without religion. The vast majority of us just don't care about the subject. Those of us who are interested in the subject tend to be somewhat quiet because those expressions of religion which even merit our attention (usually fundamentalism) are practiced by people who just won't listen to reason: there's just no talking to them. The remaining forms of religious expression, the benign forms of religion, aren't worth talking about because they don't hurt anybody. Even as a full-time atheistic activist, I spend very little time thinking about religion or atheism, but spend my on-duty time thinking about ethics, social issues, philosophy, typesetting and HTML coding, English syntax, General Protection Faults, and other more mundane elements that make up the work that I do each day. Seldom do I discuss atheism with people in social situations. I just don't care what other people believe, and have never even dated somebody who (I knew) was an atheist when we started dating. To quote a Christian missionary whose daughter I dated long ago, even when this is work, it's "ninety percent perspiration and ten percent inspiration."
Our Recommendations To Atheists
Thus, we ask atheists to recognize that most atheists are barely aware of their atheism. We use the "weak" definition for the word atheism, which says that an atheist is, at minimum, a person who simply lacks a god belief for whatever reason. The "militant atheist" is a rarity even among those who keep an active awareness of their atheism, and our goal is to make this militancy even rarer among active atheists.
We have for some time asked those atheists who are aware of their atheism (what we call "active atheists") to consider three additional things: (1) all theists have (or think they have) valid reasons for believing the way they do; (2) atheists' open and public criticism of theism is best restricted to those expressions of religious faith that are intrusive, exploitative, or dangerous; (3) in understanding what an "intrusive expression of religion" is, we do well to distinguish between private and public expressions of religion. There are others, but these are the main ones as they relate to what you're trying to say.
We cannot cut ourselves off from the rest of the world, nor should we.
We have long held that we atheists have much more in common with theists than we have differences. We also stress that the God-question is one of the stupidest controversies we can think of over which to get into a heated argument. Granted, many theists will disagree and will consider the God-question of utmost importance. Nevertheless, we have seen no reason to go along with those theists on that matter. Besides, there are plenty of theists who will agree with us in this, and we thus have plenty of opportunity to make friendships and form alliances with people who are interested in working together to solve the grave problems which we face as a species.
It is time to act as humans first and reach an understanding of each other. The promise of peace should be a standard that we demand from all religions and believes. Lets challenge local religious leaders to reach out to each other. Lets ask Christians to reach out to Muslims. Lets ask Jews to reach out to Muslims. If we can lead the way to understanding we will be respected.
Most of the theistic groups whose outlooks are conducive to this behavior are already actively engaged in trying to reach out -- if not across Christian-Muslim lines, at least across the lines of Christian denominations which were once bitterly divided. Lately, the Christian-Jewish barrier seems to be crumbling just as the inter-Christian barriers have, for the most part, fallen away. Even when the leadership still maintains a sharp distinction, the rank-and-file tend to downplay such distinction. Thus you will see many intermarriages today, and have seen these for as long as I can remember. I have many friends who are older than I who are the product of Jewish-Christian marriages.
As for atheists joining this move, I'd say that most rank-and-file atheists already do this, because most atheists just don't care about religious matters. Whether somebody is Jewish or Muslim or Christian or even atheistic matters naught to the vast majority of atheists.
The small number of atheists who do care about these things tend to be those atheists likely to join groups. This brings two advantages: First, the percentage of atheists who are willing to join a group is very small, almost imperceptible. Even though its the atheist groups that the press will hear from when they want to solicit the opinions of "atheists," the groupers are really an insignificant minority. Secondly, even if you did want to "reach out" to atheists groups, this would be a rather simple undertaking. I'm not sure you will accomplish much, because these atheists are more likely to approach their atheism fundamentalistically; like their theistic counterparts, such atheists would be much tougher to reason with.
Perhaps something similar to our suggestion will eventually catch on -- perhaps atheists will, on a wide scale, refrain from gratuitously and indiscriminately criticizing any and all forms of theism and restrict our criticism to those forms of theism which are intrusive, exploitative, and dangerous. If this or a similarly cooperative or peace-promoting outlook becomes popular, we can expect the groups to want to adapt it simply because its being popular will increase the groups' prospects for gaining new members. Hey! We could do much worse!
However, I am finding (and have known for most of my life) that the vast majority of those who do not believe in gods tend not to care whether or not others believe. My family was this way as were most of our friends and neighbors who were atheists (and those who were theists, come to think of it). About once a year, my father would get into it with the Roman Catholic family's father, but we all knew that they were just having fun with it -- engaging in a competitive game of exploring ideas -- just like when they'd discuss the merits of hunting (or lack thereof) or whatever. And we knew that the competition inherent in the discussion was no more competitive than that involved in a chess game or a tennis match. I can remember when I started hanging at the Baptist church and my parents, atheists, invited the Mormon neighbor over to see if I might be interested in Mormonism! My parents though much more highly of Mormonism than they did of regular Christianity, and thought very little of the biblical fundamentalism I was learning from the Baptists!
I have been to a Jewish Synagogue and a Unitarian Church down here.
This is an excellent start! You will go far in your specific quest with these two sects. I don't hold out much hope for many sects, but these two will provide you with great success as far as reaching out to promote peace and inter-sect dignity.
I have told other religious and political leaders to stop being selfish and I expect the same from Atheists.
You have our pledge of cooperation, but you will need to recognize that many of us atheists have been deeply hurt for centuries and this pain just won't go away in a day. We cannot learn to deal with this pain just by going to a few sessions with a psychologist or social worker. In fact, I barely know where to start.
I do hold out hope for our recommendation that atheists refrain from indiscriminately and gratuitously criticizing any and all forms of religious expression. This is, I think, a very good start. We can deal with the pain, for now, by allowing ourselves to continue to speak out against dangerous expressions of religion -- such as what happened in New York two weeks ago as well as many of the responses that have followed, including Jerry Falwell's comments, Bush's blatantly exploitative public religiosity and his crusade-like approach to his little "war," the dancing in the streets of Beirut and elsewhere, and the shocking bigotry against Sikh-American and Muslim-American citizens, which could, at any moment, turn its focus upon atheists. Any atheist will have her or his hands full addressing any one of these issues, or perhaps one of the handful of other exploitative religious acts that we've witnessed -- if that atheist even wants to say anything at all!
We really have no time or energy any more to sit there and indiscriminately cap on any and all forms of religion. Most importantly, we have no reason to act this way, because most expressions of religion harm nobody. We may disagree or even find some of it objectionable, but we're big boys and girls and we'll get over it.
As for cooperating with some forms of religion, particularly some of the more popular forms of Evangelical Christianity as it's practiced in the United States, many of the active atheists who have paid attention, who have watched the Evangelical Christian leadership over the years, have noticed several important tendencies on the part of these leaders. Evangelical Christianity is a form of monotheism which actively seeks to dominate and even rule almost every situation with which it comes in contact. Many of the more powerful Evangelical Christian leaders have shown us that they will stop at nothing to win a few converts or to gain control over this or that aspect of public life.
This was a problem during much of the career of the brilliant journalist H. L. Mencken, and it has been quite a problem starting again in the late 1960s but particularly beginning with the Reagan administration. This religiosity is not limited to the Evangelical Christian organizations, but is also practiced by some of the "fringe" sects, such as Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church. But Evangelical Christianity is so popular as to be almost ubiquitous; we are constantly having to battle them over lawmaking and even public school curricula, trying to stop them from legislating their specific brand of "morality" and bringing the instruction of their specific religious tenets into our classrooms.
This particular brand of religiosity is what I would consider intrusive, exploitative, and, at times, dangerous. I know of very few atheists -- active or oblivious -- who would disagree with the observation that the Evangelicals are a force to be reckoned with. In fact, I'd wager that even those sect with which you will find much in the way of cooperation will balk at the notion of trying to get along with those Evangelicals who set themselves apart from everybody and anybody who is not in full agreement with them on religious matters. I don't know how to address this problem, and would tend to place the "ball in their court," as they say. We can certainly urge them to try to get along with us purely for the sake of getting along, but I don't hold out much hope in many of them responding to our call for peace and unity. In fact, the closest we came to this was Bush's Day of Prayer, and even then, based on the remarks of Rev. Falwell and Rev. Robertson along with the somewhat vocal support for their sentiments from within the Evangelical camp, I cannot hold out much hope for cooperation from them any time soon.
I would appreciate feedback from you regarding my reservations.
These reservations include the fact that many atheists have been deeply hurt for a long time. This pain does come from almost all sides. Considering that atheists are the single most widely and viciously despised innocent people group in history, we will see examples of bigotry and stigma coming from those that we ought to consider as potential allies. This bigotry is institutionalized and will not fall in a day. And we are foolish, I think, if we pretend that it will just go away if we ignore it and simply go about our business of trying to get along. I suspect that most active atheists will want to continue confronting this whenever it occurs.
Cliff Walker
Positive Atheism Magazine
Six years of service to
people with no reason to believe
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