Ocassional Thoughts of an Independent Progressive Atheistic Humanist
Thursday May 3rd is the National Day of Reason in the United States. The day is a secular celebration for humanists, atheists, and other secularists and freethinkers in response to the National Day of Prayer, that is unfortunately a legal holiday in the United States. This country has many issues from high unemployment to religious conservatives attacks on women’s rights. The government shouldn’t be holding national days of prayer, we need reason to help solve human problems.
In the decades I’ve been involved in the atheist and Humanist movements, I’ve seen many “inner-party” battles over policy, plans, and actions. Many atheists I know are very vocal to the point they piss off many of my Humanist friends. So-called strident atheists never bothered me because of simple points I keep in mind that lowers my threshold of annoyance. I wish more in the freethought community would keep these hints in mind.
An example of the infighting I’ve seen inside the freethought community can read in an essay by American Humanist Association President David Niose:
Humanism is a strange collection of individuals in a stew of rationality, all of us looking for the truth for our world view. We, as Humanists, know we must work with believers and other theists to find common ground with the goal of bettering the human condition. Andy Norman, writing for the Humanist Network News, an e-zine of the American Humanist Association, tries to offer tips for dialogue on Humanism to non-humanists but does so by giving up honesty in the process.
Norman, in his essay “Framing Humanism, or How to Win the Culture War”, starts out great by explaining how we as Humanists could do a better job of bringing in new people or at least getting our message out by the use of Framing (where we control the meaning of our message), but then my alarm bells start going off when I read this:
There is a viral video called “KONY 2012” by the group Invisible Children highlighting Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda – this is the same group that Rush Limbaugh supported simply because of the group’s name. It seems the group behind the effort to bring Kony down has not been completely honest about their full agenda.
Here is a short video discussing the “KONY 2012” effort:
Guess who showed up in a news clip showing a tacky photo-op by supporters of HB 125 aka “Heartbeat” Bill? Senator Cliff Hite (R-Findlay) received a Teddy Bear that made a heartbeat sound when squeezed. The whole photo-op was a circus that P. T. Barnum would be proud of.
Here is a screenshot from the video: