that might interest me,and in I went last evening.
Oh, crap.
Warning: this is probably going to sound like a cheap, online drama fest at first - please bear with me.
After posting a humorous comment here and there on some of the more palatable posts (I found the
PZ rides a placoderm in the skypic simply hilarious), I came to a post entitled We need one in every state," referring, of course, to Camp Quest. I'll spare the details on the post itself; that's why I linked it. I was reading the comments when I came across a poster named
pdfergusonwho was making a point that I supported:
indoctrination camps(my term, not pdferguson's), no matter religious or non, are pointless. Summer camp should be SUMMER CAMP, a place where kids have fun, not a camp about advocating or slamming worldviews. pd, of course, was promptly and viciously attacked by a very immature and rude poster named
Jadehawk OM,who soon was challenging pd's freedom of speech and expression by advising him/her to
STFU.I chimed in just after midnight, defending PD's position and giving Jadehawk the telling off he/she deserved. Two thugs soon joined in and tried to needle me (a lame argumentative style, quite ineffective in terms of resolving questions or conflicts). An appeal to reason quickly silenced them.
I went a little further with the comment I made, though. I had noticed that Myers himself had commented on his own post, talking to a commenter named
Uberliederand advising Uber to
pay a visitto a Camp Quest. Jadehawk and buddies can act as big a gang of trolling jackass as they want, but my fire was lit by what PZ had suggested to Uber. Here's why.
Several months back I had received a brochure about Camp Quest, asking me to support it financially. Suspecting that it was just the bigoted reverse of the interesting kids' summer fun place portrayed in the film Jesus Camp, I sent the following query via e-mail to camp@camp-quest.org:
Hello,
I am in receipt of your recent letter and brochure regarding Camp Quest. I have two questions:
1. Would you allow children who profess a religious belief but claim to be open-minded and critical-thinking to participate in the camps?
2. Would you allow interested persons to come in and observe activities at one of the camps during the summer?
Thank you,
Patrick Craig
And gosh - what a surprise! No reply at all. Perhaps they don't want a truly inquiring mind to go in there and expose the horrible things they very likely say about religion to the kids, so no, of course they wouldn't talk to me.
Or, maybe they just never received my e-mail. I actually hope that this is the case.
I wonder if they'll reply to me now that I've issued the following challenge:
Hey, Prof. Myers, could you explain to me why, when I wrote to the main CQ site asking if I could pay a visit sometime, they never wrote back? E-mail glitch, maybe? Or could it be because they don't want me to find out that, in truth, they are a bunch of extremist bigots who bash religion in front of the kids?
Probably not. Just like extremist Christians, there is no accountability that these people need own up to. In a world with two extremes and rampant apathy in the middle, no one is required to answer to anyone, and no one cares. Religious extremists try to influence legislation to reinstate the control they've lost over hundreds of years, and secular extremists live in a dream world where ridicule makes religion dry up and go away. No one cares to listen to the possibility there may be some middle ground. My favourite phrase is now
...and the War goes on.And it always will, I suppose. The only reason I'm saying anything at all is because I'm not exactly looking forward to the day when I get beaten up or killed because of this pervasive and uncontrolled state of animosity on the part of so many secularists that I do not share. I, for one, would like to live in a world where life can be lived in some small measure of comfort, not in fear or hatred. I find myself wondering if there are others who feel the same way...
You are not alone, my friend. We are likely the silent majority of atheists.
ReplyDeleteCheck out my comments about warlords here:
http://friendlyatheist.com/2009/06/09/obamas-lip-service-to-atheists/#comment-318086
I'll reproduce it in case it disappears due to some "server error":
In fact, I think it would be irresponsible for us to stop pushing.
Some of us think that it is counterproductive to push for trivial things like removing “In God We Trust” from coins, things that have no effect on our daily lives one way or the other. When in Rome, do as the Romans do.
I think you should be grateful for Obama’s acknowledgement that nonbelievers are equals with believers. Expecting him to bend his decisions to suit your agenda is living in la-la land. Why should secularist demands be more important than those from a zillion other special interest groups, only a small percentage of whom can be accomodated? What makes you think secularists have any chance, or even deserve one, of making the short list instead of the cutting room floor?
There are droves and droves of highly motivated Christian hornets in this country. It you keep wacking at this hornet’s nest, don’t be surprised if the amassed Christian drones sting you to death defending the hive.
The solution to push groups is not more push groups. That will only keep conflict going on forever, like vendettas. The solution is to bar special interest groups from having so much influence in the first place.
Of course, that will never happen unless mandated from the top down. There will always be professional warlords on both sides whose business depends on keeping these sorts of culture wars going. But that doesn’t mean that secularists at large have to participate in this kind of warmongering. We can begrudgingly let the warmongers have at it if they insist, but we don’t have to play along. The rest of us can take the high road and wash our hands of it, getting on with the business of life instead of the business of warlords.
Viva la resistance to fighting just for sake of starting fights!