Why am I doing this?

It can be frustrating knowing that having this blog will not have much effect on the current tensions between the extremes of religion and non-religion. So why am I doing this? Why not spend my time more productively?

I guess this will have to do for an answer: I do it because I want whoever reads this to hear my voice. I want people to know that I as a secular person am not represented by the likes of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, or PZ Myers. I do not follow these men like some lost puppy, and I do not hang on their every word as if they were pop icons of atheism. I am embarrassed and sickened by their unnecessary level of outrage and hatred in responding to religion. Their New Atheism strategy is counterproductive, and it gives secular people a worse name than they had before.

I'm sure that there are many others in this country who feel exactly the same way as I do, but they aren't talking because they think it doesn't matter anyway. Well, it matters to me, folks. Remember George Tiller? He was killed because he was considered a baby murderer by a Christian extremist. Doing his job brought about his end, and such I would consider to be an honourable way to die. I may end up getting killed someday because these high-profile messiahs of secularism are poking religious extremists too hard with their sharp sticks, and I don't consider that honourable at all. If I'm going to die for my worldview, is it too much to ask that it be due to something I said or did, rather than as a result of some disagreeable self-appointed loudmouth who thinks he or she is some international atheist superhero?

So there it is. I don't believe in the supernatural, but I don't see any reason to declare war on it. What gets accomplished by that? If anyone is going to ask me to become a fawning fan of the Dawkins Foundation, you need to explain to me how it's going to make the world a better place. I'll listen, but I'll be asking the hard questions as well.