WORLD CHANGERS

Every generation has a few of what I refer to as "World Changers."

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and a number of others in that generation were in that category. Every generation has had them. I don't subscribe to the old saw that "they don't make 'em like that anymore."

Yes, they do.

It's just that they are often unrecognized as the world changers they are until later. During their lifetimes, they are often the centers of controversy and turmoil and not recognized as the dynamic leaders and game changers they really are. Sometimes, they are only truly recognized after martyrdom.

I am writing this blog on a day that honors one of those martyred world changers -- January 16 -- Martin Luther King Day.

It wasn't until today that I read the entire context of King's "I Have a Dream" speach. I had heard excerpts of it, but have to confess that I never took the time to look up and read the entire speach. Find it here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/16/i-have-a-dream-speech-text-martin-luther-king-jr_n_1207734.html.

It was like hearing the strains of a rousing march tune! What an orator! King could take ordinary words and fill them with emotional drama and power that only a master of oratory could rise to! It takes a lot of emotion and clarity of thought to accomplish the feat. One has to be totally dedicated.

It may seem strange that I have so much regard for Martin Luther King. After all, I am a dedicated anti-theist atheist. By contrast, he was a dedicated Christian minister.

King died at the age of 39. When I was that age, I was also totally dedicated to a cultic form of Christianity. Perhaps he would still be as dedicated if he had lived as long as have I. Who can know? Where we end up in life philosophy and dedication depends a great deal on what we experience and what we learn over time.

What I have learned and experienced in the interim has led me to just as much of a dedicated goal as King had. I, too, have a dream.

I dream of a day when the human race is not divided by the blind dogmas of militant religions. Of a time when reason and scientific and historical facts form the basis of personal and international human decisions. I just as vehemently and passionately hope that my descendants will be people of reasoned good will toward their fellow humans, respectful of others because of their inherent right as fellow humans to be loved and respected and given equal opportunity to happiness and prosperity.

I dream of a human race released from the shackles of myth and superstition. A world in which ignorant, superstitious parents don't home school their innocent, bright-eyed children to condemn them to a lifetime of fanatic dedication to the same mythological nonsense that has warped their own minds.

I dream of our colonizing space, spreading throughout the galaxy and developing technologies that will make what we have today look like the stone age artifacts we gaze at in museums -- terraforming planets, intervening to prevent celestial disasters, evolving to potentials we can only speculate and dream about.

It is ignorance, selfishness, greed and faith inspired hate that stands in the way. It has always stood in the way. It burned the great library of Alexandria and took most of the accumulated knowledge of the ancient world away in those flames.

The same forces now threaten the progress we have made in the last few centuries with a holocaust that could extinguish us from the universe -- a universe that beckons and waits for us to grow up and turn sane.

What a tragedy it would be for ignorance and blindness to again wipe out the hard won gains mankind has made -- all for the slacking of the thirst some have for ultimate power over other of their fellow humans -- dictating what and how they will think, what they will be forced to say they believe on the pain of torture and/or death.

I waver between optimism and pessimism. What I see in the world has much in it that discourages, yet, I still hope. It is the "only game in town," as far as I can see.

I will continue to promote and work for "the dream."

GOOD QUESTION

There was a very interesting quote on Pharyngula this morning.  Every day, P. Z. Myers publishes an essay by someone who explains why he or she is an atheist. 

This morning, the essay was by Jessica from Australia.  I like getting to the root of things, and one particular statement caught my attention as being the best sumation of the whole question about a god existing.  It came out of the mouth of a babe.  Here it is:  "What sealed the deal for good with me not really believing in a deity was my innocent 6 or 7 year old cousin saying 'If god put us here, who put God there?'”

My former close creationist friend of eighty-plus years contents himself with the assurance that god has just always been.  He can't see the contradiction in his assurance that the creation could not exist without a creator but the creator who would of necessity have to have been even more complex could just magically exist.

I will never cease to marvel how we brainy apes can be so logical about so many things but swallow the assurance of faith mongers so gullibly and placidly.  I did for decades.  I devoted my life and sacrificed good life and well-being to help promote that intellectual madness to others.  Yes, I was once a faith monger too.  Many I knew, worked with and loved still are.

WHY POLITICS MATTERS

Why am I spending time talking about politics and economics when the subject of this blog is agnostic atheism?  Am I getting off subject?

In a simple one-word answer, NO!

In twenty-first century America, politics is religion and religion is politics.  They are so intertwined that it is virtually impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins.

The Tea Party branch of Republicanism is especially intertwined with religion.  Bachmann, for example, got her advanced (?) education at an ultraconservative religious school that is far more pernicious than Ambassador College ever was.

You really cannot be a tea partiest, and to a lesser extent, a Republican without passing a religious "litmus test."  Only in the Democratic or Libertarian party, or as an Independent, can a non-religous person find a true haven.  That's why the Democratic party's support throughout the "Bible Belt" is so low.  Voting Democratic is seen as being unchristian.

Religion has taken over and corrupted politics in this country, and it's hard for me to understand why.  We once were the most progressive country in the world.  Now, we are mired in superstition and faith-based nonsense and fast becoming the laughing stock of the enlightened Western world.

There is no real separation of church and state in the US today.  Ronald Reagan started it off and the Bushes continued it with their insidious "faith based" preaching.