Jayhawker Soule

Well said ...

galiel

That is an entirely different discussion, one that is only relevant if you accept the premise of grass-roots decentralized, democratic activism. From the nature of your questions, and your condescending dismissal of my argument, that is not clear. However, I will assume that you are genuinely interested in the answers, and not just filling time until the next football game.

A long-term campaign plan does not spring full-grown like Athena from the head of Zeus. Not unless one wishes to impose a top-down view of what is or isn't appropriate.

Nonetheless, discussion have already started in this forum on specifics, from the creation of a non-partisan database of information and knowledge (no, they are not the same thing) and a communications infrastructure that would serve all like-minded organizations, free (as in beer AND as in lunch); to the division of talent and energy into several different arenas, with some (like myslef) proposing a functional division into political, educational and support, and others suggesting a division by goals or by the existing political infrastructure. There should also be threads where people brainstorm and contribute about the type of local actions that can be done with global effect.

In addition, not to belittle the quality of this community, but it is not the only place where I am attempting to spur discussion. Before ever posting here, I experimented with these ideas among friends and colleagues, and, in a more limited way, in the public arena, in the newspapers and talk radio and in intimate local meetings.

The response has convinced me that, while I by no means have all the answers, I am on the right track.

Specifically, that

1)The urgency to do *something* now is widely felt,
2) that the current top-down approaches have not worked, and that
3) we have to start somewhere, by taking the first step. Fortuitively, the march, I believe, represents such a first step.

The hoary metaphor of planning a trip before setting out on a destination does not map well to this kind of democratic effort. A better metaphor, perhaps, is the concept of "an idea whose time has come", where the confluence of timing, circumstances and actions create a wide tidal wave of energy rather than a focused fire hose.

Either way, you don't get anywhere by spending all your time debating which route is the fastest or passes the least tolls. At some point, you simply have to take that first step.

We spend too much time letting the experts put out fires for us. What we need is a tsunami that will forever change the terrain, just like the one that created the American republic.

I realize this is foreign to some. Part of what makes this possible is today's communications technology, which was a tool not available to previous generations. Part of what makes this necessary and urgent is the unique moment we face in this country's history, of which there has been altogether too little educating, where a coordinated effort to change the secular foundations of our nation have reached a critical point. And part of what makes this effort worth doing is the belief that reason and logic lead to a better world governed less by passion, less inclined to blindly follow authority, whether divine or dictatorial, and where MLK's vision can be expanded, so that people will be not be judged by the things that set them apart, but by the things that make us all human.

I don't expect any of this to change your ReasonablyDoubting mind. I do make a distinction between skepticism, which I embrace, and cynicism, which I hear in your posts and which leads nowhere.

I look forward to continuing this discussion on a more constructive path.

- galiel

Jayhawker Soule

No doubt it's sufficient for people to know that you are taking them for a ride. I admit, however, that you are correct in one regard: I am both contemptuous of, and cynical towards, activism posed as strategy or goal rather than as tactic.

Rusting Car Bumper

I didn't. To suggest otherwise would be a straw man.

DC

Rusting Car Bumper

To my knowledge that has not been said or suggested by anyone.

The point is that it if far less likely that someone will treat you with equality with regard to political rights if they see you as less than human so to speak. This is what the civil rights struggle of the 60s, especially under MLK, brought to the table. This is what gay pride brings to the table.

Whites born in the south do not respect blacks simply because laws were passed and protests were made. The white who was born into the south who would have otherwise been infused with the default racism of the culture is tody almost guarenteed not to obtain such racism because the culture was changed. It wasn't changed by law alone. The change of law was merely dotting the i's and crossing the t's. It was changed by seeping the idea of the equality of all humans into the culture.

Non-believers are missing this element. We seem to want to oppose religionists instead of seeing ourselves as equal to them in civil society.

DC

Rusting Car Bumper

I believe this to be my last response to you. You seem to take a difference of opinion personally and resort to distortions of positions which amount to insults.

I do not dismiss it or ignore the deep hurt.

We disagree on its cause. Why is this so difficult to understand? Why do you insist on painting me as some sort of enemy because of a difference of opinion?

I say the cause it not going to be solved by changing laws and marching politically. Why would a believer suddenly not hate you or not view you as evil because an atheist wins a court case or marches? Most likely the opposite will occur and the believer who hates you will "confirm" his or her prejudices. When this happens even the political struggle becomes harder.

The prejudice is the problem. Its not "under god" or "In God we Trust." These are symptoms. Fight the prejudice, and not its innumerable precipitants.

DC

livius drusus

DC, I moved to Georgia 8 years ago and I can guarantee you that racism is still very much the default on an interpersonal level. In all-white company, the n-word is thrown around without a second thought, usually under the I'm-not-racist-but banner. De facto segregation is rampant. Services (public and private) in black neighborhooods are markedly inferior.

People may be polite to each other in public, but there is no way in hell you can even begin to claim that racism is dead because white people got them some enlightenment courtesy of MLK. In fact, many people seem to believe that since they're not currently stringing people up and taking family pictures next to the charred body, they couldn't possibly be racist nomatter what sickening expression of bigotry oozes out of them on a daily basis.

The civil rights struggle made the violent and unconstitutional expression of racism distasteful, not the racism itself. Far from being a cherry on the cake of equality, civil rights legislation and its enforcement form the line in the sand. You can still hold all your cherished preconceived notions about the inferiority of black people, you just can't kill them as easily.

The south is not alone in this, btw. The racist south/liberated north image is a prejudice like any other. Racism is everywhere. My dad is from Connecticut and he harbors a charming vipers' nest of biases. Indiana is a KKK stronghold.

From what my perspective (and I have a few stories that would make your hair stand on end) the 'culture' has made public expression of racism in mixed race company unacceptable, but that's pretty much it. The rest is up to the individual and the law.

[ September 18, 2002: Message edited by: livius drusus ]</p>

waj

This doesn't jibe with my personal experience. Most of the theists I know support church-state separation (though my sample's biased, living in the northeast and hanging out with a lot of activists and musicians).

Those Christians I know who are anti-atheist (I don't know enough anti-atheists of other persuasions to find a pattern) are genuinely fearful that we are working to wipe religion off the face of the earth. Concomitant with church/state separation is freedom of religion. I do not believe that working to remove the first amendment right to practice religion is a more laudable goal than working to establish a theocracy. The goal should be rigorous enforcement of c/s separation, while respecting the right of individuals to practice their religion.

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Is the Darwin Fish I stick on my backpack actively working to restrict freedom of religion?

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If you watch Nova and truthfully answer a Nielsen's Rating Poll, are you actively working to restrict freedom of religion?

I don't think so, and I will continue to do these things (well, I don't watch Nova so often), just as I will not seek to hinder others from playing bingo at their local church or donating to the political candidate of their choice.

I will (and do) seek to hinder those who are weakening the wall separating church and state; the best way to do that, in my opinion, is to work together with those with the same goal, whether they are theists or not (and I'd expect a great many to be theists). Anti-religion sentiment, which will probably pervade AA's march, is counterproductive, and will likely confirm some of the mistaken generalizations conservative Christians make about atheists.

Alonzo Fyfe

Personally, I do not see this as an either-or (cause and effect) situation. But more as a feedback loop.

I think that people learn a great deal of contempt for atheists in school. I believe that the lesson learned when a teacher has students pledge to "one nation, under God" is easy to grasp -- that those who are not "under God" are as anti-American as those who would divide the union, and those who would promote tyranny over liberty, or injustice over justice.

I think that the sign on the school wall, "In God We Trust," written over an image of the flag, is just as obvious. It would not be any more plain than if the school had posted a sign that said "atheists are America's enemy."

These lessons, once learned so early and repeated so often to children at a young age -- that invites not only their passive observance but their participation, become almost impossible to unlearn in adulthood.

They are the symptoms of the last generation's contempt for atheists, but they are a significant cause of the next generation's contempt.

And, yet, to simply fight the court case for the purpose of winning the case, without educating people into why these actions are wrong and why these battles are being fought, is just as fruitless.

Answering merely, "Because the Constitution says so," simply is not a good enough reason -- it is as likely to inspire contempt for certain parts of the Constitution (or certain interpretations of it) as anything -- as we have seen. It leads to worthless debates whereby different participants try to outshout each other in saying, "my forefather can beat up your forefather."

The question to answer, and which is being ignored, is "Why is it good that the Constitution says these things? Why is it wrong for the state to post signs on the school that say to its students -- and have those students repeat, "There is no such thing as a patriotic American atheist."

ybnormal

From one who has just been wrongly labeled a bigot on this thread, I want to thank you for this excellent and timely post.

Unfortunately, there are still Black rural areas of the South where that statement would be challenged. Then you have places like Texas, where lynching has only been replaced by dragging Black men behind pickup trucks.


<a href="http://www.clarionledger.com/news/0006/29/29teen.html" target="_blank">This still "unsolved" story happened in the same Mississippi County that I grew up in.</a>