To Those About to Live, We Salute You

One of the problems I had while my faith was fading is that I've always had issues with depression. And if there was no forever, no galactic memory card, no ultimate score board, I was, quite frankly, afraid I would lose all hope and drive to do better. What point could there be in a finite playground? And after watching Christian/Atheist debates, I've come to understand that however shortsighted that feeling was, it was not uncommon. In fact it was a founding principal in at least one of the monotheisms. Isn't that the precise thrust behind Matthew 6:34, "Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself"?

Fortunately this is a faulty paradigm.

Often times it seems the message of atheists, especially online, is overtly aggressive and/or sarcastic. This is to combat the extreme-conservatism of religious strongholds, not to convert the idling near-free-thinkers. I often wonder if I, the oft-contrarian that I am, would have realized my own atheism had I only been exposed to this intellectual climate.

Instead of an online community (or onslaught,) I was fortunate enough  to have found the place where dialogue happens between the standpoints. From there, I turned in. Undoubtedly this is why the internet is dubbed in pop-culture as the place where religions go to die. And their end will, hopefully, be as final as our own.

When the individual turns inward, reflection is inevitable. Upon further reflection, I realized that though this life may be fleeting and capricious, there is value in it. In fact, it is because of the impermanence of our experience that these moments must be lived fully. And not only must they be pursued, captured, and engulfed with purpose, but on purpose. This is living.

This is the tender triumph which is often lost in the Pro v. Anti argument. But it is not something which the converted atheist will ever purposely devalue.

And so; to those about to live, we salute you.

ADRIAN FORT is a writer, blogger, and essayist from Kansas City, Missouri. Follow him on twitter @adriananyway. His work has appeared in Existere, decomP magazinE, The Bluest Aye, Bareback Magazine, Gadfly Online, Chrome Baby, The Eunoia Review, Linguistic Erosion, and Smashed Cat Magazine. His Master's Degree is from Lindenwood University. 


Also By The Secular Superhumanist: 
Coming Out
Humanist, All Too Humanist
Hitchens-Jefferson Day An Atheist/Humanist Holiday
Gay Marriage, God Willing

Humanist, All Too Humanist

We're branded. Worse than just labeled, we're branded. This is, people don't know who we are when we say we are atheist- they know what we think and what we'll say and where we've been. That's how branding works. They probably even know which Christopher Hitchens videos we have favorited on Youtube.

Unfortunately, as is often the case with unpopular beliefs, our branders are not ourselves. We have been branded by the majority, by theists and believers; we have been branded by those who have no idea how we wonder at the universe, let alone that we wonder at all. And so, we are considered empty. We are viewed as loveless and prideful. We are seen as selfish and without imagination.

I fear we are to blame.

We've made this too easy for them to do. After all, we are atheists. Our label itself infers a "non." A non belief in god. We're making a non claim.

So why not take it a step further?

We do not believe in god. This leaves one real option for us. We believe in people. Every breakthrough our species has made has been through the power of one. We know that.

We are humanists.

It is through the power, prescience, and propensity of the individual that our species has been able to commandeer and cull an entire planet. That there is, at least, one corner of all reality which is governed and sustained by an erect, bipedal mammal is a stunning fact. And it is a fact because of the power of the individual.

Not only is it important to accept the label of humanist because it's time, but also because of the difficulty the opposition will have in speaking down the term "humanist." And the moment of hesitation that it will take for them to mock the term "humanist," a term which exploits the integrity and autonomy in each of us, may be all that it takes to force them into questioning their own label as well.

Questioning beliefs is when answers start changing.

And changing our very label jolts the starting position of our interactions and conversations from, "why don't you do believe?" to "how could people have done all of this on their own?" That difference alone may provide the vantage point necessary to instill some doubt. And that's before the dialogue really begins.

The point is we need to force change for the world we live in, not simply create tolerance for our beliefs.

If we embrace the responsibility of a positive claim instead of running from it going forward, we can surely find some islands of common ground.

 From there we stress the importance of science and children who read voraciously. These values, when stated seriously, are extremely difficult to dispute. They are also values that the theist position has not treated as premier in the past.

But so long as the majority debits the prestige of our species to some meddling teller in the sky, we cannot agree on the value of this life.

The value of this life is incalculable.

This is what it means to be humanist.



Also, don't forget to get your shopping in for Hitchens-Jefferson Day.

ADRIAN FORT is a writer, blogger, and essayist from Kansas City, Missouri. Follow him on twitter @adriananyway. His work has appeared in Existere, decomP magazinE, The Bluest Aye, Bareback Magazine, Gadfly Online, Chrome Baby, The Eunoia Review, Linguistic Erosion, and Smashed Cat Magazine. His Master's Degree is from Lindenwood University. 

Hitchens-Jefferson Day, An Atheist Holiday

I think you'll agree that one of the most naggingly frustrating things about being atheist (besides the "where do you get your  morals form" nonsense) is that we're always celebrating other people's (read:Christian/Pagan) holidays. It's like having 364 friends, and no one ever gets around to celebrating your birthday.

Sure, I can kill a Reeses' Easter egg like few others, and I know all the words to "Baby it's Cold Outside" and it takes me a full 31 days to talk myself out of dressing up as a Naughty Nurse every October, but working retail for over a decade has never let me forget what all those holidays are really about: Margin.

And what they certainly are not about: Free Thought.

So, why not have an atheist holiday to propagate that? My suggestion is that we dub 13 April as Hitchens-Jefferson Day. It is, of course, the day that both of these Free Thought icons (is that oxymoronic?) were born. Instead of mulling the change of Christmas to Newton Day among ourselves and friends, in a Yankee-Doodle type of protest, I suggest this date for more than the one reason, First, making our claim on a previous holiday is a combative answer when we should be aiming at peace for this move. Second, Spring is the season of birth. Of beginnings. Third, Easter is wishy-washy with it's date. We'll set our claim and let them work around us.

Of course, drug stores across the nation will be in no hurry to clear 100 square feet from their Easter Aisle to sell the Jefferson Bible or "Letters to a Young Contrarian," and while it would make a good deal of symbolic sense for tobacco to factor largely into celebrations, perhaps we should shy away from that.

So, I propose, we shift our concentration and efforts of the glamorous aisles of Wal-Mart and take them deep into the dark recesses of your local book store.

Yeah, I'm suggest we continue the act of gift giving. Sue me. What could possibly be more fitting for a Free Thought holiday than an exchange of books? Book s represent the most complete single thoughts  that our species is capable of producing.

There are two "Also's" which make a more compelling case to perpetuate this behavior.

Also #1: A massive and diverse book exchange will directly assail the practice of certain individuals who claim to only need "One Book."

Also #2: The publishing industry is far from healthy. There will always be Bibles and Korans and Torahs published. Always. It's sort of on us as a community to guarantee that authors not named god stay in print too.

One last thing, instead of "Merry Christmas," or "Thoughtful Hitchens-Jefferson Day" or even "Here, read a fucking book," maybe each Hitchens-Jefferson Day gift should come with the phrase, "I'm an atheist and a free thinker."

Corny? Sure. But think how corny "Merry Christmas" really sounds. Yet it gets uttered billions of times per year. And the effect is that it normalizes the idea of Christianity. It is a type of branding for Christians which conjures thoughts of family gatherings and Christmas trees and gifts.

If we do our work, "I'm an atheist and a free thinker" will conjure thoughts of books instead of, well, whatever it is that the phrase conjures now.

Anyhow, here are the books I bought and the thought process behind each of them.

For a fellow atheist. A delectable morsel of Hitchens. It is readable, quotable, and off the beaten Hitchpath (God is not Great, Letters to a Young Contrarian, Thomas Jefferson: Author of America)

For a fellow reader who has dabbled in Palahniuk. The book is far from flawless, as many of the characters are indistinguishable, but the scope and ambition of the project should classify it as required reading.

For a friend who is aiming at becoming a stronger reader. Sure, he probably won't get the full depth of Hemingway at first read, who does? But Hemingway is exceedingly smooth to read, and upon returning to Hemingway, you always notice more.

A bit of a different look than the other books, but the giftee in question has quite a bit of reading to do for school already. One of her interests is fitness, so this book should get some use even while she is doing her imposing readings for school.

Don't question the worth of comics. This is for a local film-maker who is looking at making an adaptation of Hamlet. Therefore I believe this is going to be a helpful tool for him when entering the visualization portion of production. 

ADRIAN FORT is a writer, blogger, and essayist from Kansas City, Missouri. Follow him on twitter @adriananyway. His work has appeared in Existere, decomP magazinE, The Bluest Aye, Bareback Magazine, Gadfly Online, Chrome Baby, The Eunoia Review, Linguistic Erosion, and Smashed Cat Magazine. His Master's Degree is from Lindenwood University. 

Gay Marriage, God Willing

Even so recent as ten years ago, the gay marriage debate was not nearly so prevalent in the public sphere, let alone was it gaining success. At the time, one of the arguments used against the "gay lifestyle" by bigots with enough tact to try to avoid citing god was that "they" are so promiscuous. The gays, you know, they just sleep with every one. AIDS, it serves them right, no?

In the wake of the gay marriage tidal wave, this argument of promiscuity evaporated. Poof. And the bigots all lost their tact. Poof. After all, if the gays can be proud, why can't the Christians? (Besides the whole persecution-complex, that is.) So they are proud, and they argue strictly from their religious texts for the same type of society that Islamic states have. 

Care to dispute that? Here is my challenge to anyone arguing against gay marriage: You must answer the following question, "Why not?" The moment you mention a god that those whose rights are in question may or may not believe in, and that they are in no obligation to respect, your argument is dismissed. 

There will be no argument. None. Nothing. 

So let's play their game for a bit. Pretend there's a sky-daddy to throw curveballs into the design that he himself created. Because of this concession, we'll go ahead and pretend that homosexuality is unnatural (a claim for which there is [like the sky-daddy claim] no evidence.) Further, in this world, the act of homosexuality is sinful. Sounds like a pretty compelling case against gay marriage, yeah? Don't suppose we could shoot that down...

Free will.

Done. Argument won. Otherwise the act of murder is less egregious to Christians than two men marrying. 

But, the argument can be made, that murder is against the law. So how can I say that?

Because the state (a secular institution, mind you) is not required to authorize the legitimacy of a murder. The question of murder is proven as a matter of fact, or it is not. 

Under god's design (plot hole?) of free will, the Christian who tampers with an individual's ability to sin without victim is, simply, doing it wrong. 

So we are left where we started-- with the naked act of bigotry. 

I just hope they are sure not to lay with each other while naked-bigoting. It would be an abomination to see them getting their irony all over one another.


ADRIAN FORT is a writer, blogger, and essayist from Kansas City, Missouri. Follow him on twitter @adriananyway. His work has appeared in Existere, decomP magazinE, The Bluest Aye, Bareback Magazine, Gadfly Online, Chrome Baby, The Eunoia Review, Linguistic Erosion, and Smashed Cat Magazine. His Master's Degree is from Lindenwood University. 

The Future of Barbarism

There is a growing conversation between non-believers and the moderates of the religious world, predominantly in the interest of self-preservation in the age of mutually assured destruction, and this conversation circles around the future of religion and how to ensure that the future is less, perhaps, abrasive. In my estimation there are two conditions to this argument which, if you'll allow the phrase, murder this argument in the street of public discourse.

The first is the assumption by the religious that their chosen text is, in fact, infallible. So long as this is the assumption, there can be no common ground. Even for moderates. This is where the word "tolerance" gets its power as a tool of the moderate cause, when its utterance should be abhorred. For example, one shining sliver of the Decalogue proclaims that, "Thou shalt not have no other gods before me". Buried in this proclamation are three assumptions; 1. Thou shalt be Jew/Christian/Muslim, and if not, thou art lesser. 2. Thou shalt, in fact, have a god. If not, thou art not (art'nt?) lesser, thou art essentially non-existent. And 3. If thou havest other gods, it's totally cool, just knowest where thou's bread art buttered. Now, because of the infallibility of this commandment, the religious may be able to "tolerate"people with other beliefs, but they can never accept them. No matter how urgently they are compelled (read:forced) to love their neighbor.

So, because the religious person is the owner of the ultimate truth, what good is a secular argument that comes from a fallible and faulted soul? Due to this, at any point of deep-rooted departure, any true schism between what is reasonable and what is religious, the holyman can simply shrug his shoulders and tap his book, thus claiming authority. Ultimate authority.

The problem of infallibility leads directly into the second issue with any true type of progressivism-- and this is a problem rooted within the literature itself--  these books were written by men who didn't know better. This is an admission which must be made regardless of whether one believes the authors' hands were divinely driven or no. No page of the Bible mentions DNA. The Torah clearly avoids germ theory. I'll not mention the Koran's take on the women's movement. Sure, this may seem like a trivial charge. But imagine looking no further than Kipling's "The White Man's Burden" when trying to debate race relations. What's the problem? The human genome has been sequenced, fully putting to rest any hope for a claim of superiority springing from the tint of one's flesh. It's bullshit.

In this vein, the very nomenclature of religious texts is impregnated with assumptions, biases, and claims from ignorance which are no longer of any appreciable value to any society. Let alone a first world nation. Don't give credence to the retarding effects of a simple set of subtle language-based assumptions? Note the importance of female virginity peppered throughout the Bible and contemplate that in regard to the dichotomy, observable in contemporary popular culture, between male sexuality and female sexuality.

Because of these two hinges of the religious world-view, I fear it may be a fair claim to say that the religious future, and the future of religions, will be prone to relapses into their barbaric past much more so than open to progressing into a world where they are not necessary to a cohesive world view.

That is, we are more likely to get more events reminiscent of Charlie Hebdo and 9/11 while struggling towards tolerance than we are to enjoy peace and acceptance.

ADRIAN FORT is a writer, blogger, and essayist from Kansas City, Missouri. Follow him on twitter @adriananyway. His work has appeared in Existere, decomP magazinE, The Bluest Aye, Bareback Magazine, Gadfly Online, Chrome Baby, The Eunoia Review, Linguistic Erosion, and Smashed Cat Magazine. His Master's Degree is from Lindenwood University.