Nate Phelps Speaks!

Nate Phelps, Fred's estranged son, spoke on April 11th to the American Atheist Convention in Georgia. He speaks about his life growing up as a Phelps, as well as his own personal struggle with god and spirituality due to the harshness of Fred's theology. It is an amazing testimony and worth the time it takes to peruse through it:

We learned that every thought and deed was laced with moral implications, that every decision was a decision for or against god’s will. If a judge ruled against one of my father’s clients, his raging eventually and inevitably became a righteous rant about the judge defying god, and attacking his people. Our father explained to us over and over about how our hearts were deceitful and desperately wicked. Our education about the world was profoundly colored by this fundamental assumption. One of my earliest doubts about our faith rose from the question that if, in fact, the Adamic race is so thoroughly cursed with this moral corruption, how is it that we so willingly turn to the writings of corrupt men to find our salvation?

Many Sunday sermons were spent poring over the nuances of Old Testament stories where Yahweh had brought his people to the point of despair then delivered their enemies into their hands with some violent, miraculous intervention. While it was clear that god was unyielding toward his enemies, it was equally clear that he seemed quite willing and even eager to violently strike down his appointed ones at the slightest provocation...

[After coming home to find his mother crying and her hair crudely cut...]
In my father’s world, obscure standards and requirements that he dug out of the Bible were far more important than improving one’s character, or demonstrating kindness towards others. When he took those blades to my mother’s head, he was making a powerful assertion that he had absolute control over her very salvation. So ingrained were these beliefs that I remember fearing that, by cutting her hair, my father had condemned her to eternal damnation.

Thanks to JereKeys for the heads up on this one.

And for people that are following, make sure you keep up to date on Belly of the Beast -- Gossip-Boy.com's expose of the growing movement surrounding, of all people, Anita-freakin-Bryant. The newest section is late is due out any day now.

Obama welcomes non-believers

There is a great commentary over at CNN about Obama's reaching out to non-believers in his inaugural address:

President Obama's mention of "nonbelievers" in his inaugural address represents an important broadening of the circle of acceptability in American life, an acknowledgement of our growing diversity and a fuller embrace of the principles articulated in our nation's charter documents...

Our rhetoric, in fact, has always lagged behind our reality. When President Obama declared, "We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus and nonbelievers," he sent a signal that it's time, once again, to enlarge the circle of inclusiveness, consistent with the great American tradition of equality and toleration.

Although I'm sure that Buddhists and Jains and Sikhs and countless other religious adherents would like to have been included in the president's roll call, the message was clear: We are a diverse nation, and the "free exercise" of religion guaranteed in the First Amendment also protects the exercise of no religion at all.

You know what's funny about being an atheist in a country where well over 90% of people claim to have some sort of belief in a higher power? You tend to get ignored, unless we're asking that you not shove your belief down our throats (and then we get to be the bad guys).

People forget that, for some of us, there is no God. Period.

I don't believe. Though I tried to become somewhat of a devout Presbyterian (is there such a thing) back when I was like 13 and still trying to masturbate to images of women in my head to be normal (I would come out a year later), it never worked. I just don't feel it, I don't see it, I don't believe it. I could give you every completely reasonable and logical argument in the book about the non-existence of deity, but, in the end, it boils down, for me, to one simple point: I just don't believe.

Back to my point, though:

We tend to get ignored. We're all for religious pluralism, right? We're all about holding hands and embracing each other despite our religious differences (unless you're Muslim)(and so long as we all worship at the altar of capitalism), but atheists? Who are those? It's funny, I think people can't put their head around the idea of non-belief. Much like my own thoughts on people that belief, I don't think believers can comprehend a world without their God. I can't imagine a world with one.

The universe is so amazing and so inexplicably logical, that I can't see anything else. And that's ok. [snarkyjoke] And, besides, Sunday mornings are for hangovers, not for sermons. [/snarkyjoke]

Anyways, I keep getting distracted. It was nice to not only hear myself as a gay man mentioned in Barack Obama's acceptance speech that wonder election night... but it was nicer still to hear myself mentioned as a non-believer in his inaugural address. It's nice to know that I'm remembered.

Because, for 8 years, I really really wasn't...

...unless you count the fact that I'm white. There's plenty of attention there.

Strange, this is the first time "atheism" appears as a label in my label list. Is it, perhaps, that this is new information because I've never actually talked about it? Jeez. So much for being proud of what you are :-).