What makes you think that understanding other people's faiths and recognizing that some of them are full of great virtues must lead to adopting one or many of them as one's own? Do straights who understand homosexuality, bisexuality, transsexuality, etc. necessarily adopt one or all of them as their own sexual orientation? Some "heterosexuals" who are homophobic are uncertain and anxious about their own sexual identity, but should the irreligious act like sad closet cases toward the religious? Be confident of your faith, as of your own sexuality, even as you remain curious about and open to liberating diversity of faiths and sexualities other than yours that exist in this wide world!
Tomorrow is Sunday, so my partner goes to his church (as I sleep in -- that's the main individual advantage of being an atheist, though it's a political disadvantage), as he does every Sunday, where he and his family are always trying to move his fellow believers to take this or that action for peace and justice, as he does the same at work (being a good union man), interfaith organizations, and secular political organizations. There are many more like my partner than you or me in the USA. It is _not just OK but wonderful_ for them to be working for liberty, equality, and solidarity, inspired by their ideas of god(s) -- or godless religions -- I don't believe in. I'd love it if more people come to adopt my faith, historical materialism (which once had a great many adherents but has fallen into disuse in many nations), as their own, but provided people stand on my side on such crucial issues as war and health care and doing what they can to make this world better, they are more pleasing to me than atheists who stand on the opposite side or who stand on my side but are doing nothing. In the USA as well as most other countries in the world, leftists can't and shouldn't draw a political line between religion and irreligion and cast the religious aside -- if we do so, we lose.
On 3/16/07, Carl Remick <carlremick at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >From: "Yoshie Furuhashi" <critical.montages at gmail.com>
> >
> >On 3/16/07, Carl Remick <carlremick at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > ... I think these prayers for peace are a lot more supernatural than
> > > secular-leftists' anti-war signs. The prayers, after all, are directed
> >to
> > > God; the signs are directed to people. Achieving peace in the Middle
> >East
> > > will require human action, not divine intervention.
> >
> >Both are human actions, directed to the other Americans, the media,
> >and other human individuals and institutions. The difference is that
> >secular leftists, lacking institutions and resources, have fewer human
> >services to offer to the oppressed than religious leftists. Both, at
> >current sizes, don't stand a prayer's chance of success, however, for
> >anti-war purposes, as the Senate votes show.
>
> Keep praying then. I just ran across this inspirational quote from Hermann
> Goering:
Carl, try organizing a rally of _anti-war atheists alone_, excluding people who believe in and even pray for god(s), in the USA, and see how large a rally you can get.
Secular leftists need to understand that people who profess religions and stand on the Left, opposing the Iraq War among other things, are _not_ looking for divine intervention to end the war or bring about a just world. They are doing what they can to achieve peace and justice without it, and many of them are doing more than atheists. -- Yoshie