Posts tagged atheism
“ The population of the United States is more than 300 million and it includes some of the best and brightest that the human species has to offer, probably more so than any other country in the world. There is surely something wrong with a system for choosing a leader when, given a pool of such talent and a process that occupies more than a year and consumes billions of dollars, what rises to the top of the heap is George W Bush. Or when the likes of Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann or Sarah Palin can be mentioned as even remote possibilities.
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Attention Governor Perry: Evolution is a fact - On Faith - The Washington Post

When people ask me why I don’t see myself ever moving back to America, usually I say something like I prefer the European lifestyle - living centrally in an apartment, not having to drive, having seasons, living in a place with a lively city center, bars that never close (no 2 am cutoff here!) and a slower drinking pace, a culture that’s not as focused on materialism and keeping-up-with the-Jonesitis, better news sources, affordable health care and university, and in general, more freedom. But actually, most of those things can be found in some American cities (though they’re all certainly much more expensive to live in), and when taken on their own might not justify my decision to stay here. It’s my goto answer, though, because the truth is much harder to explain over a beer.

The truth goes something like this: in all of the places I’ve lived in, all of the places I’ve travelled to (and statistically, that’s a lot), America is the only place where I’ve experienced such blatant anti-intellectualism (and this coming from someone who spent part of their childhood in communist Poland). Sure, Europe has its share of idiots, extremists and radical parties, but for the most part, the democratic process works here because most people want the best person for the job of leading the country. They might disagree on the specifics of how to do this, but leaders are not selected because of their lack of credentials. Ignorance is not a qualification, it is a problem to be addressed with education before one can pursue a significant office. There is no mainstream pride in ignorance like there is in much of American society.

As someone who loves learning, who is constantly striving to gain knowledge and decrease ignorance, I can’t imagine living in a society whose views are so antithetical to my own. Sadly, I don’t see this changing in my lifetime; if anything, it’s gotten worse in recent memory.

Anyway, Dawkins’ article is quite insightful and worth reading.

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EDIT: Right after posting this, I found two articles on this topic, also worth reading: Republicans Against Science and The increasingly antiscience Republican candidates (the latter by one of my favorite people on the Internets, Bad Astronomer Phil Plait).

Saturday was the first ever Atheist and Agnostic March in Europe, which I wrote about earlier. Surprisingly, the march itself went off without a hitch - I say surprisingly, because this is the city in which the annual Tolerance March is met with eggs and the occasional brick or stone. The only protest came from a small group of priests, who were outnumbered at least three to one by the police, and more like seven to one by the actual marchers. All in all, I’d say there were about 250 non-believers present, carrying various signs such as “Don’t pray for me” or “Live without sin - be an atheist!”, or my very favorite, the Flying Spaghetti Monster (above). We were an impressive sight, I’d say, walking through the Market Square and around the Planty, the green ring of park that surrounds Krakow’s Old Town. Curiously, the ages of the marchers varied greatly - while the majority were in their 20s as expected, there were some notable older marchers, including an EU Parliamentarian. And while the initially wet, miserable weather was almost enough to restore one’s faith (or reinforce a healthy sense of irony), the rain managed to stay light enough for the march to carry on without losing its momentum. The group leading the event, the Young Freethinkers, aired their grievances to the crowd at the end of the march - these can be summed up as a general disdain for the influence the Catholic Church has on Polish politics and legislative decisions. Because after all, the march itself wasn’t really a protest or a movement, but rather a statement: We exist, and the country’s laws need to reflect this.

Saturday was the first ever Atheist and Agnostic March in Europe, which I wrote about earlier. Surprisingly, the march itself went off without a hitch - I say surprisingly, because this is the city in which the annual Tolerance March is met with eggs and the occasional brick or stone. The only protest came from a small group of priests, who were outnumbered at least three to one by the police, and more like seven to one by the actual marchers.

All in all, I’d say there were about 250 non-believers present, carrying various signs such as “Don’t pray for me” or “Live without sin - be an atheist!”, or my very favorite, the Flying Spaghetti Monster (above). We were an impressive sight, I’d say, walking through the Market Square and around the Planty, the green ring of park that surrounds Krakow’s Old Town. Curiously, the ages of the marchers varied greatly - while the majority were in their 20s as expected, there were some notable older marchers, including an EU Parliamentarian. And while the initially wet, miserable weather was almost enough to restore one’s faith (or reinforce a healthy sense of irony), the rain managed to stay light enough for the march to carry on without losing its momentum.

The group leading the event, the Young Freethinkers, aired their grievances to the crowd at the end of the march - these can be summed up as a general disdain for the influence the Catholic Church has on Polish politics and legislative decisions. Because after all, the march itself wasn’t really a protest or a movement, but rather a statement: We exist, and the country’s laws need to reflect this.