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December 09, 2007
Weekend Randomness
The Family
We're entertaining the stomach flu this weekend, in a bout of vomiting that seems to be an annual pre-holiday event. All I can say is that I'm glad the Bug waited until after the holiday open house at the new Dean's house to hurl the entire contents of her stomach across the room.
Knitting
Finally got my Ravelry invite! I'm foureyedflygrrl there, so if you're on, look me up.
Reading
I finally started reading The Golden Compass. I would have LOVED this book when I was younger. I mean, I am really enjoying it now, but at the time in my life when I was fantasy-prone and extremely into that sort of fiction it would have really engrossed me. I can't figure out why I had never heard of it. In any case, it's actually quite complicated and dense for a book aimed at children. And however they may have softened up the movie, the book is quite clear in its anti-religion stance, using words like "papacy" and so forth, so the connotations of the Catholic church are there. What I can't figure out is why groups like the Catholic League want to actually ban such books/movies. You'd think that a strong, meaningful, legitimate worldview would stand up to scrutiny and invite examination of counter argument. Oh, wait a minute...
Which leads me to my next item. Trying to make up my mind about throwing myself behind The OUT Campaign. Suddenly finding myself among tons of other non-theists, skeptics, etc. online has made me really examine my own unbelief and what it means in a larger sense. I see a big movement towards "coming out," which I think is important for atheists for a number of reasons, but at the same time I want to avoid the trap of setting up yet another faction, especially one based on supposed intellectual superiority. I think that the point I always want to make in outing myself as an atheist is my similarities to everyone else, not my differences. I think that showing myself to be a loving, caring, concerned, ethical, civic-minded person who is also an atheist does more for acceptance and understanding of atheism than doing the whole elitism thing. But by the same token I think not enough atheists are out, speaking out about the misrepresentation of atheism in the media, combating all the misconceptions out there, and so on. People like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris have been doing a HUGE part of this work by writing books and being so available to the media this past year, but it's not enough. In any case, I will probably be posting more about this as I sit around and continue to think through it all.
Posted by mwashburn at December 9, 2007 03:35 PMPosted to Skepticism | True Stories | knitting/crafting | literature