Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Natural Born Skeptic: My Atheist Journey Part 10



The Journey Ahead

This blog originally was part of a school assignment for an English class I had after I decided to go back to college and get my bachelor's degree. The assignment required that I create a blog and write 5 weekly posts about anything I wanted. This is why if you look at my early posts from 2009, you'll notice that many of them are hastily written and are not concerned with religion. This blog was originally called "Mike's Mandatory Blog", which was my way of making it known that my hand had been forced. Slowly it grew on me to write about what was becoming my obsession - my atheism and philosophy.

Looking toward the journey ahead, as a passionate secularist, atheist and humanist, I know the challenges people like me face. Our agenda is to preserve secular democracy here at home, and to help nourish it abroad. We want a fair, just, and humane society for everyone. We want peace - but we're not afraid to fight for it. Fundamentally, we feel that a reasonable and just society is possible, and it's only when we succumb to ignorance, superstition and ill-conceived ideologies that we impede its progress. And no, there are no hollow dreams of a perfect utopia that we are chasing after. We are not communists. We support freedom and individual rights, and the sincere democratic process.

I have many lucid fantasies of becoming a skilled debater and counter apologist for the atheist and secularist movement. I've joined a debate meetup group in my area and have learned that I'm pretty good at it. Over the past few years I've become more active in my local atheist and skeptic communities, and I look forward to further contributing to the cause for reason. I was also thinking of making videos and become an active YouTuber like so many other atheists since video as we all know can more easily reach a wider audience. I will certainly continue to keep writing about my philosophy and my journey where ever it takes me.

Perhaps it's best that I leave this part of the journey with a quote from the late Christopher Hitchens' untimely memoir Hitch-22. In the closing page he summarizes the noble struggles of the rational non-believer:


The defense of science and reason is the great imperative of our time, and I feel absurdly honored to be grouped in the public mind with great teachers and scholars such as Richard Dawkins (a true Balliol man if ever there was one), Daniel Dennett, and Sam Harris. To be an unbeliever is not merely to be "open minded." It is, rather a decisive admission of uncertainty that is dialectically connected to the repudiation of the totalitarian principle, in the mind as well as in politics. But that's my Hitch-22. I have already described some of the rehearsals for this war, which relativists so plainly call "endless" - as if it were not indeed the latest chapter of an eternal struggle - and I find that for the remainder of my days I shall be happy enough to see if I can emulate the understatement of Commander Hitchens, and to say that at least I know what I am supposed to be doing.




3 comments:

  1. Very good effort to relate a full story, a full journey. It will be interesting to see where you take it from here.

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  2. I find a lot of similarities between your story and mine. Thank you for sharing your story and I look forward to reading your future posts. Your blog is a clear and concise center of information that makes it easily accessible to others. Thank you!

    ReplyDelete

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