This is a video of my opening remarks at Rock Beyond Belief, welcoming everyone to the event and talking about why it was taking place. The blog Left Hemispheres has put up many videos of the event, including that one.
Apr 21 2012
My Opening Talk at Rock Beyond Belief
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3 comments
Modusoperandi
April 21, 2012 at 11:47 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Wow. I’m used to seeing you in text. You’re much farther away in person.
Michael Heath
April 21, 2012 at 11:56 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Re Ed’s comment, that the D.C. event was a sort of initial coming out event for American atheists:
In late-2003, based on George Bush advocating for civil marriage in a Diane Sawyer interview, I perceived that equality for gays would come soon, even more quickly than it’s come which is historically fast. The premise of the Preamble to the Constitution is that our country was structured to “form a more perfect union“. The reality for that promise is that we didn’t reach that state by mere ratification, that instead a more perfect union is an ongoing project and relevant to this blog post’s theme, the fact we seem mostly incapable of increasing equality to more people in parallel, but instead achieve advances in a more serial fashion. So I wondered which subset of the American population would take center stage in their fight for equality. I predicted it would be atheists.
I think I was at least partly wrong. The fight for gay rights took a horrible turn for the worse in the 2004 elections, with Bush abandoning his support for equality, though we’re recovering and advancing beyond that now. I also thought President Bush was effective in tamping down discrimination against Muslims after 9/11, where we now see that once he left office, the hatred and bigotry fueled by conservative Christians was always there and was no longer unfettered since their authoritarian leader was no longer a leader of their movement. Where he’s since been replaced with leaders even more un-empathetic than Mr. Bush while also lacking the moral courage to defend Muslims’ rights.
So given this context I’m happy to see a clear bell rung for atheists to come out of the closet. This is that year, 2012; that should start some funny memes in the upcoming years given the whole ’2012 end of the world prediction’. It’ll probably be characterized as the year God completely removed his supposed veil of protection from America – especially if that black Muslim socialist Barack Obama is re-elected.
What will be interesting is to see how conservative Christians react politically. The anti-Muslim rhetoric has quelled recently after the ruckus around development of the Muslim community center in NYC. Will conservative Christians get more active in the public square against atheists and secularists, beyond their energetically dishonest attacks which have long took place within their churches? If they start a political battle against atheists will that reduce their energies to deny Muslims their rights? It seems increasingly popular for conservatives to out themselves as racists, will this accelerate? How about the war on women? I doubt the anti-female thing will gain much traction this year given it’s an election year and conservatives need the votes. So stay tuned, Fox News will present the framework of the battle, with viral emails to follow.
savoy47
April 21, 2012 at 3:01 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Wow, a voice that matches the mind! Thanks for all that you do Ed.