Yesterday was Election Day and atheists had a rare opportunity to send a powerful message to the political system in the United States of America. There was a candidate in Arizona’s 5th congressional district who was an open atheist. This was our chance and atheists did not deliver.
Category Humanism
Election Day is like the Super Bowl to me. I love them and now that my term as Minority Election Inspector is up, I thought I would be able to relax this Election Day. Nope, I am now a Democratic Party Committee Person for district and so I will be out there pushing a few of candidates and making sure the Republicans aren’t up to no-good. Despite my heavy involvement here in the suburbs of Philadelphia, I am more interested in what is going on in Arizona on Election Day.
About a year ago, I read a news story about a proposal to give every citizen in Switzerland $2800 as a basic income. I remember talking about this with my progressive friends and to my surprise I was the only one who really thought this was a great idea. Sure, critics could easily point out that idea would obviously sound great to me because I am a stay-at-home dad who works a part-time retail job making slightly above minimum wage, but that isn’t why I actually liked the idea.
When I think of what kinds of things atheists should be doing to change the way the general public perceives us, I will now be thinking of people like Jaclyn Glenn. In a recent YouTube video she and her friends went out on the streets of LA for two days to raise money for Children’s Hospital. The catch is that on the first day they had a sign saying they were doing it on behalf of the United Methodists and on the second day, they had a sign saying they were doing it on behalf of the United Atheists. Check it out:
The other day, I was picking up some fast food. When I returned to my car, I noticed that the car next to mine had the window open and there was a woman sitting inside. I smiled politely at her and might have even said hello as I unlocked my car door. It was at that moment when she extended her hand to give me a pamphlet.
If you are an atheist and care about politics, then you really need to support Arizona congressional candidate James Woods. He is the Democratic challenger against a Republican incumbent in a heavily Republican district. On the plus side, he is doing everything right. He isn’t running from his atheism like most politicians in his position. He is actively using his humanist values as a positive.
There was a time when people lived clustered in groups and the various groups had to compete for food, fertile land, and resources. They didn’t have much communication with those from other groups and so it was easy to see other groups as alien. Each group marked their territory and attempted to conquer other territories. Things should be different now.
On Saturday, I got to have a conversation with Sanderson Jones. He is the co-founder of Sunday Assembly. That’s the group that the media has labeled, “The Atheist Church.” And on Sunday, I attended the Sunday Assembly and got to see first-hand what it is all about.
David Silverman from American Atheists was on Fox Business with Lou Dobbs to discuss the need for Humanist chaplains in the military. Here is the clip:
A while ago, I created a Facebook page specifically for Dangerous Talk, but it really didn’t take off the way I was hoping it would for a variety of reasons. For starters, I mainly posted there at 2am and as a result fewer people saw those posts on their feeds. Also, I had one other content creator and he was busy with his own stuff and didn’t post there that often either. But mainly I think the problem was that most people don’t know what Dangerous Talk is. The name alone could mean anything. It just isn’t descriptive enough to people outside of my blog.