Atheist Meditations

Earlier this week I was roped into helping put up Christmas decorations. For the most part, I just hate putting up decorations in general - I'm not that kind of guy - but religious decorations celebrating the nativity really bug me. I got a bit irritated, maybe I was over caffeinated that morning; whatever. I excused myself for a few minutes, wrote down some angry notes, and then returned to participate with a level of enthusiasm that might have approximated good cheer.

My scribbled note:

It is the moral duty of every young man (and any young women who want to be more than property, but those who don't/can't aren't my concern, just as I don't feel any ethical responsibility for domesticated cows that cannot survive in the wild ) to reject religion in general and their own sect/branch in particular ahead of any other exercise in consciousness. This task must be undertaken before setting out to make one's fortune in the world, and before devoting oneself to the search for a truly meaningful romantic partnership. Failure to do so is a moral failing. One fails themselves, their society, their generation and the future . . .

Indeed, I channel the demon of hyperbole exceptionally well.

Skipping over the rough parenthetical outline of why I do not crusade for Feminism (not my job), I'd like to elaborate on this moral calling. Generation Y, Generation Next, Generation Me - whatever someone wants to call these young kids - they have a unique set of opportunities that sets them apart from any of the groups of young men who have come before them. There is also a unique responsibility, and Atheism is one name for that responsibility.

I'd like to make some grandiose statements here about societies and 'moments in time when young people had to make a choice.' That same demon of hyperbole wants we to weave evocative statements about abolitionists and slave owners, those who wanted to appease fascism and those who wanted to fight it; statements about critical mass and when it was necessary to demand 'no taxation without representation.' I can't do that with Atheism.

Atheism is just obvious.

It is simply a choice between maturity and retardation. In order to be true to anything, one must first be true to themselves. Every young man has to learn to stand up for himself, and in our current time Atheism is how you stand up for your own ability to think.

Let me be clear, this imperative rests upon your shoulders, not that of your parents or grandparents. They grew up in a different world. Even when your parents graduated from high school the exchange of Ideas was nothing like it is today. There was no internet, even ocean of books and periodicals has much less circulation and depth. Sure some pursued an education and the knowledge that naturally leads to Atheism, but to not do so is a different species of failure from the one that lurks over you.

There is a direct correlation between the number of hours of leisure time per day that your generation enjoys and the expectations of learning that are thrust upon you. With the internet you can access works of academia and the diaries of total strangers with equal ease. . .

I accuse anyone who grew to adulthood in the age of the internet and has not embraced Atheism of being a failure. A moral failure and someone who will be a dupe and a tool every day they exist upon this planet.

Just as the young person who witnesses violence in the home, or whose unemployed father drinks and smokes the family into poverty may be unfortunately predestined to be a economic or relationship failure, someone whose parents' utilize the same tactics of brainwashing Chairman Mao used might never escape spiritual failure. Since our society seems to have ceased trying to show empathy for the former, I'm done going out on a limb to the latter.

Labels: anti-ministry, Generation Next, pseudo-inspirational