One people

I'm not a joiner.
I belong to no clubs and no political parties.
I don't even like to go to parties.

I'm a loner, for the most part. Always have been. I like my alone time and prefer to write or draw or paint than explain who I am to someone else.

It is enough for me to be part of the human race.
Not Black or White or Asian or Indian or Polynesian or any group that serves to divide my race.

Since the last neanderthal died, all people belong to the same tribe.

Silence is permission

Silence in the face of injustice is indistinguishable from permission.

If a boy is being bullied by an older boy and you silently turn away, you are giving the older boy permission to bully others.

If a man is unjustly killed by police and you silently turn away, you are condoning murder.

If a child is genitally mutilated in a primitive religious tradition and you silently turn away, there is blood on your hands.

Only by speaking out can you stop hate.

There is no difference in the sound of silent outrage and the sound of silent permission.

Never give up! Never surrender!

Why is it that some would state that we are a beaten people, that it is useless for anyone to fight for freedom from religion and against the 1%?

I have to admit I don't understand this defeatist mindset.

I maintain that admitting defeat  due to premature surrender against these forces is to be without hope or love for humanity.
Yes, there is injustice.
Yes, there is cruelty.
Yes, there is stupidity.
Yes, there is criminal greed.
Indeed, there are powerful forces trying to turn us into their slaves.
There is not one nor all of these that is invincible.

I'm fighting.
I'm speaking out.
I'm going to teach Christians what it is to be an atheist.

I'm about to start a somewhat risky experiment to see just how violent the opposition to atheism is in my city.
I want to show Christians the hate that their religion fosters for atheists.
I want them to be as shocked and dismayed as atheists are when they see the dark side of Christianity.
I want to shock them into questioning their religion's practices.
I'm no longer satisfied with open but patient atheism.
I'm going to start wearing clothing with ATHEIST printed on it.
At first I'll simply report the reactions. If things seem to be getting heated in my daily commute, I'll start filming some encounters and putting them on youtube.

You can't fight City Hall

"Oh well, what're ya gonna do?"
"They hold all the cards."
"It's their world. We just live in it."
"One step forward; two steps back."
"Nobody else cares. Why should I?"
"It's always been this way."

I find this attitude to be exactly what the 1% wants... exactly what religions want... exactly what your boss wants.
And it is exactly what has been hammered into you by your teachers, your employers, your police, and your government.

We are ritually trained to be drones, self defeated and selling our freedom for a chance at a better life with more things that don't matter... because it can all be taken away at a moment's notice.

How can you fight?

Chase a dream. There's something you've always wanted to do.
Do it.
Obsess about it. Delve into it. Make it part of you the way a musician plays an instrument.
Learn it!
Learn anything! Educate yourself in languages, cultures, history...

But all of us have to stop making excuses. We weren't vigilant enough. We let people take too much and leave us without enough.
We let religion have its way and we must now have ours.

All the power these people have, that religion has... you must understand...
We give them their power!

They need us but we do not need them.
We would be free and happy without big business and religion.
Imagine that!
Free and happy!

And all we have to do is say, "Enough!"

It's all part of God's plan

Plan? What plan?

What kind of all knowing, all seeing god needs to say, "Oops, I fucked up," and wipe out the entire human race to start over?

Twice!

What a bunch of bullshit!

Any kid I grew up with that played the Mousetrap board game could make a better plan than the plan of the bible because those now grown kids understand that success is doing the right things in the right order.

So grow up, face reality, and know that anything that goes right or wrong for you is due to only one person...

You.

One race

That photo is from Rio but the city doesn't matter. The country doesn't matter.
It's a large, grown man, a police officer in a vest with a gun, pepper spraying a helpless little girl for fun. Her eyes will burn and she will scream in pain. She will likely throw up from the mucous caused by the spray. And she will know that there are people in the world who think she is worthless.

If you can callously spray a child with pepper spray, or kill someone because you have a badge and you just want to, then you have decided long before that there are some people whose lives don't matter.
You have decided that the world would be better off without that person.
You have decided that the child you are pepper spraying is not a member of the human race and deserves no more respect than a bug in your bathtub.

It might be a black person. It might be a poor person. It might be a mentally handicapped person. It isn't about the kind of person you decide isn't human. It's about the kind of person that sprays a child with pepper spray or kills just because he wants to and can get away with it.

The measure of a person is in what they do when they have power over others. If they fail this test, they should be immediately and forever removed from positions of power and forced to seek counselling.

Science has proven that we are all one human tribe.
To imagine that some parts of the tribe are worth less than others is wrong and futile.
We must stop this idea of racism because there is only one race of people.
The human race.

A question for Christians

The human race is at least 100,000 years old.
Christianity is about 2,000 years old.
So, for at least 98,000 years, humans had to get along with each other, co-operate, and trust each other, simply to survive.

My question to Christians is, why do you insist that atheists can't be moral or trusted, when for 98,000 years we relied on each other's words to form trusts with each other?

What is the basis of your mistrust of atheists?
I'll tell you. It's what you've been told to believe by Christian leaders.
The Catholic church started labelling and persecuting atheists to keep them quiet.
It worked. It's still working.
I hear about atheists every day who are afraid to state their non belief because they fear for their safety.
Christians are still persecuting atheists. How are we the immoral ones?

Atheists choose not to lie. They have no holy books or threats of Hell to keep them from lying, raping, killing, stealing, and anything else they choose to do.
So, why don't they?
Why are prisons filled with 98% believers and 2% atheists?

Because atheists do not forgive themselves as easily as a Christian can be forgiven.
Because atheists don't believe in heaven; we have to make this life as beautiful and honest as we can.
Because atheists don't believe that there is a supernatural force looking out for them that will make everything turn out okay. We have to do things for ourselves, with ourselves to blame if they don't work out.

Atheists believe this to be our only life. With no promise of a glorious afterlife in Heaven or an endless torture in Hell, this life is all we have.

What you Christians call a lack of morality is actually a lack of Christianity. You're not against immorality; you're against non-Christianity.

I find this intellectual dishonesty to be immoral. You can call atheism immoral if you choose, but let's not pretend it's the morally superior thing to do.
Christianity has never been morally superior to atheism and never will be. It lacks the honesty to be moral.

Suggested reading:
http://thehumanevolutionblog.com/2015/01/27/the-moral-codes-of-other-human-species/