131228 My Comment To
Another Comment on The Guardian Pages, "Why non-believers need rituals too"
To
move many away from religion, atheism has to weave itself into the
social fabric and shed its image of dour grumpiness
Suzanne
Moore for New Humanist, part of the
Guardian Comment Network
theguardian.com,
Friday 27 December 2013 07.59 EST
My
reply to a reader's comments read now as me being fucking
super-Atheist preacher or something. Nevertheless, I post them, with
the comment that brought out my inner voice....
ID451013
[the commenter]
28
December 2013 10:21am
Suzanne
I do love your columns and I so agree with what you say about ritual
in atheistic life. Like you I feel need some replacement for the
church of my childhood. For a while my kid's school community
provided it, but now that's over.
What
do you think about this atheist church that's started up? I'm in Oz
so we don't have it here. Nor sure it hits the spot, but it's a way
of addressing the issue you talk about.
Me..,
KingCommo to ID451013
28
December 2013 1:39pm
If I
might...?
I'm
in Astrayliar also, and think the Atheist church has started here.
Sorry I can't refer you...?
As
for your feeling some need for a replacement for the church of your
youth..., let's realize the church has made us the emotional messes
we are, by plying us with - emotional shshsh, it - to such an extent,
and over so many generations, that we assume such 'traditions' are
how we should live, emote, respond, think, etc.
'Emotions'
such as the churches have plied into us, for centuries remember, so
it's quite possibly 'genetic' for most sleepy flockers in this
'modern' age, are well-designed and honed devices to block our
thinking apparatus, so we fall back on the pew in emotionally-warmed
dullness, and do not take issue with things we have sermonized down
at us, in the most emotional flourishes of high-brow language, and so
our critical thinking mind doesn't even see the roaring untruths and
outright filth the preacher spills.
Notice
how we [used to] come out of church with that 'nice warm inside
feeling'?
It's
those cozy emotional sensations that fill the souls of the flockers
that allowed the dark side of the religious cults to wage war against
people far from the chapels, churches and cathedrals, and when we
heard about it, we were too comfy - for the church issuing us with
favors - aka 'miracles' - for our loyalties - to concern ourselves
with finding any facts as to which institution on our own soils it
was/is that orchestrated the crimes. Against humanity.
There
are plenty of houses of let's say, 'wisdom', which feed our deeper
hungers with honesty, knowledge and teachings as to how to purge the
soul - the mind, of the generations of heinous falsities which have
been so much a part of dumbing the flock down to the point of blatant
disregard.
Such
'houses', nurture not the emotions, but the intellect. And the
personal rewards are many times richer, deeper and more 'joy-filled'
than any dead ritualistic dogmatic, clearly false religion.
The
better of them, nurture a healthy balance of emotion and intellect,
ritual and laughs.
Atheism
is realism, and is open, methinks, to such all-encompassing balances.
So,
Suzanne, being a female, and a mum, has to emote, sure.
But
we might do well to see even these 'traditionally female' movements
of the heart, as cultural, and not necessarily realistic, nor then,
the best way for the womens' hearts to move, even for the sheilas?
Especially when it's the cults, who propagate the trends of culture.
But
I'd reckon she's not looked hard enough for an Atheist centre where
'dour grumpiness' is a veritable source of laughter?
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