Friend-of-the-blog Marty Pribble picks up on my lamentations about the state of atheist/skeptic activism, and explains my point about there being a deeper core of crisis than religion alone better than I did:
I feel we are lacking focus. The problems of the world are not caused by religion alone, rather abuse of religious privilege, abuse of political power, and pressure from those who have the money to quash the forward thinking ideas that could see us into the next millennium. As sad as it may seem, the role of religion in this whole debate is only a minor player. Rather than attacking the religion, we should be attacking the root of the perceived need to believe, and replace it with reasoned and rational thought. Religions can only thrive on ignorance, willful or otherwise, for when one starts to ask questions, the theistic claims start to crumble like chalk.
Steve Barry at Left Hemispheres takes the opportunity to look at his own work on this amorphous cause’s behalf:
I started this [blog] to have a voice and for fun. Somewhere along the line I started to take myself too seriously and treat this as a job. That was a mistake. I am hoping that this realization is a turning point in the blog’s existence and these conversations about “what’s next?” are the next step in the movement… . I can only tear apart so many HuffPo Religion section articles. I mean…it’s just low hanging fruit, ya know?
I do. And they should be torn apart, but there’s more. I hope we can soon figure out what.
Near-Earth Object 