Posts Tagged "atheist"
Offensive adverts vs. misleading adverts
Some people seem shocked that I don’t agree with the recent decision to not run the ‘gay cure’ advert on London buses because I made a complaint about the Christian groups ‘Healing on the Streets‘ and an advert they were handing out.
I find it concerning that so many people cannot understand why I would have a problem with one advert and not another.
‘but atheist Hayley Stevens…’
I recently wrote about the complaint I made to the ASA about a group of people who were making claims about treating specific illnesses through prayer. Since writing my blog post it was picked up by the media and just… well… exploded.
The cost of an opinion
What is the cost of an opinion?
It could be a libel case with hundreds of thousands of pounds, or perhaps a smear campaign online trying to discredit you.
It could be nastier – you could be threatened with violence by your peers, your job could be threatened with a well placed and malicious complaint, or perhaps you will be told that someone knows where you live and will kill your family.
This is nothing new, people are often harassed for speaking out against the religions and belief-systems of others, or for doing or saying things that offend the traditions of other people. People have even been killed, imprisoned, harassed, stalked, beaten up, abused and more.
Yet atheists, secularists, non-believers, doubters, agnostics… they don’t go away. They don’t shut up. They don’t stop trying, they don’t stop speaking out, they never will.
Threaten to beat your school peers up, burn effigies, intimidate people by stopping their meetings, get books banned, try to rule other peoples lives through politics, but don’t ever expect those who doubt, who think, who speak out, to go away.
The cost of an opinion is high, it’s risky, but it’s never not worth it.
#atheistandproud
*I am aware that I live in an area where I wont be lynched for being atheist so it’s ‘easy’ for me to write, this, but I do so to show support for those currently being targeted by bigots.
An Easter Poem for Cardinal Keith O'Brien
If expressing your freedom of speech,
requires the discrimination of people
who you view as sinners, and not equal,
Then who is really the aggressive one?
You can read O’Briens full sermon, in which he calls my choice (and the choice of millions of others) to not believe in a God aggressive here. I find it quite hypocritical that in the same sermon in which secularism is called ‘aggressive’, this man had the audacity to then say that it’s okay for Christians to discriminate against gay people because homosexual lifestyles do not fit the way they practice their religion, and the punishment of these Christians who treat homosexual couples as sub-human is wrong.
“Recently, various Christians in our Society were marginalised and prevented from acting in accordance with their beliefs because they were not willing to publicly endorse a particular lifestyle. You have only to ask a couple with regard to their bed and breakfast business; certain relationship councillors; and people who had valiantly fostered children for many years of their particular experiences – and I am sure they are not exaggerating them!” – Cardinal Keith O’Brein
You know what though? Even as a person who chooses to live independently and not by the word of some God, I will defend Keith O’Brien’s right to say such ridiculous things to my last breath because I believe that everybody deserves freedom of speech. I’m not so confident he would do the same. What a lovely non-aggressive man.
The Other Side & The End
Many people are fine to live their whole lives treating death as a catalyst to a potential next step for their existence, some people decide early on that when you die that’s it. All done. No encore. Others believe in the existence of an afterlife in one form or another.
One thing I have learnt over time is that whatever you believe when you start to research ghosts, you will at some point question it. What the conclusion of that questioning is depends on you individually, but it happens because of the people you deal with in your research. You will deal with the thoughts, fear and consequences of death nearly every single day and it will become something that is no longer taboo for you. The negative thing about this is that the people you interact with who aren’t involved in paranormal research are less likely to be that relaxed about death and will seek comfort and answers from you.
I’m not able to offer these people the answers they are looking for as I don’t know what happens at the moment of death as I’ve never died. I can only offer my personal opinions based on the best understanding that we have on what happens to the body when the brain dies. Being put in the earth to decompose seems a fine end to life – being comitted to the very Earth that sustained you in your life. However it’s very rare that anybody takes comfort from my thoughts on death.
It seems mystery makes the inevitable easier to stomach. I also think it has a lot to with why ghost hunters are so keen to look for the ghost rather than the logical cause for activity, until one accepts how insignificant life really is then one cannot appreciate how delicate it is – how superb and wonderful life is. For as long as people continue to believe in their hearts and minds that there is more than just this they will search for the proof of that.
I know this from personal experience because I used to take great comfort from the idea that those I loved who had died were still nearby on ‘the other side’ of whatever it is that is supposed to divide the living from the dead – the astral plane, the spirtual portal, or the whole host of other names people have given to such an idea over time. I believed that I too would one day pass over into that existence and would meet them again.
However, in my early twenties (yes, I know I’m only twenty-four) I started exploring my views on religion and humanity and I realised I was Atheist and also identified as a humanist, it became apparent to me that the spiritual beliefs I used to hold were actually quite manky.
I no longer take comfort from the idea that my dead gran is on ‘the other side’ where she is ‘always near’. In fact I find that idea horrifying, my gran stuck in a place where she can see and hear all of her relatives that survived her going about their business as usual without being able to interact with them. What sort of continued existence is that?
My belief in the other side was purely selfish and I think it’s quite sad that people live every day of their lifes believing that they will survive as spirits or astral beings because it gives them a false sense of time.
In my spiritual days I would often quote Peter Pan; “To die would be an awfully big adventure”, but I came to realise years ago that it’s not death that is the adventure, it’s life – death is simply The End.
I support…
