I put up a bunch of Kerry ‘04 and Obama for Senate signs in my yard. I noticed one day, there was a Wheaton College van full of people suspiciously driving around the neighborhood. They parked in front of my yard for a whole minute and stared first at my signs, then at me. Then they drove off.

The next day, my signs were gone, stolen in the night. Now I’m not going to say it was the Wheaton College people what stole my signs, they being good Christians and Obedient to the 10 Commandments and believing their God to be so Omnipotent that they needn’t worry about how we worldly humans go about electing officials. Nor am I calling Republicans a bunch of thieving jackals.

But dammit, some yellow bellied somebody was shit scared enough to go around and steal lowly election signs from peoples’ yards?

Congrats to the anonymous writer!

The word ‘islam’ means submission. Obviously submission to the will of Allah, as prescribed in the five pillars of faith. The big-3 monotheisms are alike in dismissing the individual’s will, “not my will but thy will done” as we’re shown in the poignant scene at Gethsemane in the NT.

Self-assertion, and doubt is just a form of it, takes on the character not of honest questioning, but of insubordination and rebellion. With characteristically combative verve, Kierkegaard grasped the nettles of fideism only to fling them in the face of all the “insubordinate” who employ reason:

“They would have us believe that objections against Christianity come from doubt. This is always a misunderstanding. Objections against Christianity come from insubordination, unwillingness to obey, rebellion against all authority. Therefore, they have been beating the air against the objectors, because they have fought intellectually with doubt, instead of fighting ethically with rebellion. . . .So it is not properly doubt but insubordination.” (Lowrie 122) Thus, Kierkegaard.

Once you’ve made “the leap of faith” into hyper-religious space there is no return except by self-assertion. It’s not surprising that even attempting to leave a religious culture which demands ’subordination’ or ’submission’ to someone else’s interpretation of an alleged “will of god” adversely affects the psychological well-being of the “apostate.” Prometheus vs. Jesus —

Self-assertion dominates the popular culture, the “secular” culture. Tolerance, that wide band of “permissible” behavior, lies between anarchy and rigorism. Trying to navigate in that band requires years of training and making a lot of mistakes. And, there is no end to learning until life itself ends. Most people never become individuals — they remain herd animals.

bipolar2
copyright (self)asserted 2007

Also, I hope he understands that he’s doing a good job with exposure. Simply exposing those sheltered people to an atheist takes away the, “I’ve never met an atheist before so therefore, I’m going to make up creative myths about them!”.

Good luck to him. I’ll be following his blog.