No one really likes an angry person in life or in person. People especially don’t like angry people when they “attack” your established traditions and long held beliefs. When there is a shift in society’s power structure the media and others like to focus on the angry people as if doing so discredits the supporters of the change. It seems to be working that way for atheism too.
Author: Doug
Founder, editor and host of Secular Left - please be gentle
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A recent Best Buy holiday ad that included a nod to the Muslim holiday Eid Al-Adha brought out some comments from the sweet and inclusive Christian community.
I try to be understanding of cultures formed around religious beliefs. Sometimes those cultures go too far. One is FGM done to women in Egypt and the other is religious justice for “crimes”.
The film “Creation”, starring Paul Bettany, which is about Charles Darwin and his “struggle between faith and reason” as he wrote On The Origin of Species, doesn’t have a US distributor yet. The reason is because the subject is too controversial for US audiences. I don’t understand it either.
The Toronto International Film Festival arrives in September and it was announced the film picked to open it is called “Creation” starring Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly. It tells the story of Charles Darwin and his writing of his book “Origins of Species” that introduced the science theory of Natural Selection and led to Evolution. It seems from the trailer that the story focuses on Darwin’s struggle to write a book that takes on religious explanations about the origin of creatures found on Earth. My only concern is that the film doesn’t have the usual “protagonist sees the error of his irreligious ways…” we see in films about people struggling with their faith.
Here is a clip of a 1939 Porky Pig cartoon about the Pledge of Allegiance. The interesting bit is that the phrase “under God” is no where to be found since it wasn’t added by an act of Congress in 1954. Our country didn’t implode when the phrase wasn’t in the pledge and it won’t when it is taken out.