atheism's power
Greta Christina discusses the "doomed amazingness" of atheists, which she likens to the queer movement:
I think the contemporary atheist movement is amazing. I am inspired and enlightened and completely blown away by it, on an almost daily basis. Not to mention vastly entertained. I think the contemporary atheist movement is largely -- although far from entirely -- made up of people who are smart, thoughtful, ethical, caring, passionate, honest, funny, brave, and able to think for themselves... to an amazing degree.[...]
But that's not going to last.
We have to be prepared for that. And we have to not let our current amazingness go to our heads. We have to not succumb to elitism. We have to not fool ourselves into thinking that our amazingness comes from anything other than the difficulty of coming out, and the powerful self-selecting filter that this difficulty creates.
Barefoot Bum follows up with a post on "The Transformative Power of Atheism," calling her analysis "superficial:"
If it's no big deal to be an atheist, then obedience is no longer a virtue; rationally apprehensible mutual benefit, not Hobbesean submission to absolute authority, becomes the sine qua non of morality.All rebellion is initiated not by those who choose not to submit, but by those who cannot submit, to whom submission is death. Only the queers could lead us all, straights as well, out of the grip of sexual conformity. Only the black people (in the US) could lead us out of racial conformity. Only the women could lead us out of gender conformity.
And only the atheists -- those who would rather die than mouth the lies and bend their knees to the supreme authority of God -- can lead us all out of the worship of obedience itself.
Well, then...if it's up to us, let's get cracking!