“Only connect! And the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die.” E.M. Forster
The logic of our ideas is not as crucial as the quality of our conversation. After hearing talk about the club (and about non-theists in general) I felt I need to clear some things up for the sake of our dialogue with religious friends and neighbors. Who are we, what are we doing and why do we do it?
The premise that brings secularists, humanists, atheists and free-thinkers together is the lack of religion. This is at once a hallowed freedom – but it can also be a cursed negativity, giving everyone the wrong impression.
You just don’t believe in God and have nothing positive to say.
We’re not about the hatred or absence of religion. Rather, we have a positive goal: to give USU students an open playing ground to discuss matters of spirituality, faith, science and reason beyond religion.
Imagine the beauty that our pumping hearts and thinking minds are literally made out of the dust of ancient stars. Comprehend the stark magnificence and special humility of the human condition, if we are the result of billions of years of free-form natural phenomena rather than some mere god’s design. Ponder the trillions of planets and the probability of distant life-forms: are we doomed to loneliness in the galaxies? Is this special species only a branch on a tree of life, a wisp and a tiny blotch in a sea of vast dark? What’s the mystery behind all this?
Now we’re talking, right? Beyond religion, the view is spectacular, and there’s work to be done.
You hate religious people.
No, we don’t. How else can I say it? Religion is a great force in the world, a powerful weight on the shoulders of believers and disbelievers alike. This blog may be infuriatingly skeptical, focusing our powers on poking and prodding religion, but it hardly qualifies as hatred to do so – it’s actually something more akin to bravery, to stand up for such a hated minority viewpoint.
