Post by @pluvialgeist
Too long for 500 characters, too short for a blog post. Maybe part of a proper essay someday. Maybe.
I want peace and prosperity for you. I want you to live a long life in good health. I want you to have nutritious food, clean water, clean air, and safe shelter, always. I want your life's work to be fulfilling and meaningful to you. I want you to thrive.
I want all of that for all of us.
Literally, all of us. No exceptions.
I want that for you if you're a Nazi.
I want that for you if you're a racist.
I want that for you if you're a christofascist.
I want that for you if you're a cop.
All of us.
No exceptions.
Too long for 500 characters, too short for a blog post. Maybe part of a proper essay someday. Maybe.
What I'm Not
Don't take that to mean I'm a pacifist. I don't want to fight, but I'm not going to lie down and die when some supremacist shithead says I should. I won't apologize for that.
No one should.
That's a healthy, natural threat response.
But no one is born a Nazi or a racist or a christofascist or a cop or any other flavor of shithead. That's a choice. Choose a different ideology, one that doesn't have you convinced that you need to murder me and my neighbors, and suddenly you're back in the billions-long list of "my neighbors."
That's what I mean by "all of us."
No exceptions.
Too long for 500 characters, too short for a blog post. Maybe part of a proper essay someday. Maybe.
What I Am
I'm an atheist.
Well, okay, no. I believe that there might be something beyond our ability to perceive or understand that could perhaps qualify as (a) god/s or The God/s. Doesn't seem likely to me, but I sure as fuck make no claim to be omniscient. So technically "agnostic," but that's close enough to "atheist" here.
I wasn't always.
I was born into a conservative Roman Catholic family, raised to be a good little Catholic boy. I wasn't—a good little Catholic boy—but I know all about the goodness of Jesus Christ. I know that Christians choose as their god a man who is believed to have wanted for all of us what I want for all of us.
Too long for 500 characters, too short for a blog post. Maybe part of a proper essay someday. Maybe.
What Boggles My Mind 🤯
So it's fucking flabbergasting to me—an atheist who wants for all of us what Christ is said to have wanted for all of us—that many of my fellow Americans who call themselves Christians have exceptions to that "all of us." A fuck-ton of exceptions. More "except" than "us," it seems.
Some of those same Christians want to murder their exceptions—apparently out of spite for existing, and by existing proving an exception to the will of their loving God.
Maybe once we're all dead, all of us exceptions, their brains won't hurt so much.
That must be it.