A fellow freethinker discovered christian books at her daughter's school book fair, in Wichita, Kansas. This is an outrage and should never have occurred. I live thirty minutes from Wichita, and frankly this doesn't surprise me at all.
It is quite common in Kansas to hear people talking about doing stuff like this. Multiple times at work people will hand me tracts. I will gladly take them with a smile, and than proceed to the trash can. Kansans love to indoctrinate. I love to spread the good word of rational thought myself, but I try not to preach to someone doing their job. I also avoid school children while preaching. As I have said in past entries I am trying to become an elementary teacher. Now, I don't discuss my faith in schools and people would get rightfully angry if I did. We need to stand up and say don't indoctrinate our children. Luckily the voice saying this is getting louder.
This story was brought to us by the friendly atheist you can get to his blog from here. The link will take you straight to the article in question.
The freedom from religion foundation has been informed and will be taking action. I wish them luck, but I think this case is a pretty straight forward violation of church and state. Christians need to realize they can believe what ever they like, but they can't force our school children to believe it.
Give me a child for his first seven years and I'll give you the man.
Showing posts with label Kansas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kansas. Show all posts
Friday, September 16, 2011
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Being a Kansas Atheist
Hello my name is Benjamin Porter and I am an Atheist. This simple statement can grant you a lot of hardships no matter where your at. I'm not sure if this is especially true in Kansas or not, but I know it has caused a lot of people to get angry at me.
When I first accepted my atheism I was 16 years old and I enjoyed the music of Bad Religion. I ordered a t-shirt of the bands and was ridiculed by one of my best friends for it. His opinion on it was that the shirt offended Christians because it had a crossed out cross on it. I told him if disagreeing with beliefs was offensive that the Christian t-shirts offended me. I will always remember the response he gave to that. His response was that one was a belief system to live your life the other denies belief systems and makes life pointless. Therefore it is an asshole move to wear a shirt that takes meaning away from peoples lives.
I've always found this interesting because I don't think my life is meaningless. I am now 21 and am still friends with this individual. I have also been yelled at by many other people because I supposedly make fun of their beliefs. Now I don't bring my beliefs up to strangers I consider that to be quite rude, but I am often asked what I believe in. I assume this is an attempt to preach to me. I than tell them what I believe and will debate against their points. At that time I supposedly become the asshole even though they asked.
So my Kansas experience seems to be people don't mind that I'm an Atheist, but i better stay quiet about it. I have heard a lot of statements and about a lot of policies that would not fly in several states. I want to blog about them and get this out there. I also want to blog my opinions (from this limited perspective) on issues in the Atheist community, and philosophy in general.
As I learn more about the site I hope that I can make this an enjoyable reading experience and share more of my story growing up in Kansas. Now a video i just stumbled upon by Meridian Frost. I found it quite intersesting.
When I first accepted my atheism I was 16 years old and I enjoyed the music of Bad Religion. I ordered a t-shirt of the bands and was ridiculed by one of my best friends for it. His opinion on it was that the shirt offended Christians because it had a crossed out cross on it. I told him if disagreeing with beliefs was offensive that the Christian t-shirts offended me. I will always remember the response he gave to that. His response was that one was a belief system to live your life the other denies belief systems and makes life pointless. Therefore it is an asshole move to wear a shirt that takes meaning away from peoples lives.
I've always found this interesting because I don't think my life is meaningless. I am now 21 and am still friends with this individual. I have also been yelled at by many other people because I supposedly make fun of their beliefs. Now I don't bring my beliefs up to strangers I consider that to be quite rude, but I am often asked what I believe in. I assume this is an attempt to preach to me. I than tell them what I believe and will debate against their points. At that time I supposedly become the asshole even though they asked.
So my Kansas experience seems to be people don't mind that I'm an Atheist, but i better stay quiet about it. I have heard a lot of statements and about a lot of policies that would not fly in several states. I want to blog about them and get this out there. I also want to blog my opinions (from this limited perspective) on issues in the Atheist community, and philosophy in general.
As I learn more about the site I hope that I can make this an enjoyable reading experience and share more of my story growing up in Kansas. Now a video i just stumbled upon by Meridian Frost. I found it quite intersesting.
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