Of course I like initiatives, especially good ones. Naturally there are many, but rarely as unheard of, strange and truth bearing as the coming out campaign started by R. Dawkins (http://outcampaign.org/).
I have not looked into the site with an air of deep interest, rather I took a quick look, noticed it’s pillars and decided that it belongs into my category of good initiatives. Why? Because I think there are so many people not only struggling to define and justify their beliefs, but often fighting against a stream of social pressures that their supposedly held beliefs has laid upon their shoulders.
This gets all the more vivid from my own perspective. No, I have not been raised in an orthodox family. The education I received at junior school was Christian though, and it took me years to get rid of the whole package. I never chose to believe, which I deem impossible anyway, because I think you either believe or you do not. I have however, been taught to believe. And for years I have pushed the subject aside, hopping along like any other adolescent, claiming I did not hold religious beliefs. But I think, or I know to a certain extent, that I did hold those beliefs, at least partially. Only a reminder of the concept of ’soul’, the fear of retribution or life after death (small but nevertheless present) and a short-sighted biological web of knowledge, is needed to make this a clear-cut case.
Now the battle has been won. I gladly take on creationists or like-minded persons in discussion, just not before 8am. Evolution did the trick, as with so many people. Further investigation into the roots of especially Christianity opened a whole new paradigm for me. The more I hear and read, the more I wonder why on earth religious people refuse to open their eyes. But then my own route to infidelity forces itself upon my mind’s eye again.
This makes me sympathetic to Dawkins’ initiative. I am sympathetic with all projects that strive towards a better understanding of reality, especially for subjects that are either a taboo or difficult to reach for the average person (we will not discuss what an average person is, we take it for granted like we’re all Wittgensteinians). Indeed, there are more topics where an attitude towards more and better public understanding ought to be set as a goal, in as much as it hasn’t already happened (embryonic stem-cell research is only one of them). Freedom by law is only one thing, freedom of (speaking your) mind a second, but freedom of traditional and unwanted social constraints is what we’re aiming for.
At the beginning I called Dawkins’ project ‘unheard of’. Of course, it is not. Even here, in tiny Holland, we’ve had such an initiative: A focus on Muslim non-believers. Though the combination of these words are near logical inconsistency, it was supposed to help them along the path of life, escaping social pressure, punishment and other sneers because they dumped indoctrination. The difference with the Out Campaign, is that it does not touch a single soaring wound, but goes to the heart of all religious communities that have created or upheld obstacles prevent from going your own way.
I am a fervent atheist and never flee from any discussion that relates to these matters, though to be honest I have grown tired of religious dogmatists (my bedroom wall makes a better and less irritating conversation partner than many theists do these days). So hereby some small, superfluous effort to support Richard Dawkins’ campagin.
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