Sunday, February 24, 2008

How to logically assess this

Of late I have been considering the merits of an atheistic outlook toward life and living. I have read Richard Dawkins' book "The God Delusion" twice and a couple of other books on the subject including Christopher Hitchens' "God is Not Great." Also, I have spent several hours at a time on more than one evening exploring the Web on this subject and have noticed, also more than once, inferences to the rights of homosexuals as a concern or part of the atheist platform as represented on the several atheist websites I visited. Since I failed to annotate those Websites I feel terrible since without some great luck and good fortune a reader may never see what I am speaking of. I will concede here that it may have been 2 or 3 websites which contained text expressing support for the homosexual life as part of their overall atheist strategy. I'll not fault them for that.

Having said all that first it seems to me that from one viewpoint it looks like atheism may be being used as a front to defend and promote the homosexual lifestyle. I really hated to use the word lifestyle just then but I could not think of another way to say what I mean. Check out any atheist web page and you may see links to pages that will offer reasons for the nonexistence of a God or any gods and somewhere you will eventually see something that involves homosexuality as it relates to the issue of atheism. Usually the text describes support for the homosexual lifestyle.

Is homosexuality the single most identifiable issue in the debate? Granted, evangelicals seem to target homosexuals more any other class of godless behaviour. But when you think about it most of the molesting of children by the clergy is of the "man on boy" type. Another useless yet interesting correlation?

I work with a man whose adopted son is gay and we shall call him Wayne to protect his identity. Wayne told his father once, "Daddy, no one would choose to be homosexual." Well would they? Many of the religious mindset in concrete would say that it is a choice. I say it must be genetic because in my life I was never confronted with a dilemma of having to choose with which gender of my playmates I most desired to have intimate relations. I always chose the females and never once entertained thoughts of the choice being male. For me, it was just something inside me telling me to go for the girls!

I imagine the experience is something along those lines for those in the world who hear "go for the guys!" If homosexual behaviour is genetic then we have a long way to go before we actually reach a level of sophistication that can be called civilised. We still live in a world where gay men and women are killed because of this variation among the modern homo sapiens that now inhabit the planet. Convincing some of those inhabitants that Albert is gay because of genetics may be impossible to do in the prevailing environment of ignorance we find ourselves shaking our heads at.

You may live in a nice place and work in an even nicer place and you may very rarely see an ignorant homo sapien but from where I live and work I rarely see an intelligent homo sapien. Having all that behind me I am reminded of the ditty that goes something like this; "When they were after the Homosexuals I said nothing because I was not a Homosexual...." Eventually they will come after you.