"Cross rubicons you filthy children"

(quote: me; video: clip from Bad Boy Bubby {turn your volume up a bit})

A humanist organization has begun putting advertisements on buses that say something along the lines of: "Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness's sake". As a phrase I find none of that disagreeable. I don't believe in god, and I find our culture and progress diluted by those that practice within organized religions. I believe that religion is a trait adapted for survival in an environment we no longer inhabit, a vestige of a different time, and irrelevant paradigm that refuses to get the fuck out of the way. But this advertisement nonsense is just that. The struggle of ideas is not won with bus advertisements and silly mottos. This campaign will do nothing but embarrass most atheists and further alienate believers. Consider this: if you are an atheist what is the single most personally annoying attribute of religion (we are not talking here about its tendency towards violence and hatred, the stupefying effect it has on children, the reprehensible behavior it is allowed to excuse)? I think we can all agree that it is evangelism. We do not like the word 'god' on our money, we do not want religion forced on us in television or the public square, we do not want the moral compass of the church taking bearings in our halls of justice. Many atheists say that they don't have any problem with people practicing their 'faith' as long as they keep it mostly to themselves. The tacit agreement behind that is that we keep our understanding mostly to ourselves. And yet, here we are. Evangelizing. Giving the fools an argument for what's wrong with us. Occupying, however inaccurate the term, the 'militant' moniker bestowed by Bill O'Reilly and Bill Donohue and Rush Limbaugh. Religion will end. In a few generations it will finally be shrugged off like an ill-fitting coat. That is not to say that we can't push on it with science, or air it out in the appropriate interpersonal conversation, or write about it on our blogs, or create irreligous art. We simply need to hold the same respect for everyone else that we demand they give us. I don't know what the hell this group was thinking.

It all starts to become real when you get your test scores back and your portfolio is 95% done and your letters of recommendation are piling up in their letterhead envelopes and Wayne State has sent most of your transcripts and your boss tells you "there is no point in doing x, you'll be gone in a year". And if I were to gut a deer and read its steaming entrails they would tell me my best chances for acceptance are the University of Oregon, Ohio State, Brooklyn College, and my second alma mater. Next summer, I'm plotting a month-long Retirement Party that will find me hitchhiking and bussing from Portland, Oregon to San Francisco, California. I will sleep on the beach in Coos Bay, in the salted trees of Siuslaw National Park, in the view of Stinson beach, in the parking lot of Mt. Tamalpais State Park. I want to demarcate my departure, dig a deep slash in it that can never be recrossed. I want to think of nothing save how I will eat and where I am going for 30 consecutive nights. There will be only so many instances in a life that allow for such digressions. Each one must be swallowed whole.