Alright.. lets rewind to the freshman year of my highschool.
I had a gym class in which for three weeks we had a unit on square dancing.. anyone who knows me knows that I dislike dancing with a passion. I just can't dance... I don't know why, and I don't like dancing. If I can help it I'd avoid it for a long long time..
Anyway, what happened is that students who had a "religious" excuse were permitted to not dance, and could partake in a supplementary activity, which was working out. So without saying a word as to why I was doing it, I partook in the supplementary activity. I knew the other two guys who were doing it to. Neither of them were very religious, but because of their parents religion, they were able to squirm out of dancing, no questions asked.
On the other hand there was me. My parents are hindu, (they're very liberal, which is awesome) and well, I was an atheist in practice, an agnostic when questioned, though I preferred to avoid the "what religion are you?" question all together, and where I could help it, I would pretend not to listen to it, or would quickly change topics, or exit the vicinity of the question by actually leaving. It isn't that I was ashamed to admit that I don't believe in any kind of a god, just as I'm not ashamed to admit that I don't believe in Santa Claus, or that I don't believe in unicorns and fairies.
I just know of the social stigma that comes with being an atheist.. you know, people see you as a immoral, baby eater who is going to fall to eternal torment (granted that this is the US, and the majority of it's inhabitants are followers of some kind of abrahamic religion). Though I must disagree. I do have morals, you can thank my parents for that. You can thank them for being good people and passing that down to me. Also I would never eat a baby. that just sounds plain nasty, and eternal torture, well, there's no evidence for it, so it's probably not going to happen.
Anyway, I digress. What happened then, is that I was put in a bind.. apparently to not fail, I NEEDED a note from a religious leader saying that I was exempt. Darn it. I knew there would be a catch. However, it wasn't going to end like this.. I was about to challenge their logic. So on the spot I made up a "religion", in accordance to this "religion", I was not allowed to dance. Now what? they would have to be hypocritical to fail me for those three weeks. Unfortunately it seemed that the school had no issue with that. I was called into a conference with my teacher and counselor. Well, a chance to defend myself. To defend the fact that personal convictions should be valued just as much, if not more, than religious convictions. The only difference
between me and the other two students was that they had years of tradition on their side. I did not. However their motives could not be questioned, because that would be attacking their beliefs.. yet my own personal beliefs, they had no problem tossing aside as though they were trash. The hammer was brought down on me, and well, thinking that I was completely alone, at that moment. when they threatened to fail me, I broke down.
I felt truly alone. At the time, I thought I was the only person in my entire school, maybe my entire town, heck maybe even the entire state, who found religion to be fairytales taken way too seriously. It was a feeling unlike any other.. A feeling of hopelessness. One that I wouldn't forget for a while. I guess, one could say I could somewhat empathize with the witches during the witch hunts.
Luckily for me, they were somewhat understanding. They told me never to pull a stunt like that. And since I had done the supplementary activity, I was allowed to get a passing grade, a D, for those 3 weeks of gym. On the other hand the other two students got an A for those 3 weeks, only because they had a religion behind them. That sounds a little too similar to discrimination I would say.
Though you must understand, I have nothing against the school nor the people that worked there. What I'm attacking is the double standard that society has set forth, the one where we are forbidden from questioning faith (which by the way is the illogical belief in something in the face of no/ contradictory evidence) From my example you can see what happens though. One persons "faith" is worthless and that person could be considered illogical, or stupid or insane. However when many people have faith and they organize.. it suddenly becomes reasonable and taboo to say otherwise.
As it happens our society give waaaaaaay too much respect to faith. Even more so than to reason. I think that this double standard needs to change. We need to if anything, respect the individuals convictions. However none of this should be done on religious ground. Why is that pacifists are fair game to be drafted, yet priests are not? Why is it that one's political stance can be criticized, but one's religion cannot. Heck, society will go as far to slander the morals of secularists/atheists/agnostics but it won't even lift so much as a finger if those morals that are derived from a religion. (for more on that check out my older blog, "atheists have no morals?")
This kind of discrimination needs to end. And REASON needs to be valued over FAITH.
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