But though the relaunch of this blog was this year, I was blogging for quite awhile before the relaunch. The content of this blog from before the relaunch goes as far back as February, 2016 – over three years ago.
Three years. That is quite a lot of time. Even since my blog’s relaunch, I have evolved quite a bit as a person, and my views on various matters are no doubt affected by this – but not to the point that I look back at any of my previous post-relaunch articles and say “Oh no, this does not represent who I am now”.
Not so if I go back to the time of the earliest content of this blog from before the relaunch. In those three years, my views on a lot of things have changed so much that some of my old entries are, to say the least, a bit embarrassing.
The very oldest entries you will find in this blog are all about oracle-type cards, such as Tarot cards. To my credit, even when I wrote those entries, and as far back as adolescence for that matter, I never believed that the random shuffling of cards could reveal anything special about future events. However, I did believe at the time that my subconscious mind already possessed a lot of knowledge that my conscious mind did not – including, at times, knowledge about the future. I also believed that my perception of little nuances in the illustrations on randomly selected cards could help unearth information from this mysteriously vast wealth of knowledge that supposedly resided just beneath the surface of my mind – assuming that the deck of cards in question was one that sufficiently “resonated” with my personality.
I still believe that my reactions to an image on a randomly selected card, or for that matter any sufficiently intricate image, can provide insight into thoughts and attitudes within me that I have not quite acknowledged on the surface. However, this process may or may not be as straightforward as I once thought it was – and I have no way at the time of testing the hypothesis that it is. Furthermore, even if my reaction to the images can indeed reliably unearth thoughts from my subconscious, I now realize that that does not mean that the predictions and/or insights thus unearthed from my subconscious are in any way reliable – and that, as a matter of fact, I have no solid basis to conclude that they are.
Not that the time that I spent illustrating my variation on certain Tarot cards and other oracle cards was a total waste or anything. I did get some neat artwork out of it. (The few cards appearing on this blog are not even the best ones to come out of this endeavor. There are far better ones probably still sitting there on my old Instagram account.) However, I realize now that it is unlikely that I achieved anything in that process other than some neat artwork and whatever benefits inherently come from neat artwork. I should not expect those images to ever help me unearth from my subconscious mind any reliable predictions about the future or any other special insights.
Then, there is my article from May 18, 2016, currently titled “Even from Atheists, [When it Does Occur] Religious Intolerance is Wrong”, or as it was titled at the time: “Even from Atheists, Religious Intolerance is Wrong”. Writing the notice of disavowal for this article I found to be especially tricky. This is mainly because most of what I find today to be problematic in the article is what was in the title (the old version of the title) and in the introductory paragraph. The rest of the article, though being problematic in a few areas, I still today think makes on the whole some good points.
The article was written in direct response to two people – one who had expressed the view that tolerance to all religions was forfeit due to atrocities that many religious groups had done in the name of God – and the other who had expressed the view that parents should unconditionally be forbidden to take their children under a certain age to any religious services of any kind, no matter what religion, and no matter what does or doesn’t go on at those religious services. Such views are indeed inherently intolerant views.
However, such views are also very rare among Atheists, even among the strongest of Atheist activists. Most atheists activists, while not respecting the beliefs themselves of religious people, are nonetheless very respectful of the rights of religious people to hold those beliefs. There is a plethora of Atheist activists who will very unapologetically explain the problems with religion – but most of them would vehemently oppose laws that prevent people from freely practicing their religions, provided that they do so in a way that doesn’t impede anyone else’s freedom or otherwise harm anyone.
I did not know at the time how rare the intolerance that I was directly responding to was among Atheists. This may be due to the fact that at the time of me writing the article in question I still believed in the existence of God – then again, it might not.
At any rate, even then I would have been one hundred percent in favor of a ban on parents taking their children to religious services that would be potentially abusive to the child in any specific identifiable way. Does the religions service help instill attitudes that will result in the kids feeling self-hate should they turn out to be LGBTQ? If so, that’s abuse. Does the religious service work to instill in the children fear that they will risk condemning their souls to eternal torment if they dare employ critical thinking in a way that could potentially result in them questioning Church doctrine? That, too, is mentally abusive behavior – and I not only feel that way now, but I also felt that way then, even though I believed in God.
Instilling such attitudes in vulnerable children is abusive behavior whether it is done in church, at home, or anywhere else – and in a sane society, any parents who take their children to a church service where they know such attitudes are liable to be pushed would be arrested and lose custody of their children. I know that now, and I knew that then. And the same goes for plenty of other practices that go on in way too many religious groups all over society.
However, if no such identifiable form of abuse is expected at the religious service – then forbidding parents to take their children to the service is intolerance, plain and simple. I am just as convinced of that now as an Atheist as I was back then when I believed in God. However, once again, what has changed in my views is that at the time, I thought that a significant portion of Atheists held the intolerant view in question. Nowadays, however, I doubt that that is the case.
So, in short, I still believe that intolerance is just as wrong when it comes from Atheists as when it comes from anyone else – but nowadays, I realize that the vast majority of the Atheist community agrees with me on this matter.
I strive now, a few years later, to articulate as much as possible in what respects I stand by this old article and in what respects I recant it. It would be much easier to just delete the old article and write a new, less problematic replacement. But I do not do that. Why? Because while I wish to clarify that I no longer hold certain views that I once held, I have no desire to rewrite history so as to pretend that I never held those views.
And the same goes for any other old articles that I once wrote expressing views that I have since come to see as significantly problematic.
