I wanted to tell you about a strange experience I had a few days ago:
We live in Bloomington, IN which is sorta liberal and multicultural due to IU I would guess.
We spent the days around July Fourth in a rented house in Michigan City, IN. My wife dragged me to the 4th of July Parade in La Porta, IN which is a few miles West of Michigan City on Lake Michigan. My kids had hijacked the camera so I don’t have evidence - but amongst all the tractors, trombonists, clowns etc, in the parade there was quite a contingent of churches. Two stuck to my memory. One was proclaiming the end of the world for October 2011 and the other had this nice warning: “Freedom of Religion doesn’t mean Freedom from Religion”.  Luckily I left my atheist t-shirt in Bloomington but this sure left a sour aftertaste with me.

Our friends, a couple of professors from Germany who had spent a year in Bloomington essentially stated as these strange trailers rolled by: “Here we’re the ones who should just shut up because we’re not normal. If you had somebody put signs like that up in a parade in Germany they (who made the sign) would be considered crazy”.

I moved to the US in 1988 and thought I’ve seen most of it.. But sometimes I still just stand there and think that the country is moving backwards into the dark ages.

Peter

Well, I’ve spent my entires life in the US, and I can still be startled and amazed but such things. Lucklily, we have groups like this to remind us that not everyone supports the return of the dark ages.

I too am a U.S. citizen by birth, and am dismayed when I see or hear of stuff like that.  Fortunately for people like Brennen, Doug, and me who live near the coasts the ratio of such ideas to more enlightened thinking is much lower than it is in the center of the country.  With the publication of quite a few books like Dawkins, I’m optimistic, however, if the tide really goes completely in the direction of the quoted signs, I’ll begin to go along with the poster who wants to form something like the First Church of Humanism as an anti-theistic religion.

Occam

Yes, fortunately this sort of thing doesn’t happen around where I live ... but it is dismaying nonetheless. We certainly have a lot of work to do.

Still, as a northern Irish person, I have to say it is better than the twelfth of July parades.  Those guys aren’t pleasant. Even now, living in the northwest of England they are still at it.  They walk through liverpool and then go off to Souhport to start fights. If you really want to see religion at its worst, you can’t really beat the orange order.

Peter K - 07 July 2007 02:04 PM

“Freedom of Religion doesn’t mean Freedom from Religion.”

And that’s what the church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is for…

logicisrefreshing - 08 July 2007 08:40 PM

And that’s what the church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is for…

This just reminds me of why I’ve wanted so badly to get out of Indiana since I was a teenager.

Though I suppose it’s not so bad if you stick to the college towns, or in the Indy area (preferably near the CFI headquarters ).

brainlesssteel - 13 July 2007 02:48 AM

This just reminds me of why I’ve wanted so badly to get out of Indiana since I was a teenager.

Though I suppose it’s not so bad if you stick to the college towns, or in the Indy area (preferably near the CFI headquarters ).

OTOH, when I encounter individual people, not groups, it’s fertile ground for discussions.

I actually just drove by the CFI in Indy last week. That’s so cool.

Peter