Affiliations

As Grrbear noted in a comment on my last post, I now have an affiliated site. If you accidently type my site name using 'blogpsot' instead of 'blogspot', you get some piece of shit bible-wielding craptastic site. Okay, so that was a little strong. But dude. I think the people responsible for this other site did a search for blogs written by people favoring the study of evolution in the public schools and the exclusion of creationism from scientific discussions. (I should clarify that I am completely fine with religious discussions - as long as such things are taught in the context of fields in which they belong.)

Given my new sister site, I feel it is necessary for me to make a statement regarding my position on religion.

I identify as agnostic. I was raised Catholic and find that particular religion extremely patriarcal and guilt-inducing and I disagree whole-heartedly with most of the churches positions on social policies (abortion, gay unions, women in religious roles, etc, etc, etc).

As for religion as a whole, I admit that there are things that we do not understand in this universe, but I don't know that 'god' is the way to explain these unknowns. The evidence that most encourages my doubt: the fact that the role of god and religion has changed over time to roughly correspond with how much we understand about a given topic from a scientific perspective at that time (ex. - the roles that religious leaders have played over history in dealing with illness have been increasingly taken over by medical professionals as medicine has come to understand the causes of and cures for disease).

In addition to my belief that the main role of religion is to explain the as-yet unexplained, it's also become increasingly clear to me, beginning in college and into my adult life, that organized religious institutions have historically served frighteningly powerful political purposes. No better way to insure a unified voting body than to place "entrance into heaven" on the ballot!

And a few last words on evolution vs. intelligent design. [I'm sorry for those regular readers out there who have had enough of this.] The Theory of Evolution (let me remind y'all* that 'theory' in science verbiage carries far more weight than the same word used coloquially) has a hell-of-a-lotta evidence to back it up. Intelligent design? Not so much. In fact, science and religion come to points of 'understanding' through altogether different means. In science, we use the scientific method to gather evidence in support of or against a given hypothesis. Religion, on the other hand, is based almost entirely on faith and (as I see it) the lack of evidence that something else is causing a given outcome. It's true, the big macro-changes that occurred over evolutionary history are still a bit of a conundrum. But why the hell would single-celled yeast share so many genes with Homo sapiens if the two species didn't come from similar origins.

And to close: I'm not saying there is not a god(s). I'm just saying that I question his/her/its/their existence because I don't see the proof. And, as an aside, I am firmly of the belief that if there is a god, he/she/it would not exclude a kind, generous, selfless individual from the pearly gates just because that person identifies as an athiest.

And with that, I step down from my box o' soap.

* I am fully aware that my regular readers are already quite estute on this topic