The Chestnut Tree Cafe was born the evening of October 19, 1998. The site has undergone numerous revisions and modifications since that time, but the essential underlying themes have remained the same.
Mysticism is far too common in the 'modern' world. From Christianity to alien visitation, too many people deny real world evidence and reason to adopt ideologies based on the vapor of faith. We who reject 'faith' are regarded as abnormal.
I hold that 'faith' is both dangerous and evil. I say of faith what zealots say of drug use ... it leads to harder things! Once you abandon reason for 'faith' in an ideology, you have opened the door to all sorts of other, potentially hazardous, beliefs. And too often, these beliefs involve servitude to one master or another.
Once one has adopted on 'faith' servitude to a master god and has become comfortable with believing in things that defy reason, servitude to authoritarian government rule is really not much of a leap. Here in the United States, people often bring up the U.S. Constitution when they feel their rights have been infringed upon by their neighbors. But the Constitution does not protect individual rights from being infringed upon by other individuals - it protects the individual's rights from government intrusion. But nobody cares about this, especially post-911. Ask people if they are concerned about basic civil liberties and they just look at you like so many deer caught in the headlights. "Why should I mind if the authorities search my car without probable cause? I don't have anything to hide."
I find myself returning again and again to the many tattered old copies of George Orwell's 1984 that lay about my house. Winston Smith lived in a dark and inconceivably oppressive society. He had no one to talk to ... no one with whom he could share his concerns that something seemed not quite right with the World. When he eventually found a release by writing his thoughts down in a diary, his mind was so flooded with thoughts and with excitement that he at first could write only gibberish, followed by "DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER!"
Eventually, Winston composed himself and wrote the following introduction in his diary:
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"To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are different from one another and do not live alone - to a time when truth exists and what is done cannot be undone:
From the age of uniformity, from the age of solitude, greetings!" |
While Winston Smith found release by writing his thoughts in a diary, I have turned to spewing my text upon the internet. The maintenance of this site allows me to relieve my frustrations. It brings me clarity, and at the same time it offers me an opportunity to educate my Christian visitors. No ... reading the mad ramblings of a pissed-off atheist isn't going to cause any Christians to throw away their Bibles. What it WILL do, however, is give you the opportunity to see the world from an atheist's eyes. Is this not a good thing? Should we humans not strive to understand the cultures, beliefs, and moral perspectives of one another? Down with Big Brother, mother fucker.
"In theory it is still possible to be an orthodox religious believer without being intellectually crippled in the process; but it is far from easy, and in practice books by orthodox believers usually show the same cramped, blinkered outlook as books by orthodox Stalinists or others who are mentally unfree. The reason is that the Christian churches still demand assent to doctrines which no one seriously believes in. The most obvious case is immortality of the soul." |