The Freedom To Tweet, Or Not

 America, I heart  you. More precisely, I heart the freedom and liberty that all Americans enjoy. Sure this country is not perfect, but it is better than, let's say, living in hot ass Kuwait or Saudi Arabia.

Recently a judge in Kuwait sentenced a Sunni activist to three months in jail for...blasphemy. OK, this is where I say, WTF. The judge determined that the Sunni activist said thingies deemed derogatory to Shiite Muslims...in a series of tweets. In the whole wide world there is a blasphemy trend, err, an anti blasphemy trend. There is that stupid UN resolution, which is really stupid and our very own president supports it (c'mon blood, sheez).

Freedom of speech is becoming less and less free in many parts of the world. If I had a nickel for everytime I have heard of a blogger being jailed for simply stating their views, whether right or wrong, I'd have at least $2.25 (I'm trying to say that it is common). If I didn't live here in the awesome states, perhaps I would be in jail.

Let's see off the top of my head, I totally blog about religion all the time and I criticize the government. On the Twitter and the Facebook, I have said that "I feel like killing people." So I have feelings and opinions and I express them. Revolution is in the air and the Arab Spring, I hope, will bring freedoms to the Middle East. Recently, in Saudi Arabia women were granted the right to vote (but not until a year or so from now), but they cannot drive a frackin' car. A woman was recently sentenced to 10 lashes because she...drove.

I haven't asked in a while, "Is everything getting better or worse, or both simultaneously?" Jail for tweeting and lashes for driving. This time I'll say worse.

Thanks American...for being you.

* Voting, driving and lashing, not ness. in that order.

* Tweet, go to jail.

Team Atheist Forever

It's not your grand pappies Crusade anymore. 

I will now attempt to make sense. Wish me luck...

In an attempt to rebrand itself and perhaps seem hip-r to the younger crowd, Campus Crusade for Christ is changing their name to Cru. Wow, isn't that hip. They decided that the word "crusade" was yucky (my word) and that it has negative connotations. But...

"We were not trying to eliminate the word Christ from our name. We were looking for a name that would most effectively serve our mission and help us take the gospel to the world. Our mission has not changed. Cru enables us to have discussions about Christ with people who might initially be turned off by a more overtly Christian name. We believe that our interaction and our communication with the world will be what ultimately honors and glorifies Christ (Faith and Reason)."




And what better way to honor and glorify 'him' than hiding your intentions and then suddenly busting out with "Now, repent sinner...or go to Hellllll." Just kidding. You can follow Cru on Twitter @crunews (or you can just go on a Twitter break and not even look at it for a hella long time) and you can see their epic movie, aptly named The Jesus Film (I dare you to watch it you heathens. Their meticulous and scientific statistics claim that every 8 seconds "somewhere in the world, another person indicates a decision to follow Christ after watching the "JESUS" film (link)."

No little boy, I'm not Catholic. I'm Jewish...look at this.

Any who...I thought two things. 1) We should take a page outta their book with their growth and rebranding and the question that I'm happy to ask a lot lately 2) is this sh* working. Ya know the battle for secular society?

I've said before that 'they' have entire college campuses, TV and radio stations (not just shows on those stations, but the whole station), their books sell in the millions every year and some of their churches attract up to 10,000 on one weekend for one church. That's pretty awesome peeps and don't forget this...we are the minority. I've just saying that one day I hope our numbers are so great that we can have college campuses of our own, or TV station or network. That would be awesome.

Campus Crus...., err, Cru has claimed to have 37,900 "saved souls" since they have started bothering college kids on campus since 1951. They are on 1,029 campuses across the states. That's pretty good (and slightly deceiving, more later) and I can't help but think that would be cool if The Secular Student Alliance had those kinds of numbers. Just sayin'...

And what about the rebranding thingy. There have been many attmpts on our part to make the perception of atheists...softer. There was Richard "Papa Bear" Dawkins and his idea to call ourselves Brights, which is pretty good, but it didn't catch on. We can also be Humanist, rationalist, secular humanist, nu humanists etc...but ya know what, I like New Atheist the best (1). I'm proud to call myself a New Atheist and associate myself with the nu atheism and the golden age of atheism. I think what we need to do is embrace it positivity and make it a positive term. We can do the good 'ol turn around and when peeps say "new atheists" while looking down their nose, we can say, "Hell ya I'm a New Atheist." Just a thought...

Has baddass been taken?

The other thingy was...Is this working; that battle for secular society that we keep talking about. Is Christian privilege waning and for that matter, Christianity in general. I might contradict myself right now (and as I've said many times in many weeks lately...I'm not making sense, even to myself), and it says so in the article, but when you crunch the numbers, Crus has only saved 7 souls per campus per year. OK, if we look at it like that, then that is not that much.

Number wise, and we see this in survey after survey, the numbers of believers are going down here in the Western nations and it is only rising in third world countries (read poverty and no education). All denominations have dwindling numbers, the remaining clergy is aging and the youth are leaving the faith of their parents in droves. That is why CCfC changed their name to Cru-to attract the younger generation and leave behind notions of their parents negative and un-hip faith. Sure some churches have epic concert like services that attract thousands, but those churches are few.

One commenter made a funny and a good point. Dude said that the name went from Crusade to Cru. What is next, just a "C" and then after that it gets smaller and smaller until there is nothing. It just disappears.  Well, we can only hope.

(1) Fo Sho I like being referred  to as a New Atheist and I do call myself that. but what I would love would be if everyone started saying Team Atheist. I think it brings a sense of belonging, belonging to something that is bigger than the individual. I can't help but think of all the geeks out there that did not play team sports and spent their time studying (that that is why you became a skeptic and then an atheist). Well, come and be on my team, our team. This is your chance to be on a team. Isn't that attractive? I think so. Team Atheist Forever.

* Dam, I didn't make sense. This is bullshit................