Why I'm here.

Not in the universe, mind you. I'm talking about why I'm here, on this blog, talking about these things.

I grew up in a wackily religious home. My mother's brand of christianity is what I like to call Veggie Tales Christianity. It focuses primarily on being kind, loving one another, loving god, and god loving us. It's rather good stuff. It can be a little naive, and a little blind to the harm the church causes in the world, but its heart is in the right place and it's trying. My father's brand of christianity was as a way to justify the things he already felt or thought. It made him Right and others Wrong, and he was fond of that dynamic. He read the bible the same way he listened to Rush Limbaugh, although he did the latter far more frequent and enthusiastically.

A lot of things happened on my spiritual and religious journey, and I will probably talk about some of them on this blog when it's appropriate. Suffice it to say, I rejected the more hateful and unreasonable tenants of what I'd come to know as christianity and I found my faith grew. I continued to embrace science and reason and I found my faith grew even more.

I find it neither contradictory nor controversial to identify as christian and be very enthusiastic about scientific discovery.

I've also considered my faith to be something private, as long as I've been old enough to consider such a thing at all. Christianity was used as a weapon against me, so I see how it's being used as a weapon against others. I will not thrust my religion upon anyone.

However, in being quiet about the things I believe I've noticed that there is a voice missing from the discussion. We're left with the shriekings of hateful, twisted individuals who use religion to justify the harm they would perpetrate on others. And the only voice to combat them is the voice of the anti-religious (and I am thankful for them).

But it shouldn't be their responsibility. It should be ours. We've let this sickness fester and grow and it's consumed the very foundation of what Christ is purported to stand for. Bizarro Christianity has come to define the religion, at the very least here in the United States where I grew up.

This is unacceptable. We should be calling out the hatefulness and cruelty we see coming from our ranks, not making excuses for or defending it. And that's what I'm going to do here, with my little voice, on my empty blog. And maybe somehow, someone will hear it. And maybe they'll do the same. And maybe we'll rebuke this beastly inversion before it can do too much more damage.

And that's why I here.

...

Also because science is really neat.