Blasphemy and Other Fun Stuff

I'm feeling better and better about our forthcoming move to Lexington. Yesterday was our first day of classes at a secular homeschooling co-op and it was AWESOME! The kids had fun, learned a lot, and got to hang around lots of other kids without any focus on religious beliefs. They are counting down the days until returning next week. We'll enjoy it even more when it's a short drive from our new home instead of the hour plus we have to drive each way now.

And speaking of new home, were getting closer to our actual move, as we now have both a buyer for our current house and a contract to purchase a home in Lexington. Now we just work through the processes to get both sales closed within the next couple of months.

Our family is excited to be more active in the growing humanist/freethinker community after we move. We're particularly looking forward to next month's first annual Kentucky Freethought Convention. Check out this list of amazing speakers lined up to speak! I still kind of can't believe an event like this is coming to Kentucky, and I can't wait to be in a whole building full of freethinkers and skeptics.

Though Lexington itself is far from nonreligious, it offers our family a network of other secular families and individuals who recognize that religious faith is not necessary for morality, who place value on critical thought, education, and reason rather than on faith (i.e. belief without proof), and who know that rights and respect belong to human beings, not to ideas and beliefs. 

This concept of rights belonging to human beings rather than to ideas and beliefs is very relevant in the aftermath of the US Embassy killings and continuing unrest in the Middle East in protest to a blasphemous movie. Let's reword that a little bit. People are being killed because other people's religious faith is being offended. Human beings are dying because someone offended an idea. A myth. A story. And anyone who thinks Islam holds some kind of monopoly on this kind of behavior needs to read a history book or two.

Long live blasphemy. The Onion does a wonderful job of it here. (Image not safe for work. Or kids.)