What is your name? (Real or pseudo)

John J. Ronald

What is your date of birth?

2/15/1971 - Aquarius rules ;-)

(no, I don't really believe in Astrology either)

What is your gender?

Male

What is your race?

Caucasian

What is your e-mail address? (optional)

jjr0013@unt.edu

What is the name and URL of your homepage? (optional)

http://people.unt.edu/jjr0013

Where do you live? (City, State, Country)

Sugar Land, Texas, USA

How would you best describe your form of freethought? (Atheist, Agnostic, Humanist, etc.)

Atheist/Rationalist/Humanist/Cosmopolitan/Socialist/Ecologist

Were you raised as a freethinker or to be religious?

Nominally raised Presbyterian, mostly by my mother, who is still nominally religious, but my Dad was a science teacher and disaffected Presbyterian and closet atheist. He rarely came to church with my mother and me. I did get baptized & confirmed around age 13, but sort of drifted away from religious services after Middle School.

What originally set you on the path to freethought?

My Dad inculcated me with a healthy respect for the scientific method from an early age, and he frequently showed me how to do experiments and practiced his science lessons on me first before introducing them to his class. He let me grade papers using an answer key, helped me on science projects, etc. I remember going to church, listening to bible stories, and thinking to myself "and these people in this church think this is LITERALLY what happened? Are they crazy?"; Admittedly, we belonged to a pretty "liberal" church, and our pastor was a very nice man, and he didn't push the theology too hard--he was mostly like a counselor, talking about how his week was, and how he tried to do right by other people, etc. He was charismatic in a non-threatening way; but when he left our church to move on to bigger things, we lost interest in going. By the time I hit High School and got exposed to anti-abortion fanatics, read up on the likes of Pat Robertson, and other fundies, especially in relation to censorship issues, and also read up on religious history and the history of the Enlightenment, I reacted with hostility toward religion. I did lapse back into a "religious" phase in graduate school, but that was on account of having my brains scrambled trying to get a handle on Postmodernism...luckily, it didn't last, I got a handle on PoMo, then rejected both and reverted back to Freethought after undertaking a careful study of the history of philosophy from the pre-Socratics to the present.

I also had a brief spate of time where I flirted seriously with the idea of converting to Judaism, but abandoned it. I remarked to a friend who was converting under Reform auspices, "It's too bad you can't convert to Secular Judaism" and her answer was "but honey, you can, it's called Reform", but I was unsatisfied with this answer. As much as I respected this culture, with its devotion to learning and scholarship, and as much as I respected the rigor of the Orthodox tradition in particular, I just couldn't buy into it. In some ways I liked it better than Christianity, but I just had to say no, in the end. I'm still able to surprise and impress some Jewish friends with all the trivia I learned about their people's culture, though.

Also, living in a foreign country (Germany, Academic Year 1992-1993) really opened my eyes about a lot of things most Americans don't put a lot of thought into, including religion.

When did you "come out" as a freethinker to family/friends/public, and how did it go over?

I think my mom always suspected since High School, and my dad never minded, and he and I have been able to share in our Freethought musings in recent years. Mom doesn't approve of my atheism, but she accepts it. She was always pressuring me to go to church services or bible study groups to make friends/meet people, but I found other venues to meet friends that were much more gratifying.

Do you feel it necessary to continue to hide your beliefs in any circumstances, and if so, why?

No, I don't really hide it---but I don't go out of my way to advertise it. It might be noticed when I roll my eyes at excessively religious displays in stores or out in public. I do sometimes attend the Xmas & Easter services at a Lutheran Church in town, but I only do so because of the German language services at this venue (I have a degree in German studies).

Have you ever been the victim of discrimination or abuse because of your beliefs?

Discrimination? Not that I'm aware of. Abuse...well, let me put it this way. My ex-Wife found God again, and I found I didn't want to stay married to a religious nut nor have anything more to do with her creepy family.

In what types of freethought activism, if any, do you participate?

Mostly the cheque-writing kind right now...I subscribe to Freethought Today, have a "Gold" membership with The Infidel Guy (that I need to renew, come to think of it), subscribe also to Free Inquiry (really love their book reviews!), the Skeptical Inquirer, and own Dan Barker's Losing Faith in Faith, and I often patronize www.evolvefish.com! One very COOL site, and I've bought many audiotapes from them, all of them fantastic--especially the Robert Green Ingersoll stuff. I had never heard of Ingersoll until I found Evolvefish...I also belong to the national ACLU and the ACLU of Texas, and the Union of Concerned Scientists, and I get email alerts from Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. I also tend to buy memberships in Natural Science (and Natural History) Museums & Zoos and support the study of the Natural Sciences in any way possible. I vote for anyone who runs against conservative Republicans, even Libertarians if that's the only alternative.

What do you feel is the best part of being a freethinker?

Being able to enjoy art & music without a moralizing "religious filter", being able to just plain enjoy life without the excess guilt, all this worrying about some afterlife I no longer believe in. Being able to just focus on doing right by other people and trying to make the Earth and my country a better place to live, in whatever small way I can...and opposing ignorance and superstition whenever I can. Gells well with my professional ethics as a library professional. Any library I work in I will make sure has religious as well as non-religious and even anti-religious material. People must have the freedom to make up their own minds.

What do you feel is the worst part of being a freethinker?

Being spurned by a love interest because of my lack of "faith". This has happened on a few occasions. Still, in retrospect, I wish my ex-wife had done so also--would've made my life a whole lot simpler and less complicated...still she was nominally an agnostic when we met, and we shared the common bond of being anti-war (and to her credit she still is anti-war) but I should've known she'd go back to her "fundie"/theistic roots one day, which she did, and I bid my goodbye. Our relationship was short, intense and passionate while it lasted, but too full of too many contradictions and it became too impossible to disguise the contempt we felt for each other by the end.

Also, having to watch even progressive politicians pander to religious constituencies and their pet predjudices. Robert Green Ingersoll and Thomas Paine would be appalled by America today. I feel there are no astute politicians who have the guts to speak out for the rights of Freethinkers today.

What is the societal atmosphere for freethinkers where you live?

Sugar Land is pretty religious, but it's so close to a major city (Houston) that it's not in any way overpowering...not in my life, anyway. There weren't any out-and-out self-proclaimed atheists in my school that I was aware of, but most of my High School classmates took religion with a grain of salt (or swig of beer) and kept their distance from the VERY religious kids. Houston (where I spend most of my free time) is a very culturally diverse city--you almost forget you're in Texas sometimes. Love it. Just wish I could find a library job in this town instead of the corporate 9-5 gig I'm doing now.

In college, I went to the very conservative campus of Texas A&M University, where there were more religious groupings of students than you can shake a stick at...but there were also plenty of non-religious venues to get involved in, like German Club & Russian Club; I found that most so-called Christians like to drink, smoke, cuss and play dominoes ("42") as much as other more secularly minded students, they just had weird hangups about premarital sex that the rest of us didn't. There was also a small, brassy "Atheist and Agnostic Student Association" that made up hillarious signs and t-shirts. I never joined but I always admired their courage.

Grad School, I went there a confirmed atheist, then became a theist/"liberal Christian" for a time, then dumped this belief system altogether as unworkable, and rejected Postmodern philosophy too and fell back to being a classical modernist/unapologetic Marxist. It "fits" me the best. I was an atheist the entire time I got my library degree, married and divorced my ex-wife.

How do you define "freedom of religion" and do you think your country attempts to grant this?

Freedom of Religion includes Freedom FROM Religion and I think it is very much under heavy assault in this country, and I am deeply disturbed by how aggressive certain Christians are becoming in the public sphere; Religious intolerance is becoming 'trendy' and brazen again. Bush's "Faith Based" programs are a crock, exactly the kind of CRAP that Madison and Jefferson tried to WARN us about. I'm very worried about the way the Judiciary in this country in particular is going...these right wing, extremist Judges scare the sh*t out of me and make me want to learn French and move to Canada.

If you could share one thought with whoever might read this profile of you, what would it be?

Remember that the only reason that there are "moderate" and "liberal" Christians today is because many scientists and philosophers have been battling for centuries against superstition and prejudice out of a love for shared humanity rather than some displaced, unseen "God-thing", and they, though their actions (often at the cost of their own lives!) have SHAMED and EMBARRASSED mainstream churches into more moderate positions on social issues. Be very afraid if religion ever gets an unfettered grasp on the reins of political power ever again. If the Media today seem to take seriously the fluffy talk about Angels and Afterlife, don't think denunciations "Devils and Witchcraft" won't be far behind. Voltaire said it best: "As Long as People Continue to Believe in Absurdities, They Will Continue to Commit Atrocities..."