Greta Christina has been writing professionally since 1989, on topics including atheism, sexuality and sex-positivity, LGBT issues, politics, culture, and whatever crosses her mind. She is author of
The Way of the Heathen: Practicing Atheism in Everyday Life, of
Comforting Thoughts About Death That Have Nothing to Do with God, of
Coming Out Atheist: How to Do It, How to Help Each Other, and Why, of
Why Are You Atheists So Angry? 99 Things That Piss Off the Godless, and of
Bending: Dirty Kinky Stories About Pain, Power, Religion, Unicorns, & More, and is editor of
Paying For It: A Guide by Sex Workers for Their Clients. She has been a public speaker for many years, and many of her talks can be seen on YouTube. Her writing has appeared in multiple magazines and newspapers, including Ms., Penthouse, Chicago Sun-Times, On Our Backs, and Skeptical Inquirer, and numerous anthologies, including
Everything You Know About God Is Wrong and three volumes of
Best American Erotica. (Any views she expresses in this blog are solely hers, and do not necessarily represent this organizations.) She lives in San Francisco with her wife, Ingrid. You can email her at gretachristina (at) gmail (dot) com, or follow her on
Facebook.
No, it’s not JUST a story. Furthermore, it doesn’t help anyone frame their experience.
It does help some people frame their experiences.
In fact, any belief system (even Science. Yes, yes, I know, blasphemy :o) helps frames anyone’s experiences so long they encounter it at some point in their lives.
how is science a “belief system”? Unless you want to start aruging solipcism, that’s a pretty silly thing to say.
As for religion being a story, that’s quite true and each theist picks which parts are important/true.
Some people flip out when you call Harry Potter a “just a story”, or Star Trek. There are other people who, due to their own obsessions, imagine these to be grand conspiracies against civilization itself (either communist in the later case, or real witch craft in the former). Nothing people place excessive value on, whether its negative or positive values, is “just a” or “merely a”, you are still an idiot of you get violently upset over either their existence, or someone complaining about them.
Getting bloody upset, though not violently so, about people being that damn stupid, on the other hand…