Stupid Girls

Sunday, March 13, 2011

Hypatia day

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I was just invited to an event called Red Friday and firmly declined with the following comment: I won't attend because you identify yourselves with "The Silent Majority," which hated women and LGBTI people. I am very sorry our troops are being squandered, abused, disabled and killed for oil profits, and i would applaud in an airport.... But YOU do not represent ME, freedom, liberty, equality, the Constitution or freedom of choice in religious matters. You've confused religion with nationalism, and that makes you unAmerican.

Immediately after that post, as I caught my breath, still shaking, I found THIS event! One of my favorite moments of the Egyptian revolution was seeing a line of ordinary citizens, holding hands, making a chain around the Library of Alexandria.

Well, you know I just started bawling like a little girl!

HYPATIA DAY

You are Attending · public event
Time
Tuesday at 12:00am - Wednesday at 12:00am

Location
Wherever you are.

Created By

More Info
A pagan, and probably an atheist, Hypatia of Alexandria was a woman of remarkable intellect who advanced mathematics and the science of astronomy in her time. Her death at the hands of a christian mob in March 415ce has been described as marking the end of classical antiquity.

If pagans and atheists had saints she would be foremost among them and it is for this reason that it is only right that she is celebrated. As only the mont...h of her death is known, the date for this occasion has been placed at the mid point of the Ides of March (the 15th).

According to one story she was flayed alive by monks using scallop shells, so to mark this day I am suggesting the wearing of a shell as jewellery. And as a sign of reconciliation, as she was also killed during Lent, the giving up of a luxury or even fasting for the day. Perhaps followed by a feast in her honour.

In doing so we remember the tragedy of the Christian destruction of classical learning, from which it can be argued the West did not recover for 1000 years. It is a sobering reminder to always be prepared to look again at history before assuming that things could not have gone another way.

In her own words, as attributed to her:

"All formal dogmatic religions are fallacious and must never be accepted by self-respecting persons as final."

"Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all."

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Hi, I am an agnostic, Unitarian Universalist, atheist witch.

I'm agnostic cuz I don't know (puny, human brain here; can't conceive the mind of G*d, if there is one; has no idea what happened b4 the Big Bang or how life started on Earth).

I'm Unitarian Universalist because, oh, hell, go look it up, but I appreciate the respect for all/no faiths and the inherent worth and dignity of every human.

I'm atheist because I am without belief in a deity. I'm not saying there might not be one, or millions, but I don't believe it (refer back to puny, human brain), based on theologies with which I am familiar (refer back to Unitarian Universalist here).

I am a witch because that's what we're always called, when they come to rob us of our property, rape us, torture us and kill us, just because we don't fit the stereotypes, gender roles or social norms they dictate to us (even though they could never conform to their own demands, either) AND because, in my ethnic traditions (Cherokee, African American and British Isles: all escapes from slavery, servitude, etc), women held great power before the xians came, took our languages, our traditions, our land, our bodies, our health, our sanity, our faith, our medical practices, our oral and written histories, our liberty . . . .