How do we talk about religion or the religious, and how do we criticize or express concerns about the beliefs and actions of a religion or certain members without being regarded as "anti-religious?" I am afraid that explaining we are nonbelievers and not anti-religious is a distinction lost on a majority of the people who adhere to a theistic religion. This majority, I would speculate, reaches nearly 100% among fundamentalists. So, how do we couch written and spoken observations and criticisms?

In the time I have been a member of Humanists of Utah, a number of our members have admonished us not to become anti-religious and to instead concentrate on our humanist ideals. For the most part, I think this is a good idea. We do need to get the word out as best we can, what humanism is all about.

But to be honest, being nice to the zealots of the world is getting harder and harder for me. In the last few years, we have seen an increase in challenges to many aspects of our secular society. Challenges to choice (i.e. abortion rights) and challenges to separation of church and state (where fundamentalists want to stick the Ten Commandments all over public property, and they push to get evolution out of schools, or creationism and intelligent design taught alongside evolution). The list goes on and on.

A lot of this stuff is getting my hackles up. Furthermore, some of the mean-spirited religious who are intolerant and hurtful or who present their theistic beliefs as science while denigrating real science deserve little respect.

During the last two LDS General Conferences, I went down to observe what was happening. It was quite a scene, with loud mouthed street preachers waving temple garments around and yelling at conference goers, degrading their beliefs and promising them they were hell bound if they didn't change. There was a contingent of the gay and lesbian community there, decked out in black and white with a coffin and a number of signs declaring certain statistics about Mormon suicide rates. There was also the group of evangelical Christians there to counter the nastiness of the street preachers by greeting the LDS members with handshakes, telling them to have a nice day.

While watching the spectacle, I engaged one of the Evangelicals in conversation. I told him that it is a tough situation, that while the right to free speech is of great importance, people should be allowed to worship without being harassed. I told him that I was agnostic and not there to defend LDS theology. He agreed that people shouldn't be harassed, and said he thought Mormon beliefs were wrong but that it was a matter of "methodology" and that the street preachers' methods weren't likely to convert many Mormons.

We then had a civil discussion about several philosophical and various religious topics. This discussion was interrupted when one of the bellicose preachers started yelling right in my face from four feet away. Actually he was yelling through me at three young LDS boys who were laughing at him. His predictions of hellfire or whatever it was isn't what irritated me, it was having a loudmouth yelling in my face. So I told him, "If Christ were here, he would rather be re-crucified than stand next to you assholes."

I don't plan to be anti-religious by challenging people's basic theology, but if they yell at me or call me names or accuse me of being a "God hater" or in league with the devil, I will respond. Also, when they try to tell me (or the rest of the world) that all of geology is wrong and that "the flood" laid down the entire stratigraphic column with features like the Grand Canyon being carved in a few days, I plan to challenge these absurdities. If some see this as anti-religious, then so be it.

--Bob Lane