The world's newest religion

If the recent actions of the Freedom From Religion Foundation are any indication, woke is where secularists go to impose their faith on others

First things first. To celebrate the arrival of the brave new year, 2025, you have the opportunity to upgrade from a free to a paid subscription, which unlocks the entire site, at a discounted rate. Just click here for the link. One of the things that a paid subscription does is enable you to comment. If you think that I’m going to spend time considering the comments of every yahoo in the world with an internet connection and an opinion, you’ve got another thing coming. But if you pay, well hell, I’m your huckleberry. Show me the money!

The photo above was taken about 40 years ago. A few weeks later, I took a ground fall from this exact spot while free soloing the route. It was a long way to the ground, enough that I had time to think, interrupted by one bounce from a ledge and then a hole through the tree canopy. After hitting the ground, I remember jumping up and shouting, "Can't kill me!" before passing out. When I came to, it was nearly dark, and I limped a long way (several miles) back to my truck. I then drove 90 minutes to get back home. I was laid up for about a month.

Fifteen years ago, I experienced another similar catastrophe. I’d signed up for the Vegas to Reno offroad race in the solo motorcycle category. Practice went awry.

A few weeks before the race, I was riding in the Snake River desert, getting ready for the race. It was a bit after sunset, and I was hauling ass through about a foot of moon dust that was covering the two-track I was following. Then things went blank.

I remember awareness returning very slowly, and with the awareness came pain, dull at first, but then in waves. I don’t know how long this period lasted, but by the time I became aware enough to check my watch, it was 3 am. My brain was too scrambled to make any sense of my circumstances. But it went something like this: I was alone in the middle of a desert in the wee hours of the morning. I was injured, fifty miles from anywhere and out of my mind. Help was not on the way.

As I started to come around, it occurred to me that I should probably figure out how I got to where I was and where I was going. The pain as I sat up was intense. I had to roll over onto my knees to push myself off the ground. As I stood up, I could see by the faint light of a quarter moon a motorcycle laying on it’s side a few yards away. I wondered if it was somehow connected to me. That tells you all that you need to know about my state of mind.

It took some time for me to regain enough wherewithal to get on the motorcycle, see if it would start, then try to ride it somewhere. I got the bike off the ground with waves of pain and, with some difficulty, got it started. I could see the glow of some lights far off in the distance, and that seemed as good a place to go as any. I still had no idea where I was or where I was going. A green light was blinking from somewhere, which was extremely annoying.

The upshot was a 70-mile ride out of the desert, which I made with five broken ribs, a separated shoulder, a collapsed lung, and a concussion. After about an hour of riding, I figured out that the flashing green light was coming from the personal locater beacon, a GPS tracking device, on the chest strap of my backpack. I could just pull over and hit the big, red “come get me” button if I wanted and wait for the cavalry. But that went against my nature.

It took nearly three hours, but I rolled into Arco, Idaho, at about 5 am. The first person that I encountered looked at me horrified. I was pretty messed up. The cause of all this was later found to be a wire to my headlight that came unplugged from the wiring harness.

I don’t recommend that you try this at home. I was a week in the hospital after that misadventure. And I got scolded by everyone for not hitting the come-get-me button. But the way I see it, if you get yourself into something, it’s up to you to get yourself out if you can. That’s just my way. Self-sufficiency is the code by which I’ve lived my life. If nothing else ever breaks my way, but I keep that part of me intact until the end, I’ll check out in peace.

Those of you who’ve been here awhile know my convictions concerning religion, faith, and spirituality. For those of you who do not, I was probably the world’s youngest athiest. I’ve never believed in a higher power, at least not in the same way that religious people do. I think that organized religions have, on balance, done more harm than good, and history is replete with examples. I do, however, acknowledge that religion does benefit some individuals. And whether it does or not, I begrudge no one the comfort of faith or spirituality. Whatever gets you through the day.

I have no objection to faith, spirituality, or religion as long as you leave me out of it. I neither need nor want any of it. You show me a church that doesn’t fleece the flock for money, and I’ll show you someone who’s worth at least listening to. Until then, you may take evangalism and stick it where the sun doesn’t shine. Sending missionaries here carries significant risks. I’m much more likely to convert them to my way of thinking than they are me to theirs.

I’m currently fostering two young children in my home along with my own two younger kids. But I’ve looked after kids other than my own my whole life. If a child comes into my home, there’ll be some discipline, some chores, some manners, some singing and dancing, and lots of fun. I’ll put a roof over their heads and the nicest clothes on their backs that I can afford. I’ll help them with school and love them up as much as I can. They are, if nothing else, safe here.

A while back, I took one of the kids I was looking after into an appointment with a counselor. I’m not a big fan of counseling, but I’m willing to give anything the benefit of doubt when it comes to helping a troubled child. At one point during this session, the counselor took a book of Mormon off his bookshelf and asked the kid if they were familiar with it. My head nearly exploded with enough force to place it in a fully geosynchronous Earth orbit.

If Mormon Jesus is the answer to this child’s problems, where was he all the times this kid suffered horrific abuse at the hands of his parents? Where was Jesus when this child was exposed to an entire cocktail of recreational drugs in utero? In fact, where was Jesus at that very moment? I didn’t see him anywhere. The three people in that room were the child, myself, and a dumbshit counselor. Unless Jesus was hiding behind the bookshelf, he was MIA.

I can go on, but you get the point. Everyone is free to make their own choices, but as far as I’m concerned, in my life, the buck stops with me. If there’s business to take care of, I’d better get it done. It’s more effective to get after chores yourself than to pray for divine intervention.

Being a conservative atheist is one of the loneliest philosophies in the world. Most athiests are liberal; most conservatives, at least in this country, are Christians. I’m a square peg in a round hole or a round peg in a square hole. Either way, I’m on my own.

As of a few days ago, even more so, as one of the few organizations that, on paper anyway, had the backs of people like me, betrayed the all of us.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) recently decided to censor a board member, Jerry Coyne, a professor emeritus of ecology at the University of Chicago, over a column he wrote for their publication, Freethought Today. Coyne’s column, entitled “Biology is not bigotry," was a critique of an earlier column by Kat Grant, a fellow at the FFRF, entitled “What is a Woman,” which concluded, “A woman is whoever she says she is.” The triumph of pseudoscience over science followed protests from transgender activists and led to the resignation of Coyne, biologist Richard Dawkins, and Harvard Professor Steven Pinker from the FFRF.

Six months ago, I wrote here that Wokeism is the world’s newest religion. One needs to look no further than the actions of the FFRF for all the evidence needed in support of this thesis.

Dr. Coyne and I share something in common besides our views of spirituality. We’ve both had pieces published in Freethought Today, and both were accompanied by controversy. My piece, 30,000 Days, may be read here. Those of you who are longtime readers will remember this column here from September 2023. An editor at Freethought Today (a very nice guy whom I’m sure is also uncomfortable with censoring a legitimate debate) reached out to me a few weeks later about publishing 30,000 Days in FT.

There was one condition: He wanted permission to omit the middle portion of the column, the section where I addressed Lee Atwater's deathbed mea culpa, because he was worried that anything nice said about a conservative Republican would obscure the column’s larger message about the wonder of existence for his audience.

I told him that was precisely why his audience needed to read the original column in its entirety. If you claim to be a free thinker but are afraid of opposing views, you need to study up on what freedom of thought is actually about.

That’s why this recent move by FFRF is unsurprising, at least to me. Most humans, at least in our time, are irredeemably tribal. Religion scratches a very primal tribal itch. If you take away the religion, the itch remains. The folks at FFRF decided to substitute one set of religious beliefs—that ideas we don’t like should not be above challenge or objection—with another—that ideas we do like are above challenge or objection.

That's the fundamental essence of religious faith. I’m assuming that auto-da-fé is just around the corner. How about we pass around a hat to take a collection so that we can get FFRF some zazzy name badges for their missionaries?

Associated Press and Idaho Press Club-winning columnist Martin Hackworth of Pocatello is a physicist, writer, and retired Idaho State University faculty member who now spends his time with family, riding bicycles and motorcycles, and arranging and playing music. Follow him on Twitter @MartinHackworth, on Facebook at facebook.com/martin.hackworth, and on Substack at martinhackworthsubstack.com