Let us bow our heads in thanks for atheists
Filed Under (Deep Thoughts, Funny Stuff) by Ian on 24-02-2008
Tagged Under : agnostics, atheism, athiest, people, religion, us
Hahaha, this was pretty funny, even though it probably wasn’t intended to be.
Let us bow our heads in thanks for atheists
The re-awakening of atheism in America is going to make for some very interesting times. Leaders of the Christian Right have spent years trying to cast themselves as the voiceless victims in a secular society, but the scapegoating is over. (Want to talk marginalized? How many atheists have there ever been in Congress or the White House?)
Nonbelievers know a lot about Christianity and Judaism, most having been raised in religious families. Believers, however, are somewhat less clued-in about atheists. Here are a few simple truths about who they are, and aren’t.
Atheists are well-behaved. Atheists seem to play well with others overall. They’re not in the news for getting caught doing things they tell others not to do. Most co-exist peacefully with believing family and friends. They pay taxes.
Atheists don’t start wars on behalf of atheism. They do join the military, however, and contrary to the cliché, they are found in foxholes. In fact, there is a lawsuit now against Defense Secretary Robert Gates and a major who harassed a group of “foxhole atheists” who simply wished to exercise their freedom of/from religion while serving their country in the Middle East.
Atheists have a thing for the American Constitution, particularly the First Amendment that separates church and state. They are secularists who support a government free from influence by any religion. They’re not anti-religious but nonreligious.
So when people like Mike Huckabee announce they want to “take this nation back for Christ” and make the Constitution fit the word of God, atheists worry, and feel that everyone else would be wise to worry along with them.
Atheists don’t take up much space. In fact, they only comprise 0.4 percent of the U.S. population, according to the 2001 American Religious Identification Survey, conducted through the Graduate Center at CUNY. (Agnostics would add 0.5 percent, the nonreligious 14.1 percent more.)
A total of 900,000 people isn’t even enough to fill 10 football stadiums, but evangelical leaders insist the godless are behind the decline of a whole nation. Uh, okay.
Atheists make good neighbors. Chances are, if you lived next door to an atheist, you might never know it. Atheists aren’t known for going door-to-door or shore-to-shore to un-convert people. They will help you even though there’s no heavenly reward in it for them.
Atheists have lower crime rates. They are underrepresented in prisons. They are overrepresented in institutions of higher education.
I don’t know that there is so much of a re-awakening of atheism, so much as I think most of us are fed up with being the scapegoat for others’ misguided agendas. I, for one, now challenge people who think it is just fine to voice their religious opinions knowing that most are afraid to confront them. I hope that more free-thinking people will begin to question faith-based “isms” on a more regular basis.
I’m not out to TKO religion (believers are doing that on their own), I just don’t want non-rational based thinking forced upon me or anyone else.
I always lives in interestin’ times.
As sad as it is, we need only open a few history books to know that ours is a lost cause, though I’m not rushing out to start believing in magical sky-daddies. Nearly every society throughout history has been hugely influenced by a religion of some sort, and as long as the Earth presents things we don’t have explanations for, people who can’t be bothered to think for themselves will credit these things to magical beings, and wish violence against any who disagree.
Those same people are astounded by david Copperfield and think what he does is actually magic.
When I watch Copperfield, all I’m thinking is “man, I want to figure out how he did that!”