For nearly two thousand years the religious have killed, banished, tortured, and jailed atheists for the crime of being atheists and daring to tell someone they were.
After reading Enough Atheist Diaries I was moved to write one.
Normally I wouldn't have bothered: I would not have thought anyone at Daily Kos would tell others here that their viewpoint should not be written.
More below the cloud of smoke rising from a burning heretic.
I see that diary is no different than other places where the religious concentrate to attack atheists for daring to say they are atheists and why, such as Yahoo Answers.
I did not HR that diary. It should stay up as an example. (I don't know how to HR anyway, or even if I can.)
I normally would not have bothered even responding. I was moved to write after this:
So after all that lead up, here is the REAL question believer's want to ask those who choose not to believe in God. The question is this: If there is no God, if we are just carbon based life forms, different than, but not amazingly different than, say, cockroaches, why have morality at all?
. . . and this:
Now some may say my commentary is outlandish, but I would have a hard time understanding why that is so. If we are not made in God's image, if we are just animals, then why do we have a "special morality"?
Yes, that comment was outlandish, and that question is wholly unoriginal (except perhaps the decorative apostrophe in the word
believers). That question on Yahoo comes from Level One questioners and gets demolished daily, even by Christians.
You already know the answer to your question.
So have you started worshipping mighty Kali then? Hundreds of millions of Hindus hold she is a very jealous goddess, and she has exactly as much evidence as your god. When you understand why you do not believe in her, you will understand why we do not believe in your god either.
If I asserted you were made in God's image but substituted "Kali" or "Allah" or even "Pazuzu," you would likely be highly incensed and argue strenuously against the notion. But there is just as much evidence for those assertions as yours. None.
You have every right to believe that. I have every right to demand evidence for your assertion.
Well, aside from the fact that many animals have morality and we are not special in this regard (dolphins, bonobos, even ants), it appears that a moral code is a survival strategy that works.
This question comes up daily on Yahoo Answers, where I hold forth occasionally in the Religion & Spirituality section.
Enough of the "Enough Atheist Diaries." It is the militant atheist meme so-well pushed by the religious.
It is the meme that says we should just shut up and take whatever the religious dish out.
It is the meme that says that "you are comfortable as long as you don't have to acknowledge we exist."
You know, like gays. They decided that shutting up and staying in the closet does not work. Like African-Americans. They decided shutting up about mistreatment and inequality before the law does not work. Like atheists are doing now on Ten Commandments monuments and school prayer and creationism in the classroom. We decided shutting up does not work.
The meme that allows for sectarian town board prayers and the Hobby Lobby decision.
It is the meme that says we are immoral, that we are wrong for even speaking at all.
Atheists are the least trusted minority in the USA, according to Pew Research, even more so than rapists and pederasts. But there are lots and lots of believers in jails.
Despite being in the bottom of percentages for criminality, for divorce, for unwed teen pregnancy, for a whole host of metrics, we are the least trusted. We are considered without morals.
A majority of voters polled say they would not vote for a well-qualified atheist simply because that person is an atheist.
Though my state does not have a requirement to believe in (some) deity, it does have an oath which requires "So help me God" afterwards.
When I was elected to my village board (city council), a flurry of activity went on over that oath, because I would not swear it and the board knew it. It is unconstitutional. In the end, I was "allowed" by someone (I don't know who, but someone higher up the government food chain than my village board) to affirm rather than swear.
No. Such a diary as this is part of the symptom: "You people should just go away and be quiet."
Insert any other word in that sentence and see why it is the product of bigotry:
Enough Black Diaries
Enough Jewish Diaries
Enough Christian Diaries
Enough Women's Diaries
Enough Gay Diaries
I have never written diary on atheism here. Until now.
I am an atheist.
Why is it the diarist linked above has so much more trouble with that statement?
I have a right to make it. I do not go round to other's homes on Saturday mornings to expound on the "Gospel of Nothing" but I do have a right to make it.
I thought Daily Kos was the group where Progressives hang out, the place where people expound on liberal values such as tolerance and free speech.
Was I wrong?