One of the things that gets my blood boiling when religious people start crowing about how evil and despicable we atheists are is the demonstrably false notion that people without religion can’t possibly lead upstanding “moral” lives because we don’t live with the constant fear of eternal damnation from a capricious and short-tempered “all-loving God” if we don’t behave. And yet, study after study show a very different picture: the 10-15% of the population who self-identify as atheists are among the most educated, socially responsible, and politically engaged segment of the American population.
I ran across this video on an atheism website the other day. It is a bit self-important to be sure, but it hammers home some seriously relevant points about the difference between rhetoric and reality when it comes to the “morality” and positive effects of the presence of non-believers in this country:
Dear Harvey, Pete, Barry, Kevin, and every other weathermonkey on Boston-area TV: Enough is enough. The fucking blizzard was THIRTY-TWO YEARS AGO. It’s time to stop trotting out the same blurry videotape of cars stuck on Rt. 128 that is older than some of the people who are actually on your broadcast, just so we [...]
It’s going to be a long two months waiting for the iPad to actually ship so that all the tech bloggers and their hangers-on will stop writing so much speculative bullshit about iT and turn their attention iNstead to some other thing that’s going to Change Life As We Know iT. Since you cannot click [...]
Please, please, PUH-LEEZE stop talking about “What do we call the last decade?” Nobody could come up with an acceptable choice ten years ago, and nobody’s going to come up with one now. “Aughties” and “Naughties” are contrived and stupid, and so is the very idea that anything wraps up all nice and neatly into [...]
That pisses me off no end as well, and I’m religious (well, sort of; it’s a long story). Whatever religion stamp you put on someone tells you nothing about their sense of decency or their behavior. I’ll refrain from a long rant, though, cos it’s not like I’d be telling you anything you don’t know.
Granted, I have my own religious prejudices that I have to work on. Not all fundamentalist/charismatic/etc. Christians are evil. [More blither deleted. Stopping now.]
Douglas Adams was an atheist. Need I say more?
All the best people are, dear.