Come out of the closet Americans

[Econoline]

You can have a moral code and be an Atheist [or a Theist], but it's certainly not required. (Josef Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot were all Atheists; I'm not particularly impressed with their moral codes...)[The Reverend Jim Jones and his followers; Ayatollah Khomeni; Torquemada; archbishop Arnaud Amalric (papal legate of the ironically named Innocent III: "Kill them all. For the Lord knoweth them that are His"); the legions of the First Crusade (commanded by another "Innocent" Pope); the priests of the Maya, Inca, and Aztec theocracies; the Spanish conquistadors; members of lndia's Thuggee sect; the prophet Mohammed and his many followers; Adolph Hitler; the 9-11 terrorists...and many many others were all theists and I'm not particularly impressed with their moral codes...]

I've talked about the way many Atheists proselytize, and also how many of them feel the need to demean and ridicule the faith systems of others, but BSG's post reminded me of another quality many some Atheists have...

The tendency to confer some sort of "moral superiority" on themselves and their fellow Atheists.

Nowhere near as strong as the same tendency in many some Christians and Muslims.

[Lord Jim]

I'm fine with "some" rather than many, in the case of both Atheists and Theists (I'm not in a position to count them)...

[The Reverend Jim Jones and his followers; Ayatollah Khomeni; Torquemada; archbishop Arnaud Amalric (papal legate of the ironically named Innocent III: "Kill them all. For the Lord knoweth them that are His"); the legions of the First Crusade (commanded by another "Innocent" Pope); the priests of the Maya, Inca, and Aztec theocracies; the Spanish conquistadors; members of lndia's Thuggee sect; the prophet Mohammed and his many followers; Adolph Hitler; the 9-11 terrorists...and many many others were all theists and I'm not particularly impressed with their moral codes...]

Well, I'm happy to go on the record as saying I'm not either...

You can mark me down as "opposed" to the "moral codes" of every person and group on that list...

[Econoline]

Atheists are unified by one single belief, (and it is a "belief" since obviously it is impossible to prove empirically, just as is the opposite; which is what makes Atheism a faith-based system) namely the non-existence of God.

Individual Atheists, or groups of Atheists can have moral codes they developed without religion, but Atheism at it's core really only inherently contains that one leap-of-faith belief. (And many adherents to the Atheist faith embrace it with the fanatical exuberance and absolutism one can find in other faiths. This is what leads them to feel the need to denigrate those who don't accept their faith.)

One cannot believe in the existence of God and be an Atheist. But so long as one embraces the non-existence of God, one can believe pretty much anything else and still be an Atheist; that belief is the one and only requirement.

I dunno, Jim...I generally identify myself as an atheist, but I don't really have a firm leap-of-faith belief in the non-existence of one god or of any other number of gods. Rather, I simply don't believe in the existence of any god or gods--exactly the same way I don't believe that the sun revolves around the earth, and I don't believe in the existence of phlogiston.

Put another way, I don't believe in your god (Yahweh/Elohim/Allah/the Trinity) in exactly the same way you and I both don't believe in Zeus or Odin or Ra or Ba'al or Krishna. My list of gods I don't believe in is simply just one god longer than your list. Am I still an atheist, then, or something else?

And certainly the genocides committed by the evil atheists you mention weren't an inevitable result of their atheism: I'm sure I can find many more horrendous crimes against humanity which have been committed by people who professed a belief in a god (or gods) than you can find committed by people who professed a belief in the non-existence (or a disbelief in the existence) of the same god or gods. Yet I'm not going to contend that these atrocities are an inevitable result of a belief in the Christian god, or any other god. Just as there are many many many more Christians (or Jews, or Muslims, or...) who are NOT evil than who ARE evil, there are many many many more atheists who are NOT evil than who ARE evil.

And this speaks directly to the point of why atheists should come out of the closet. If the only atheists most people can name are spectacularly evil people, anyone who deliberately or inadvertently reveals himself or herself to be a nonbeliever will ipso facto be seen by most people as evil--and identifying someone, rightly or wrongly, as an atheist will be seen as pretty much the same as identifying that someone as an evil person. The more atheists are seen as ordinary, normal, unexceptional people with the same values and lifestyles as everyone around them, the less likely it is that their fellow citizens will automatically assume they are evil without knowing anything else about them. (For instance: until there is a critical mass of atheists in the U.S. who are seen this way--i.e., unextraordinary--I doubt very much whether it would be possible for an atheist, however well qualified, to be elected to the office of POTUS--or any other high elective office.)

There's plenty of assholes on every side. Belief systems don't make people assholes. Assholes use belief systems to justify being assholes.

BINGO!

[Big RR]

I don't really have a firm leap-of-faith belief in the non-existence of one god or of any other number of gods. Rather, I simply don't believe in the existence of any god or gods--exactly the same way I don't believe that the sun revolves around the earth, and I don't believe in the existence of phlogiston.

I have a very different feeling about the existence of god (any god) and the heliocentric view of the universe or phlogiston, as I've seen scientific proof of heliocentrism and against the existence of phlogiston. Because most theories of the existence of a god(s) is that god(s0 is/are supernatural, not natural scientific proof can be dispositive as to god's existence/nonexistence. Your nonbelief list is not just one god longer than mine, mainly because I think many of the gods recognized are just different faces of the same god (and I don't understand enough about any of the other religions to rule one out entirely (or bring it in entirely). I have my concept of what god is, but like the blind men with the elephant, not everyone "sees" the same thing.

The more atheists are seen as ordinary, normal, unexceptional people with the same values and lifestyles as everyone around them, the less likely it is that their fellow citizens will automatically assume they are evil without knowing anything else about them.

I think the same is true of the theists/religious/whatever; they are probably seen by many as more mainstream than the atheists, but so long as the jerks are the only ones heard, that is the picture many will have of them.

[Lord Jim]

If the only atheists most people can name are spectacularly evil people, anyone who deliberately or inadvertently reveals himself or herself to be a nonbeliever will ipso facto be seen by most people as evil--

I wanted to respond to this a while ago but forgot about it...

I don't think the negative image of Atheists in American society is a result of the average person connecting Atheists with "evil" Atheists like Stalin, or Mao or Pol Pot...

I think it's much more to do with associating Atheism with assholes like the Atheist in the other thread who's made it a crusade to bully small business people with lawsuits over "pray or meditate discounts" in their restaurants, or the Atheists who work themselves into an indignant lather over selections from Handel's Messiah being sung at High School Christmas concerts...

Or that publicity seeking jerk from California (who's name escapes me at the moment) who was filing law suits a few years ago to get "Under God" taken out of The Pledge Of Allegiance, and "In God We Trust" removed from the currency, (he even filed a suit to try to prevent the POTUS from saying "So help me God" at the end of taking The Oath of Office...)

I think it's meddlesome, shit stirring folks like that, (and also sneering, condescending types like Hitchens and Dawkins) that form the negative impression of Atheists among most Americans more than flat out evil types...

[BoSoxGal]

Do you realize how entitled that post sounds? As if the principle the Atheists are advocating isn't a bedrock of our Constitution.

Thomas Jefferson was prouder of his advocacy of separation of church and state than of having penned the Declaration, you know. He would, I think, be alarmed at the presence and influence of religion in our government and laws today.

[Lord Jim]

He would, I think, be alarmed at the presence and influence of religion in our government and laws today.

If so that would very much surprise me, since the presence and influence of religion in our government and laws was far stronger and more pervasive in his day than it is in ours...

[BoSoxGal]

[Big RR]

Jim--do you honestly think that only atheists want "under god" removed from the pledge of allegiance or "in god we trust" off our currency (I'll defer on the prayer discount because I don't know enough about it); as someone who believes in god, I agree with them. Indeed, using god to somehow trump up patriotism (as in the POA) or to somehow bless our currency demeans god IMHO (in the way the chocolate crosses do, e.g., at easter). Why nay religious person would want to do that is beyond me.

We are not a theistic nation in any sense of the word--people are free to believe or not believe in any god as they see fit. but someone is not somehow unpatriotic because they don't want to somehow recognize god in the Pledge of Allegiance, nor is someone anti-god because they do not want it on our currency (I wouldn't ant it on casino chips or bingo markers either). and removal of those words doesn't make the pledge of allegiance any less of a patriotic oath (It did fine without "under god" for decades before someone chose to insert those words) or our money worth any less.

As for Messiah selections at a high school holiday concert (and it is a holiday, lest Christmas become even more genericized than it is), the biggest complaints I have seen come not from the atheists, but from those who subscribe to other religions. I personally see no problem with singing recognized masterworks even if they were composed fro the RC church, so long as that is not the only category of songs sung; we can include the religious as a recognition of its importance in western music right along side the secular--the courts have generally recognized this.

[dgs49]

Most people who claim to "believe" live their lives as though they did not, truth be told. For example, Christ called us to a humble life of prayer and self-sacrifice, shunning all but the most basic possessions. The statement about rich men/camel/eye of a needle must be taken in the context that the typical lower-middle-class American has more possessions and wealth than all but a very few people at the time of Christ - and most of us are totally wedded to our possessions and the accumulation of even more of them.

Christians? I don't think so.

But to say that you are overtly an atheist is the moral equivalent of saying, "I AM god." I can decide for myself what is right and wrong, based on my perception of reality and the equities of any given situation. And oddly enough, the determination of what is "right" generally turns out to be the same as what is BEST FOR ME.

Let me know when they build a museum to honor the great humanitarian and philanthropic atheists - the ones to spent their lives working with the poor, gave their fortunes to help the unfortunate, and devoted their lives to finding cures and treatments for horrible diseases. I won't hold my breath.

[Joe Guy]

But to say that you are overtly an atheist is the moral equivalent of saying, "I AM god." I can decide for myself what is right and wrong, based on my perception of reality and the equities of any given situation. And oddly enough, the determination of what is "right" generally turns out to be the same as what is BEST FOR ME.

Declaring that you are an atheist only means you don't believe in a god. Nothing else. You've created your own interpretation of what it means to be an atheist.

[MajGenl.Meade]

I don't mind if the God references come out of the slogan and the money.... it's not relevant in any real Christian sense.

As to atheists, those I've known have been (like Christians) a mixed bag of good spirits and not so good ones. It's all one to me if everyone in the world became atheist... it's getting crowded in Heaven already and we need the room. Bit of a squeeze where they're all bound though

[Sue U]

Let me know when they build a museum to honor the great humanitarian and philanthropic atheists - the ones to spent their lives working with the poor, gave their fortunes to help the unfortunate, and devoted their lives to finding cures and treatments for horrible diseases. I won't hold my breath.

Perhaps you've never heard of Andrew Carnegie, Warren Buffet, George Soros, Mark Zuckerberg, Ted Turner or Bill Gates?

It's all one to me if everyone in the world became atheist... it's getting crowded in Heaven already and we need the room. Bit of a squeeze where they're all bound though

[BoSoxGal]

I love this explanation of rejection of religion, from Einstein's Autobiographical Notes:

. . . I came—though the child of entirely irreligious (Jewish) parents—to a deep religiousness, which, however, reached an abrupt end at the age of twelve. Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true. The consequence was a positively fanatic orgy of freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies; it was a crushing impression. Mistrust of every kind of authority grew out of this experience, a skeptical attitude toward the convictions that were alive in any specific social environment—an attitude that has never again left me, even though, later on, it has been tempered by a better insight into the causal connections. It is quite clear to me that the religious paradise of youth, which was thus lost, was a first attempt to free myself from the chains of the 'merely personal,' from an existence dominated by wishes, hopes, and primitive feelings. Out yonder there was this huge world, which exists independently of us human beings and which stands before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least partially accessible to our inspection and thinking. The contemplation of this world beckoned as a liberation, and I soon noticed that many a man whom I had learned to esteem and to admire had found inner freedom and security in its pursuit. The mental grasp of this extra-personal world within the frame of our capabilities presented itself to my mind, half consciously, half unconsciously, as a supreme goal. Similarly motivated men of the present and of the past, as well as the insights they had achieved, were the friends who could not be lost. The road to this paradise was not as comfortable and alluring as the road to the religious paradise; but it has shown itself reliable, and I have never regretted having chosen it.

(Emphasis mine; I share the bolded sentiment entirely.)

[Econoline]

I was searching for one particular quote from Isaac Asimov when I found these, which state my position much more clearly than I ever could:

I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be.

I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say one was an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn't have. Somehow, it was better to say one was a humanist or an agnostic. I finally decided that I'm a creature of emotion as well as of reason. Emotionally, I am an atheist. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time.

Oh, and the quote I was looking for may not actually exist...but if it does, and if anyone can find it for me, I would appreciate it. I clearly remember once reading a quote attributed to Asimov that said something like "I'd like to think that if it turns out that there actually IS a God, He'd be big enough to forgive a simple difference of opinion." (I couldn't find it anywhere, but it does seem like something he might have said.)

[Econoline]

While I'm at it...I 've been meaning to respond to a couple of posts in this thread but have been alternately forgetting about it and putting it off.

I have a very different feeling about the existence of god (any god) and the heliocentric view of the universe or phlogiston, as I've seen scientific proof of heliocentrism and against the existence of phlogiston. Because most theories of the existence of a god(s) is that god(s0 is/are supernatural, not natural scientific proof can be dispositive as to god's existence/nonexistence. Your nonbelief list is not just one god longer than mine, mainly because I think many of the gods recognized are just different faces of the same god (and I don't understand enough about any of the other religions to rule one out entirely (or bring it in entirely). I have my concept of what god is, but like the blind men with the elephant, not everyone "sees" the same thing.

I guess I didn't make quite clear enough the distinction I was trying to make between affirmatively believing in the non-existence of something, and simply not believing in that thing, whatever it may be. (Perhaps æther [also see here] would have been a better example than geocentrism or phlogiston.) I think the two Asimov quotes in my previous post sum it up better than I ever could. As for the number of gods I don't believe in, it's pretty hard to disbelieve separately in, say, Zeus and Jupiter, so I guess you've got me there. (Unless you consider the number of non-existent gods to be essentially infinite, in which case my statement does still stand.) But if the one god you believe in contains aspects of several other gods, it's still just one god you believe in and I don't, and a large number of gods we both don't believe in.

I don't think the negative image of Atheists in American society is a result of the average person connecting Atheists with "evil" Atheists like Stalin, or Mao or Pol Pot...

I think it's much more to do with associating Atheism with assholes like the Atheist in the other thread who's made it a crusade to bully small business people with lawsuits over "pray or meditate discounts" in their restaurants, or the Atheists who work themselves into an indignant lather over selections from Handel's Messiah being sung at High School Christmas concerts...

Or that publicity seeking jerk from California (who's name escapes me at the moment) who was filing law suits a few years ago to get "Under God" taken out of The Pledge Of Allegiance, and "In God We Trust" removed from the currency, (he even filed a suit to try to prevent the POTUS from saying "So help me God" at the end of taking The Oath of Office...)

I think it's meddlesome, shit stirring folks like that, (and also sneering, condescending types like Hitchens and Dawkins) that form the negative impression of Atheists among most Americans more than flat out evil types...

If the typical American thinks atheists are merely assholes rather than evil, that still makes it important--maybe even more important--for ordinary, normal, unexceptional people who happen to be atheists (and who don't happen to be assholes--or evil) to come out of the closet.





ETA: Another totally apt message from The Tweet of God: "It's always the small minority of people who are total assholes that ruin it for the vast majority of people who are only partial assholes."

[Lord Jim]

If the typical American thinks atheists are merely assholes rather than evil, that still makes it important--maybe even more important--for ordinary, normal, unexceptional people who happen to be atheists (and who don't happen to be assholes--or evil) to come out of the closet.

It would be lovely to find Atheists (I actually know some) who are secure enough in their Atheism not to get torqued off about a "Holiday" concert being called a "Christmas" Concert,( because after-all that's what it is...)

Atheists who aren't self righteous, sanctimonious, and self-superior, (we've certainly seen a full portion of that in this thread)...

Atheists who actually show respect for the believers in the three great Monotheistic religions, and don't ridicule them with comparisons to Odin, Zeus,The Lord Of The Rings, or The Tooth Fairy...

Yes, that would be quite refreshing...

Until those things happen, I really don't see Atheists being anything other than marginalized in American society, and considered by most folks to be...

Well...

Assholes...

[Crackpot]

Well The Lord of the Rings would be apt if applied in reverse.

[Big RR]

Jim--I know many atheists (at least that's what they say they are) who are exactly like that. When my kids were young and wnet to elementary school, I was involved in the PTA for a while (I just got tired of it) and I found the people who protested things like Christmas parties, Halloween celebrations, etc. were not the atheists but those of minority religions (in my kids' schools hindu and moslem).

[BoSoxGal]

a "Holiday" concert being called a "Christmas" Concert,( because after-all that's what it is...)

Talk about 'self righteous, sanctimonious, and self-superior' - it is, in fact, a HOLIDAY concert - because there are numerous holidays celebrated by numerous religions that occur in the period of time that also encompasses Christmas.

At a Christian school with only Christian participants, feel free to call it a Christmas concert.

But in public schools attended by Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Wiccan, Atheist, etc. students - it's right to call it a holiday concert, and there is nothing self righteous, sanctimonious or self-superior (?) about asserting that reality.