Why Atheist Bloggers Discuss God

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Posting at God is for Suckers!, Stardust had a bit of fun with a comment from a Christian troll (see here). The comment was as follows:

If there is no God and you really don’t care, why do you insist on maintaining a blog site that states over and over that there is no God and you really don’t care. Who are you trying to convince?

It turns out that this is a very common question from Christian visitors to atheist blogs. It is one that I have been asked and have previously answered here. However, I think that Stardust's brief response is worth highlighting.

To answer this question, Stardust posted an interesting video clip. However, she first said,

We are trying to convince YOU that you need to give up the sky daddy beliefs or keep your religion to yourself and out of our secular government, our public schools and institutions, and our bedrooms….honestly. (And also stop trespassing on our private property with your bible-thumping — our homes are our ” PRIVATE sanctuaries” away from the world.)

Knowing Stardust, this was intended as a flippant off-the-cuff sort of remark, but I think it conveys considerable wisdom. Many atheists, myself included, do feel this way. If we were not convinced that religion was harmful and that humanity would be better off without it, we would probably have little to say on the subject.

Proud irrationality troubles us because we've seen the damage it does and continues to do. We see widespread religiosity, with its glorification of faith over reason, as a detriment to everything from medicine to effective environmental policy. We want the toxic influence of religion out of government and government-funded institutions. We want to be able to raise our children free from religious indoctrination. While we support the right of Americans to freely practice their religion, we do not believe that this includes the proselytizing. Rather, such practice should take place in churches and private homes. You see, we believe that religious people should have the right to be religious, but they should not have the right to impose their religion on others.

reposted from: atheistrevolution
my: highlights / emphasis / key points / comments