The Need for Militant Antitheism

Here's some interesting nuggets from an email exchange I had recently on an Atheist listserv:

I responded to this email from one Tyler:

Not all religion is malicious. Childish, illogical, and bad on the extreme, but not always evil. Besides, what can we do against the vast majority? We can spread knowledge that Atheism is an option and is a justified position (in the Richard Dawkins way). That's pretty much it. And seriously... "go to religious websites and engage the enemy". Really? I mean, as funny as it would be to tear down their set-in-stone beliefs, wouldn't we just be painting a bad image of atheism? I'd rather keep our number of enemies lower, and try to foster better relations with more people. Here is a potentially superior list-

Elect atheists to Senate and House
Elect atheist president
Have that president appoint an atheist Justice

A lot harder, I know. What we need to do is work toward acheiving all three of those. This means all of us have to actively try to make most religions comfortable (enough) with us. If we can do the first two things on that list, we've already won the war on religion. Spreading divisive (even if true) remarks won't help reach any of these goals.

Here's my response:

Most religions (especially of the Ambrahamic variety) will absolutely never be comfortable with Atheism. Period. Full Stop. The only way Atheism will ever have greater acceptance in America is to have less religious people inhabiting it.

To your "We can spread knowledge that Atheism is an option and is a justified position": Yeah, we've been doing that for a long while. In some countries it catches on (see Scandinavia). It won't here for a variety of reasons.

Hitchens, Dawkins and (especially) Sam Harris are part of the much more militant antitheism movement and embody the only way we can ratchet back the religious insanity in this country. This is by aggressively refuting their magical thinking and refusing to accept religious appeasement (i.e. oh, religion is fine as long as you're outwardly pleasant and not bombing things). Too many of us get distracted by noticeably BIG evils and forget to notice the subtle evils of moderate religious toleration that, in the aggregate, amount to a much greater mound of evil.

Jesse Helms - Good Riddance

Jesse Helms, one of the most hateful bigots to hold the office of Senator of the United States of America in the last century, died today.

If he truly held the Christian beliefs he said that he did, I suspect he'll find his new home in the afterlife to be a bit warm. If the hell he believed in really is a place where you are tormented by your sins for eternity, let's just say that some strapping male African demons will be, ahem, "having their way" with him for a very long time.

Here's a sample of the hatred, fear, racism and homophobia that fed his career:

As an aide to the 1950 Senate campaign of North Carolina Republican candidate Willis Smith, Helms reportedly helped create attack ads against Smith's opponent, including one which read: "White people, wake up before it is too late. Do you want Negroes working beside you, your wife and your daughters, in your mills and factories? Frank Graham favors mingling of the races."

Another ad featured photographs Helms himself had doctored to illustrate the allegation that Graham's wife had danced with a black man. (The News and Observer, 8/26/01; The New Republic, 6/19/95; The Observer, 5/5/96; Hard Right: The Rise of Jesse Helms, by Ernest B. Furgurson, Norton, 1986)

Ancient history? No. Helms remains unapologetic to this day. Forty years after the Smith campaign, Helms would win election against black opponent Harvey Gantt with another ad playing to racist white fear-- the so-called "white hands" ad, in which a white man's hands crumple a rejected job application while a voiceover intones, "You needed that job…but they had to give it to a minority."

In columns, commentaries and pronouncements from the Senate floor, Helms sowed hatred and called names: The University of North Carolina was "the University of Negroes and Communists." (Capital Times, 11/22/94) Black civil rights activists were "Communists and sex perverts." (Copley News Service, 8/23/01)

Over the years Helms has declared homosexuality "degenerate," and homosexuals "weak, morally sick wretches." (Newsweek, 12/5/94) In a tirade highlighting his routine opposition to AIDS research funding, Helms lashed out at the Kennedy-Hatch AIDS bill in 1988: "There is not one single case of AIDS in this country that cannot be traced in origin to sodomy." (States News Service, 5/17/88)

More recently, when a caller to CNN's Larry King Live show praised guest Jesse Helms for "everything you've done to help keep down the niggers," Helms' response was to salute the camera and say, "Well, thank you, I think." (Wilmington Star-News, 9/16/95)

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UK Poll: Religion is Evil

You gotta hand it to the Brits, they're far ahead on a great many things these days -- and now this!

A new British poll finds that the people of the UK identify religion as one of the worst social evils of our time. This made some Brits happy:

Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society, said he was “extremely pleased”.

“Britain has had it with religion,” he said.