Essay:Unreligious Tolerance: The Plight of Atheism

From my blog

Here be a big one, look out...

If you've read my "About The Blogger" page lately, you'll notice something. It says, when I mention my religious beliefs, "agnostic atheist." Well, I have joined what might be America's most distrusted minority. In a poll conducted by the University of Minnesota, one polling question asked was "I would disapprove if my child wanted to marry a member of this group." 48% of people said "Atheists," while 34% said "Muslims," and only 7% said "Conservative Christians."

The Boyscouts of America doesn't allow Atheists or Agnostics, and telling your parents that you're Atheist can be similar to if you told your parents you were gay. What I mean is, there would be the whole problem of an adverse reaction, resulting in being completely disowned by one's parents in some cases.

A common arguement used by Conservative Christians is the fact that Atheists only make up 4% of the US population, and thus their views don't matter. The American population is busting three-hundred million, and four percent of three-hundred million is around twelve million, and twelve million people is a lot of people. The Human population of Earth is around six billion, seven-hundred-seven million, and approximately fourteen to fifteen percent of those people are Atheist. Fifteen percent of six billion whatever is around maybe one billion. Do Atheists sound like a tiny group now?

According to this map, percentages of Atheism are much higher in Europe. Only around ten percent of people in the Czech Republic believe in God, while only a bit more in Sweden believe. If the USA was on that map, it would be dark dark blue. I'm not saying that Americans should be Atheists, and I respect the beliefs of people who follow a religion. I respect many religions, unlike a lot of Atheists, who take a picture of the World Trade Center, shining in the morning sun, with the words "imagine a world without religion" over it.

Many Atheists, of course, support seperation of church and state, and also support humanism and tolerance. In fact, many are like me - they respect religion, specifically the mainstream forms of religion, not the radical bunches of oats.

I think the main reason why Atheists are discriminated against, is because many Americans grew up during the Cold War era, and many have gotten caught up in the evil thing known as McCarthyism. Why does this pertain to Atheism? Many Communist leaders such as Stalin, Lenin, Pol Pot, and so on were Atheist. Joseph McCarthy once actually said, "Today we are engaged in a final, all-out battle between Communistic Atheism and Christianity."

Many Conservatives make the odd claim that Atheism is what allowed Stalin to murder a whole ton of people, when in fact, Stalin was batcrap insane, and he was possibly Agnostic. He actually went to a Seminary school when he was younger. He also looked like Borat, not that it matters that much at all.

Ohh yeaaaah I'm doing good with this blog, it's almost a full page in OpenOffice. No more half-page blogs for me. Anyways, what allowed Stalin and Pol Pot to murder innocent people, is the egotism they developed after they became leaders (and the fact that Stalin was a bit nutty to begin with). Seriously, if you give someone practically dictatorial powers, they might go a bit crazy, and get the mentality of a kid smashing ants: there's nothing the ants can do to stop me.

Also, here's another funny arguement: Hitler was Atheist. He was not Atheist, he was Christian. Many people who reside on the far-right are Christian, and today we hear terms like "white Christian babies" used by Neo-Nazis. Nazism actually merged together with the Church in some ways. Hitler wasn't a Satanist either, so put your hand down Mr. Conservative Christian, I'll take questions later.

Fifty-two percent of Americans say they wouldn't vote for an Atheist running for president, and there has only been one openly Atheist member of Congress. You may think that we are just as intolerant as Pat Robertson or Ann Coulter, you may think we don't bathe or we burn Bibles, and you might think that we want to end religion, but keep in mind that you should not stereotype. If I said something like "all Black people eat fried chicken," I'd get a huge negative response, and possibly some bullet holes in my window, but if I or someone else says "all Atheists hate religion and don't bathe," people would agree.

We're becoming tolerant of race and gender, but becoming tolerant of Religion at a much slower pace. By the way, notice how I, despite being Atheist, capitalize words like "God" and "Bible"? It's because I'm tolerant. I hope I smashed your pre-programmed stereotypes into little tiny bits.