Atheist activism in and of itself is important if you believe that the religious right has more pull in this country than they should. People can try to get prayer back in schools all they want, as long as it doesn't happen I don't care about that. However I do care about politicians being anti-gay marriage and anti-abortion because of religious belief. The US is at a crossroads. Every other industrial nation in the 21st century has become more secular, whereas we have become more theocratic in a sense. Somewhere in the last century we allowed the fringe far right uber-christian conservatives to seep into government. It isn't a government that promises the freedom to believe whatever you want, we have a government that either blatantly or secretly endorses only the christians, and our laws, our policies are dictated from that.
So taking the offensive from an atheist point of view provides an objective reasoning to ensure that our country doesn't become completely theocratic. Atheists march and protests as atheists because it isn't one sect of believers or another pressing for their own agenda, it is nonbelievers pressing for the end of bias. Barack Obama possibly maybe being a muslim should not be an issue at all, whether it's true or not, but because this is a christian society this unfounded rumor has taken root and damages every move he makes. The very fact that they care about what church a politician attends attests to the severity of religious ideology in politics. This nation is teetering on the edge of unadulterated theocracy, and if the skeptics can't reel us back in, then we will become the southern Baptist equivalent of Iran. Atheism provides an objective agenda, not based around one set of beliefs or another. So using that as a platform makes sense in that we are trying to move away from the ideological reasons for policies, and towards the moral and social reasons for policies.
So taking the offensive from an atheist point of view provides an objective reasoning to ensure that our country doesn't become completely theocratic. Atheists march and protests as atheists because it isn't one sect of believers or another pressing for their own agenda, it is nonbelievers pressing for the end of bias. Barack Obama possibly maybe being a muslim should not be an issue at all, whether it's true or not, but because this is a christian society this unfounded rumor has taken root and damages every move he makes. The very fact that they care about what church a politician attends attests to the severity of religious ideology in politics. This nation is teetering on the edge of unadulterated theocracy, and if the skeptics can't reel us back in, then we will become the southern Baptist equivalent of Iran. Atheism provides an objective agenda, not based around one set of beliefs or another. So using that as a platform makes sense in that we are trying to move away from the ideological reasons for policies, and towards the moral and social reasons for policies.
"In our youth, we lacked the maturity, the decency to create gods better than ourselves so that we might have something to aspire to. Instead we are left with a host of deities who were violent, narcissistic, vengeful bullies who reflected our own values. Our gods could have been anything we could imagine, and all we were capable of manifesting were gods who shared the worst of our natures."-Me
"Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all of which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, even if religion vanished; but religious superstition dismounts all these and erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of men." – Francis Bacon
"Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all of which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, even if religion vanished; but religious superstition dismounts all these and erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of men." – Francis Bacon
