http://www.nandotimes.com/opinions/story/390994p-3104826c.html
Opinions: GARY SLOAN: Trust in the faithless
Copyright © 2002
Scripps Howard News Service
Special Report: America Responds
(May 4, 2002 1:13 a.m. EDT) - American atheists often feel like strangers in a strange land.
According to a survey conducted last year by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, 66 percent of Americans view atheists unfavorably - double the disrelish for Muslims. Another survey, this by the Kaiser Foundation, The Washington Post and Harvard University, revealed that 69 percent of Americans would be disturbed if a family member married an atheist. In the last presidential election, 49 percent of the electorate said it wouldn't under any circumstances vote for an atheist.
Since people like to appear tolerant, even to anonymous pollsters, the figures probably understate the national antipathy toward atheists.
By pitching its message to believers, the George W. Bush administration tacitly excludes atheists from the public arena. Last November, at a White House dinner marking Ramadan, Bush told Muslim dignitaries, after having invited them to pray in the East Reception Room: "America seeks peace with people of all faiths." But not with "people of reason"?
Bush says, "The true strength of America lies in the fact that we are a faithful people by and large." He also says public leaders should "call upon the love that exists not because of government, but that exists because of a gracious and loving God."
In his public addresses, Bush never mentions unbelievers, even though atheists and agnostics make up 10 percent or more of the American electorate.
Vice President Cheney, too, voices the politics of piety: "Every great and meaningful achievement in this life," he has said, "requires the active involvement of the One who placed us here for a reason."
Attorney General John Ashcroft offers frequent edification. In February, at the annual convention of the National Religious Broadcasters, he catechized: "Civilized individuals - Christians, Jews, Muslims - all understand that the source of freedom and human dignity is the Creator. Governments may guard freedom. Governments don't grant freedom. All people are called to the defense of the Grantor of freedom, and the framework of freedom He created."
By implication, atheists, unwilling to grant reality to the Grantor, are bestial threats to civilization.
An Old Testament mentality underpins the animosity toward atheists. American freedom, prosperity, opportunity and power, the American Way, is sustained (it is thought) by divine favor. Should atheism flourish, an offended deity will withdraw from the new Chosen People his beneficent guidance. Losing its privileged status among nations, a godforsaken America will, like Sodom and Gomorrah or the Roman empire, careen to irreparable ruin.
Though embedded in the American psyche, the hostility is irrational. Most atheists are civilized. We aren't clones of Joseph Stalin. We value freedom, democracy, and security. We abhor tyranny and terrorism. Many of us even like dogs and children.
When the horrific events of Sept. 11 are considered dispassionately, atheism looks benign. The culprit was bellicose theism. Whatever our faults, we atheists will never kill ourselves or anyone else in the name of religion.
Gary Sloan is a retired English professor in Ruston, La.
"As every one knows, there are mistakes in the Bible" - The Watchtower, April 15, 1928, p. 126
Believe in yourself, not mythology.
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