Earlier
I pointed out the irony that religious people in America, seeing the rest of America
rejecting their beliefs on abortion, gay marriage, contraception and other
social issues, are now insisting they are being persecuted. Despite the fact
that they are hard at work persecuting their saner neighbors, using school regulations
to torment non-conformist children, ramming their views down everyone else’s
throats in the form of legislation, making it impossible for nonbelievers or
even moderate Republicans to run for office, selling fear and hate, declaring
war on the Boy Scouts for not hating enough, screaming hate at military
funerals, going totally bonkers when people say “happy holidays” instead of
“merry Christmas”, losing their minds when Obama figures out a work-around to
allow women to get contraception. As though their religious liberty includes
the “liberty” to deprive everyone else of their liberty. And then screaming
“Persecution!” when they aren’t allowed to persecute others.
But
there is another, even more appalling sign, to remind us of who is really
persecuting whom.
Throughout
history, an easy way of figuring out who is being persecuted, is looking for
signs of “mental reservation”, or “mental equivocation”. That means that in a
time of persecution, a person says out loud that they agree with the prevailing
tyrant, while making a “mental reservation” to the effect that “no, I don’t
really believe that, I’m just saving my neck”. Lying to man but saying the
truth silently to God. Victims of persecution have been using this dodge since
Roman times. Francis of Assisi used it, not to save himself, but to save
another man who was about to be killed. By the 16th century there
was so much religious persecution, that mental equivocation became epidemic,
and widely discussed. .Shakespeare even made a joke about it – read the
porter’s speech in the Scottish play. The philosopher Kant wrote about it.
Throughout
history, the people being persecuted hid their beliefs. The Roman Christians
hid in catacombs to pray. Jews in Nazi Germany professed Christianity or else
hid in people’s cellars. Today, gays and lesbians still hide in their closets.
And here in the United States,
atheists are still very much in the closet, accustomed to hiding during the
thirty-year reign of terror by the U.S. evangelical movement.
Look at the polls, for example. When people talk to pollsters, they often lie. It has already been established that they lie about how often they vote, go to museums, go to symphonies and operas, give to charity, have sex, and use drugs. Often pollsters are reporting the self-image of American people, rather than how they really live.
Today in America, only about 21-26 percent of Americans actually go to church each Sunday, essentially unchanged from when the nation was born two centuries ago. Lower than you thought, isn’t it?
Look at the polls, for example. When people talk to pollsters, they often lie. It has already been established that they lie about how often they vote, go to museums, go to symphonies and operas, give to charity, have sex, and use drugs. Often pollsters are reporting the self-image of American people, rather than how they really live.
Today in America, only about 21-26 percent of Americans actually go to church each Sunday, essentially unchanged from when the nation was born two centuries ago. Lower than you thought, isn’t it?
But
there is another 20 percent of Americans who claim to go to church, but really
don’t. That’s 60 million people, lying about their religion. And that doesn’t
include the people who don’t believe, but go to church anyway. And the people who say they’re Catholic, but are really
saying “my parents were Catholic and I got married there, but I haven’t been to
Church since Monte Carlo night.” They know that if they admit they don’t
believe, their neighbors are going to, here’s that word again, persecute them.
Ostracize them. Beat up their kids at school. If you think I’m kidding, trying
going down to Alabama and starting an atheist club for the local high school
kids.
If
religious people are so persecuted, why are non-religious people so terrified
of the church people that they lie about their beliefs? Sixty million people,
living in fear and embarrassment, right in the land of the “free”.
Likewise we can assume that we have many, many political leaders who don’t believe in God. But how many politicians are willing to say so publicly? One guy, Congressman Pete Stark, broke the barrier. And he didn’t start his career that way – he didn’t reveal his “preference” until he was 75 years old and had already served 24 years in Congress, in a seat that is so safely Democratic that he beats his opponents by about 3 to 1. So that isn’t exactly high on the Nathan Hale Scale of Bravery. Bu he’s ahead of everybody else. Kirsten Sinema finally joined him in the House.
In our political world, being an atheist is more horrible than being gay (Barney Franks is out of the closet), or soliciting in a public toilet (Larry Craig), or patronizing prostitutes (Vitter), or killing someone in a car crash (Kennedy, or even Laura Bush), or using illegal drugs (our last three presidents), or molesting children (Foley), or not paying your taxes on time (seemingly half of Obama’s cabinet), or being a proven criminal (dozens of examples from Marion Barry to Ted Stevens).
Just to put it in perspective, Barney Frank came out as gay in 1987. But he didn’t come out as an atheist until 26 years later, in 2013 – after he left office.
Atheists and gays are the two groups that can experience hate and intolerance in any country on earth.
Not long ago, polls said that almost half of Americans thought
that atheists didn’t share their vision for America and that they didn’t want
their kids to marry an atheist; approvals for atheists were below the approvals
for Muslims, blacks and gays, and atheism was equated with crime and
immorality. Atheism has been used to deny child custody. Recent polling says that more than half of America would
never vote for an atheist presidential candidate; the number of people who are
willing to vote for an atheist actually dropped from 49 percent to 37 percent.
Attacking atheists is the one form of bigotry that apparently is still okay.
Name another minority of many millions of people, who have almost no voice in government. Blacks, Jews, Mexicans...? Nope. The closest example is our three million Native Americans, but even they get land, casinos, an entire bureau of the Interior Department to take care of them, and the occasional politician.
And it doesn’t seem to bother anybody that this one minority, the atheists, has no voice.
Even more striking, the pattern of silent non-believers is not spread evenly across the country. A huge proportion of this is happening in the red states: the south and the Great Plains. And it’s not just nonbelievers, either: all across the south, there are atheists and agnostics, but also members of other faiths, and gays and lesbians, in hiding.
Name another minority of many millions of people, who have almost no voice in government. Blacks, Jews, Mexicans...? Nope. The closest example is our three million Native Americans, but even they get land, casinos, an entire bureau of the Interior Department to take care of them, and the occasional politician.
And it doesn’t seem to bother anybody that this one minority, the atheists, has no voice.
Even more striking, the pattern of silent non-believers is not spread evenly across the country. A huge proportion of this is happening in the red states: the south and the Great Plains. And it’s not just nonbelievers, either: all across the south, there are atheists and agnostics, but also members of other faiths, and gays and lesbians, in hiding.
Also,
moderate Republicans who don’t really believe the Fox News nonsense about Obama
and gays and abortion: isn’t it astounding that moderate Republicans in the
south, who were all over the place in the 1980s, seem to be totally extinct in
just 30 years? They’re not extinct: they’re hiding until the purges and pogroms
stop.
Also
in the closet down there, are the people who might want their daughters to
receive sex education and HPV shots to prevent cancer, or want to buy
contraception or Fifty Shades Of Grey without getting nasty stares at the
store, or have their kids taught evolution without getting the
Jesus-on-a-dinosaur lecture too. Or reopen the Planned Parenthood clinic so
they can get their mom a mammogram again. You know, liberals.
But
what if all these closet moderates and liberals, all across the south, all came
out of the closet at once?
What
if they all proclaimed their true beliefs, and began organizing? What if they
start registering people to vote: women and gays and blacks and Hispanics who
want equality and fair treatment?
What
if they decide to take over the south?
And
what if moderate Republicans joined them? What if people like Dick Lugar and
Susan Collins and even John Boehner finally said “screw it, I can’t keep
repeating this Fox-Limbaugh hogwash for the cameras anymore, I’m abandoning the
conservative extremists! Who’s with me?” What if the non-crazy half of the GOP
got fed up and bailed out like Arlen Specter did?
All
we need to do is ask them. Go down south, like Red Cross volunteers in a
hurricane, hold out a metaphorical blanket and a cup of coffee to the
moderates, the nonconformists, the people who are fed up with the hijacking of
our country by the extremists, and say “Try leaving the extremists. Nobody is
going to hurt you. Because the extremists are bullies, and all bullies are
cowards. Like Harry Truman said, the Klan is a brave bunch, but they are only
brave when they’re IN a bunch. Once they see that we have a bunch of our own,
and that it’s going to be a fair fight, they will bluster and make some noise,
but then they will run away. And then you don’t need to be afraid anymore. And
we can begin cleaning up the mess they made.”
America’s
conservative revolution has been a thirty-year Hurricane Of Stupid, but it’s
blowing out to sea, and now it’s time to round up the survivors, and make the
nation as though the hurricane had never happened.
For 30 years, our political
discourse has been dominated by the three pillars of Republican
arch-conservatism, and two of them have a strong under-current of evangelical
stupidity: the ethos of the god-guns-gays culture warrior, and the messianic,
God-told-Bush-to-invade-Iraq Crusader lunacy of the neocons. It is only because
of the donations to the Republican party from religious loons, and their
obnoxious insistence on ramming their views down our throats, that we have
spend so much time arguing about their cherished issues.
Look at how much time we have wasted arguing about abortion, school vouchers, school prayer, intelligent design, putting the Commandments in courtrooms, stem cell research, euthanasia, cloning, civil unions, HPV shots, contraception, sex education, faith-based initiatives, banning books, assisted suicide....As though we don’t have more serious issues to discuss, like two wars, a dying industrial base, and a Depression. Not only do the evangelicals own the Republican agenda, even Democrats feel the need to kowtow to them.
For thirty years, the voices of religion – fear, hate, illusion, intolerance and wilful ignorance – have dominated our political life. As for the voices of atheism – logic, reason and tolerance – not only are they being ignored, but no one even acknowledges their existence. If you asked one of our political leaders what they think of atheists and their views, you would get a blank stare, and some serious stammering and backpedalling.
Just imagine, if the evangelicals had not been so powerful, and we had spent the last 30 years thoroughly debating, not the abortion issue, but the health care issue, for example, or the issue of defense spending. Just think how much more informed our electorate would be right now on the issues that really matter. If the atheists, gays and the rest were being heard.
Atheists potentially have more to offer America than any group. Philosophy and politics cannot work without clear thought, logic, and a resistance to fallacy, and atheists play that game better than anyone out there. And the tide is turning: virtually everything religious people believe – from the pseudoscience of Genesis, to the absurdity of heaven and hell and the resurrection and other miracles, to the rigid and intolerant moral views on everything from gays to genocide to slavery – is slowly being exposed as fallacy.
So when do the grownups get their turn? And when can we have an actual atheist political leader who isn’t 77 years old?
The thing is, we already have atheists among our political leaders. We just need them to come out, the way Stark did.
Come out and lead! If the evangelicals can launch a thirty-year revolution of suicidal folly, we can do the same, and save the country!
Religion has had a 3000-year head start, and has had nothing useful to say for centuries, whereas atheism as a movement has barely begun. What happens when we can finally use the truth to counteract the centuries of religious lies? Already the third largest U.S. religious group, behind Catholic and Baptist, is “none”. Twice as many Americans have great confidence in science, as in religion. Could reason kill religion for good in 100 years?
Look at how much time we have wasted arguing about abortion, school vouchers, school prayer, intelligent design, putting the Commandments in courtrooms, stem cell research, euthanasia, cloning, civil unions, HPV shots, contraception, sex education, faith-based initiatives, banning books, assisted suicide....As though we don’t have more serious issues to discuss, like two wars, a dying industrial base, and a Depression. Not only do the evangelicals own the Republican agenda, even Democrats feel the need to kowtow to them.
For thirty years, the voices of religion – fear, hate, illusion, intolerance and wilful ignorance – have dominated our political life. As for the voices of atheism – logic, reason and tolerance – not only are they being ignored, but no one even acknowledges their existence. If you asked one of our political leaders what they think of atheists and their views, you would get a blank stare, and some serious stammering and backpedalling.
Just imagine, if the evangelicals had not been so powerful, and we had spent the last 30 years thoroughly debating, not the abortion issue, but the health care issue, for example, or the issue of defense spending. Just think how much more informed our electorate would be right now on the issues that really matter. If the atheists, gays and the rest were being heard.
Atheists potentially have more to offer America than any group. Philosophy and politics cannot work without clear thought, logic, and a resistance to fallacy, and atheists play that game better than anyone out there. And the tide is turning: virtually everything religious people believe – from the pseudoscience of Genesis, to the absurdity of heaven and hell and the resurrection and other miracles, to the rigid and intolerant moral views on everything from gays to genocide to slavery – is slowly being exposed as fallacy.
So when do the grownups get their turn? And when can we have an actual atheist political leader who isn’t 77 years old?
The thing is, we already have atheists among our political leaders. We just need them to come out, the way Stark did.
Come out and lead! If the evangelicals can launch a thirty-year revolution of suicidal folly, we can do the same, and save the country!
Religion has had a 3000-year head start, and has had nothing useful to say for centuries, whereas atheism as a movement has barely begun. What happens when we can finally use the truth to counteract the centuries of religious lies? Already the third largest U.S. religious group, behind Catholic and Baptist, is “none”. Twice as many Americans have great confidence in science, as in religion. Could reason kill religion for good in 100 years?
