Public Atheism

This is great, finally a US congressman has the balls to admit that he is an atheist. That congressman would be Rep. Pete Stark from Fremont, a local Bay Area city. Anywhere else in the western world, this would not be much of a news item, but given the general religiosity of the US, and the prejudices that atheists struggle against, this is relatively big news. If Pete Stark were not a long standing congressman (18 terms), in a heavily Democratic urban area, his chances of re-election after this declaration would be nil. The balance in the US is seriously skewed, to the point that many people believe that atheists are immoral by their very nature. This, despite the fact that many of humanities greatest crimes have been perpetrated by deeply religious people. Even Hitler on occasion used the guise of Christianity and Catholicism to justify national socialism. Morality really has nothing to do with religion - the universal tenets of love, kindness, and justice apply whether one is a believer or not.

This argument has been of great interest to me lately. I've just finished Richard Dawkin's book, The God Delusion, although I admire his stand and I largely agree with his reasoning, I have never quite made the jump from agnostic to atheist. I suspect his book is aimed at people like me, people who are on the fence, but don't believe in any way in a personal god, and have a deep respect for natural selection, and its inherent meaning and beauty. In fact, my sister bought it for my Christmas present (yes I see both the irony and the contradiction), saying it had my name written all over it.

I was brought up in a pretty religious (but very tolerant) family, although that was not unusual in the Ireland of the time. Everyone was, in appearance at least, religious; however, I never bought it. From a pretty young age, I thought it was all a little ridiculous, childish, and superstitious. As a child, I never really got why God, this all powerful being who created everything, needed us to pray to him. That would be like the cloned sheep, Dolly, praying to the scientists who created her. I know religion is more complex than just that, but every time I examined the logic of religion, it just tied itself up in knots. The truth is, I never found any meaning in it - at least any meaning that I could have found elsewhere, outside of religion. It all seemed like so much theater, but as history has proved, it was dangerous theater. The least of its sins was that it crippled Ireland's maturation as a country, and the biggest was that as an institution, it was complicit in the worst criminal activity - sexual abuse of children.*

At the end of the day, while I can't really believe anything that the major religions espouse, most of all the core belief of a personal God, I haven't quite made the jump to outright atheism. I like the comedian Bill Maher's take - he believes in a supreme being, but doesn't feel the need for a giant bureaucracy between him and it. I'll settle for that for now, although every day I edge closer to the precipice. Ultimately in the interest of our survival as a species, I think atheists making themselves more visible in society is a good thing. Some hard scientific logic would not go astray in these days of fundamentalism, spin, and deception.

*My father always points out that without the religious orders, most Irish children would never have been educated, as the state just didn't have the resources in the early and mid 20th century. Credit where credit is due, but, and it's a biggie, Irish society abdicated oversight of education, and as a result many children suffered both physical and sexual abuse. Religion is just like any other form of power, unchecked it runs rampant over the weak.