Atheists should be revered, not discriminated against

O' Oregon, I love you because you're (relatively) godless. And now here we have the Brookings Elks Lodge banning a sweet eighty year old woman from the premises because she's an atheist.

This smacks of the Bible Belt, not the Live Green and Mainline Lattes Belt. Deeply disturbing.

Today Oregonian columnist Margie Boulé had a follow-up. In "Atheists run up against 'last bias'" she points out that Americans say they'll vote for all sorts of presidential candidates, but not someone who fails to profess a belief in God.

A recent poll conducted by USA Today/Gallup found that Americans are overwhelmingly willing to vote for a presidential candidate who is an African American, a woman, a Catholic or a Latino. A solid majority would vote for a candidate who is Mormon, who is a homosexual, who has been married three times or who is 72 years old. The only category that did not break 50 percent? Atheists.

As I said in my "Leave God out of the Super Bowl" post, the United States is way behind more enlightened European countries in this regard.

I have some friends who visit Europe regularly. They tell me that there it would be almost inconceivable for a politician to make his or her belief in God a campaign issue. It just doesn't come up. But here, an admitted unbeliever probably couldn't be elected to a major office. This isn't something the United States should be proud of. It's a defect, not a virtue.

The Elks are a good example of how religion contributes to hypocrisy and narrow-mindedness, not morality. The Elks web site claims that they stand for "the principles of Charity, Justice, Brotherly Love and Fidelity." But their charity and brotherly love stops if an elderly woman says she doesn't believe in God.

Crazy. Apparently Billie Sieg would have been acceptable to the Elks if she'd lied and told them that she was a believer. But she was honest. Boulé writes:

Oh, it's not like she stands on street corners, trying to persuade others that God does not exist. She's a quiet atheist. "In today's world a belief in God can take a lot of forms. I happen to be an unbeliever in supernatural deities, but I do believe in Mother Nature" and the holiness of "the world around us."

Sieg sounds like a Buddhist or Taoist to me. I suspect that if she'd responded to the Elks interviewer, "I believe in the god of Buddhism," she'd be enjoying the social activities in the lodge now.

Religious discrimination, after all, is a no-no in American culture. Unless someone doesn't believe in a traditional religion at all. Then it's fine to discriminate against them.

Someday, and that day can't come soon enough for me, this attitude will be seen as the pre-scientific relic of mythology that it is. A-theists are just people who don't see any evidence for a demonstrably unseen God.

Unicorns also are unseen. So a-unicornists are ubiquitous. As are a-fairyists and a-Big Footists.

However, Elks Lodges don't bar the door to people who say they don't believe in unicorns, fairies, and Big Foot – because these entities aren't revered by the majority of Americans.

God also likely is non-existent. At least, there's no proof of God's existence, which puts the supreme deity in the same epistemological class as fairies. Something which makes people feel good, but lacks standing in objective reality.

So we all should bow down to the courageous believers in truth like Billie Sieg and Sylvia Benner who refuse to accept religious absurdities just because they're the majority opinion.

Majorities often are wrong. At one time almost everyone used to believe that the Earth was flat, slavery was justified, and women were second-class citizens.

Before too long students will read in history books about the not-so-good old days when citizens of the United States were discriminated against because they didn't believe in God. And they'll think, How could this ever have happened? What were they thinking?

Not much, sadly. Not down in the Brookings Elks Lodge, in 2008.

Comments

[Rain]

More atheists are speaking out which might someday change this situation as people find out they don't have horns and plot evil deeds any more frequently than the so-called religious. I think it's a shame that people don't separate religion from spirituality as often it's religion that they are angry at not whatever spiritual power might be behind the universe.

[Mark Drejza]

As a strict Catholic-turned-aethist (like so many more that are turning each day), through simple logical thought, with energetic debate, and without any formal philosophical education, I have concluded the same thing...this whole "god" thing really is an "extra" in people's mentality. People don't need it, they only think they do. Fundamentally, it makes no sense. What I find most peculiar is the perception that atheism is in many ways equated to satanism, for which Satan is something we equally don't believe in. When growing up Catholic, I was taught pagan=bad. However, this is so not the case. It is a shame that such things are taught with such bias. I am glad that I have come to the conclusion that we are fully capable of being kind, caring, compassionate, patriotic, and family-oriented--all without God. This puts lots of responsibility on us--and only us. We can't cop out when we fail, but we can reap the intangible benefits of our related achievements of simply being kind, caring, compassionate, patriotic, and family-oriented humans. We are not apathetic. We are not evil. We are atheists. We are as American as anyone else.

[Kreta Christain]

"God is an Atheist, He can't believe how some people are so full of it".
If you believe:
1. Making a mental note that Jesus does exit, gets you into Heaven.
2. Atheists go to Hell.
3. Christains go to Heaven.
4. Jesus Acended into Heaven.
5. Jesus walked on water, healed the sick, and raised the Dead.
6. Your old body comes to life again after 3 days.
7. Virgins give birth.
8. Asking God to forgive you on your death bed grants you forgiveness.
9. Mary is a Goddess.
10. The Bible is the word of God and man did not tamper with it.
11. Jesus died for you.
12. God can hurl lightning bolts.

You could be full of it. God said Man put his own hand in the bible. It is not the true word of God. Take heed, "God has returned".