Atheists in America

Being an Atheist in America Isn't Easy - Newsweek Society - MSNBC.com

This is a good read from Newsweek: a story about the new aggressive atheism promoted by new books by Dawkins and Sam Harris.

Some interesting extracts:

In a recent NEWSWEEK Poll, Americans said they believed in God by a margin of 92 to 6% —only 2 percent answered "don't know" —and only 37 percent said they'd be willing to vote for an atheist for president. (That's down from 49 percent in a 1999 Gallup poll —which also found that more Americans would vote for a homosexual than an atheist.)

Now that really puts things in perspective!

And further down:

It is not just extremists who earn the wrath of Dawkins and Harris. Their books are attacks on religious "moderates" as well, —indeed, the very idea of moderation. The West is not at war with "terrorism," Harris asserts in "The End of Faith"; it is at war with Islam, a religion whose holy book, "on almost every page ... prepares the ground for religious conflict." Christian fundamentalists, he says, have a better handle on the problem than moderates: "They know what it's like to really believe that their holy book is the word of God, and there's a paradise you can get to if you die in the right circumstances. They're not left wondering what is the 'real' cause of terrorism."

Sort of a backhand compliment to fundamentalist Christians, I suppose.

How about this for a silly suggestion:

On the science Web site Edge.org, the astronomer Carolyn Porco offers the subversive suggestion that science itself should attempt to supplant God in Western culture, by providing the benefits and comforts people find in religion: community, ceremony and a sense of awe. "Imagine congregations raising their voices in tribute to gravity, the force that binds us all to the Earth, and the Earth to the Sun, and the Sun to the Milky Way," she writes.

Now that would be taking Nature worship to a level of meaninglessness I had never considered possible. (Surely the most ancient belief systems we know anything about at least had the good sense to praise or worship things believed to be sentient (such as the god or animating spirit behind all or part of Nature.) But praising a rock for being a rock doesn't seem a very "scientific" thing to do.

Maybe I will add more to this topic later..