The last post

[merlinofchaos]

My point, by the way, which I was too tired to make is...

In this country (and probably others), it's almost required for politicians to be Christian. For those that truly believe in religious tolerance, it's ok for politicians to be Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist or Hindi.

But atheists? Get out of town. Apparently having some belief is better than having no belief at all.

The problem is, atheism isn't a lack of belief. It is specifically disbelieving in God. And I don't think those are the same thing, not by a long shot. It isn't coming across two paths (or fifty paths) and simply choosing not to pick one. That's agnosticism. That's saying you don't know. Atheism is saying you do know, and you do believe...that God or Gods do not exist.

Comments

[phoenix-heart.livejournal.com]

I think the (faulty) reasoning of most Americans is that they think no religion=no morality. Since most people derive their moral compass from the Bible, whether they realize it or no, they believe that someone that doesn't believe in the Bible will have no moral compass. Which is absolutely wrong, but hard to argue with...primarily because it involves convincing religious people that one can have moralvalues without a God to decree them. And convincing them of THAT is a much bigger argument than just "atheists are people, too."

The funny thing for me is that most of my atheist friends seem have a stronger commitment to actually living their life by moral values, and a more consistent record of actually acting according to what they say (rather than saying they value one thing and doing another), than most of my Christian religious friends. :)

In my experience, most of my atheist friends would get into Heaven faster than most of my religious friends.

[evilmagnus]

Oh, yeah. I forgot about that. Try telling a Christian that their Morality is based on fear of reprisal in the afterlife (after they start lecturing you on how you can't possibly be Moral without God in your life, of course) and that an Atheist's morality must be based on 'do unto others' because that's the logical way to do things ... good times, good times.