Atheism For Dummies (For Dummies (Religion & Spirituality)) (69 page)

Atheists in the military and children in public schools are sometimes required to engage in religious rituals or prayers, are proselytized, or are punished or ostracized for not belonging to the religious majority.

Seven US states still prohibit atheists from running for public office — something unthinkable for any other worldview. If any state prohibited Jews from running for office, it would and should be a national outrage quickly corrected.

Entire organizations, buckets of scarce resources, and continuous lawsuits are required to keep creationism and other religious ideas out of public school science classrooms and in the hands of families and churches where they belong.

Religious concepts such as “life begins at conception” have derailed important and humane public policy, including stem cell research and sensible reproductive rights.

The Catholic Church, by its opposition to sensible birth control, has unleashed a humanitarian catastrophe on developing countries.

Many children are abused with the idea that God would punish them eternally for honest doubts or very normal human thoughts.

Countless thousands of children have been sexually exploited by generations of priests abusing their trust and authority.

Sexuality, one of the most beautiful and enjoyable parts of being human, is often depicted by religion as shameful. Estimating the emotional damage done to generations of believing teens by some religious attitudes toward the natural and harmless practice of masturbation, for example, is hard.

Though many religious people and institutions have worked hard on the right side of social issues, traditional religious ideas have often formed the greatest obstacles to moral and social progress, including the abolition of slavery, women’s voting rights, sensible reproductive rights, gay equality, and countless others.

Many individual atheists have been shunned and disowned by their religious families.

Many people believe religious ideas should be granted special protection from challenge simply because they’re religious.

Again, this list is seriously abbreviated. Hopefully it’s enough to show that atheists aren’t angry just for the sake of it, or for imagined slights, or for merely feeling “offended.” There are real injustices at work here.

Opening Up the Freethought Movement

For most of the history of the organized freethought movement, atheists have tended toward a particular type. If police were profiling atheists 20 years ago, for example, they may have been told to watch for

A white male in his 60s or 70s