A new bill pre-filed in the Georgia General Assembly this month would not only allow drivers to obtain license plates reading “In God We Trust,” but would in fact require them on all vehicles – unless drivers pay to cover it up. . . “In other words, if you feel the government should not be establishing a religion, you are going to have to pay to prove it.”
Paul Zachary “PZ” Myers (born March 9, 1957)
Associate Professor of Biology at the University of Minnesota Morris, Author of the Pharyngula Freethought Blog, Public Critic of Intelligent Design, and Outspoken Atheist
It seems to be an obligatory opinion of people who believe in mockable and ridiculous things that they will oppose mockery and ridicule. I’m afraid there is no magical exemption — there isn’t a set of stupid beliefs that you get to set on a pedestal and declare that no one can call them stupid.
Americans who worry about Muslim countries adopting Sharia law forget that our country was first settled by Christian fundamentalists who codified their own version of religious absolutism — and had no qualms about killing anyone who objected. . . The truth is that the Puritans had no problem with religious persecution. They just wanted to be the ones doing the persecuting.
A landmark 2006 study, analyzing data from a large survey of Americans, found that atheists “are less likely to be accepted, publicly and privately, than any others from a long list of ethnic, religious and other minority groups.”
There is no actual evidence backing up the assumption that atheism somehow leads to a decline in morality. In a 2009 study, sociologist Phil Zuckerman argued that “a strong case could be made that atheists and secular people actually possess a stronger or more ethical sense of social justice than their religious peers,” adding that they, on average, have “lower levels of prejudice, ethnocentrism, racism and homophobia” than the much larger population of believers. He adds that “with the important exception of suicide, states and nations with a preponderance of nonreligious people actually fare better on most indicators of societal health than those without.”
The comments in response to this article bespeak volumes to the intolerance, ignorance, and bigotry expressed by Christians toward non-Christians in the military. It is absolutely astonishing! [MSH]
Always Question Authority 