Atheism and America

There's a new article today in the Telegraph, a leading newspaper in the UK, on the rise of atheism in the US. It's a story about how there's a growing acceptance of rational thought in the US, and that non-belief in a god - something that has been suppressed for too long - is now gaining momentum.

Official figures show the ranks of the non-religious have doubled to 13 per cent, or 30 million people, since 1990.

Now a hard core of five million atheists is seeking the political clout that has made Christian conservatives and the Jewish lobby powerhouses in Washington politics.

The report also quotes Richard Dawkins:

Mr Dawkins said last week: "On my book tour of America I was agreeably surprised by the positive reception it got. There is a huge undercurrent of non-believing feeling in America which has felt repressed, suppressed, almost persecuted.

"Many people said, 'Thank you for saying what I have always wanted to say but didn't feel I could'."

Mr Dawkins is an advocate of increasing atheist militancy. "The secular, non-religious vote, if properly mobilized, is nine times as numerous as the Jewish vote," he said.

I think the interesting thing here though is that this awakening is a sign that the religious right has gone too far in trying to push religion into every facet of society, and we're now starting to see the backlash.....but it's a backlash not to change the constitution, but to reaffirm it.

We're not interested necessarily in "converting" people to atheism, just to making sure that the separation of church and state is maintained and strengthened, while at the same time promoting rational, scientific approaches to solve the very real problems of the age (global warming, AIDS, cancer and so on) instead of asking an imaginary sky fairy for help.