Monday, December 04, 2006
Atheists are the new outcast minority
From the RoundTable blog
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Robert F. Boyd
Boyd, of Daleville, was a professor and science writer at Marquette University before his retirement.
History reveals that, in whatever society we are talking about, minorities are frequently the scapegoats for whatever are the prevailing ills of the day.
Depending upon the society, the minority blame-game may be related to skin color, religious affiliation, ethnicity, sexual preferences, etc. Take your pick: Chinese, Irish, Germans, Hungarians, Asians, Catholics, Jews or Africans. All of them at one time or another were regarded as second-class citizens.
African-Americans continued to bear the brunt of the minority label until segregation gasped its last breaths in the 1960s.
Another minority, homosexuals, were for years regarded as the scum of the Earth, as witnessed by the brutal ways in which they were routinely harassed. Today, many homosexuals have come "out of the closet" even though they have not yet been allowed to enter the rest of the house to enjoy their so-called guaranteed civil liberties.
The most recent bogeyman is the atheist. You know who he is -- the secularist who wants a wall of separation between church and state, the elitist scientist who believes in evolution and not creationism, and the pagan who not only promotes pornography and abortion but also has created a social climate reprehensible to all Christian values.
And if you're a born-again atheist all those labels may apply to you.
Christians in this country believe that unless God is at the center of national life we will be forever exposed to crime, poverty, warfare and disease. Although science cannot prove the existence or absence of God, it has been able to provide some interesting statistics that make one think twice about the existence and importance of God in a society.
Countries regarded as secular or whose populations have by choice abandoned religion have been compared with those who are considered religious. Studies have demonstrated that when one measures life expectancy, literacy, income and education, nations whose populations are religious do poorly as compared to the more nonreligious ones. In addition, studies of non-African countries reveal that nations with the highest rate of homicide are religious.
If you read the newspapers and other communication outlets, evangelicals and fundamentalists are the hot topic, especially with regard to their welcoming of Armageddon. They are coming out of the woodwork like cockroaches and their pied-pipers are numerous.
This was to be expected since their pied-piper figurehead is President Bush.
You can't swing a dead cat without hitting one of them. Thanks to Bush, with help from the religious right and its ilk, the United States for the past six years has been ruled by a faith-based government.
Seizing upon their power in government, the Christian right is attempting to rewrite history as it relates to our Founding Fathers. They claim that America was founded as a Christian nation and that Thomas Jefferson was a decent Christian who really didn't mean what he said about the separation of church and state. Of course this attempt at revisionism is totally false.
Jefferson stated in 1802 in front of the Danbury Baptist Association: "The legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and state."
As regards Jefferson's Christianity, he clearly respected Christ as a philosopher and moral leader but described Christianity as "our particular superstition." Perhaps Tom DeLay, the evangelical hammer in his day, inadvertently spoke the truth when Congress rebuffed one of his proposals. He said, "They treat Christianity like a second-rate superstition."
Perhaps someday the atheist may be able to come out of the closet. Maybe, but if he is a male who is an atheist and a homosexual, don't hold your breath. And if she's a woman, forget it.
