Saturday 15 November 2008

Atheist thought for the day

"Most atheists probably wouldn't give a flying teapot what anyone else believed were those beliefs not used as spurious justification for assuming positions of privilege, manipulating politics, obstructing science, discriminating against others, commandeering community schools, proselytising to the young and the vulnerable, lying about scientific theory, and generally trying to manipulate the lives of the willing and unwilling alike."

- MIKE LIM, writing in the National Secular Society's Newsline

3 comments:

anticant said...

As I repeatedly point out, there is no such thing as non-political religion. It is in the very nature of religion to interfere in politics with the objective of moulding society more into the 'godly' path which the religious person believes is the true way to happiness and salvation.

There is nothing inherently wrong in this, until it spills over into attempts to coerce, browbeat and bully other people into conformity, as it nearly always does - increasingly so in these days of strident fundamentalism.

Atheists, non-believers and secularists strive for a different sort of society, of the kind which used to be called democratic, in which difference and diversity of thought, opinion and lifestyles are tolerated so long as they do not harm others or society in general.

For a time during the mid-20h century, this was increasingly the mainstream political practice in the West. Nowadays, disturbingly, it can no longer be taken for granted but has to be fought for.

Longrider said...

I'd say that was pretty much spot on.

Bodwyn Wook said...

Given the dismal performance of all these fool god(desse)s -- and, still worse, of their nincompoop devotees! -- atheists are certainly logically ahead of the human pack as far as that goes....

This implicit corollary is what mainly pisses off the dim & the botched.