It may not come as a surprise that Atheists are not alone in the desire to rid the Earth of belief systems. All ‘faiths’ would prefer that others joined their particular brand and that all other brands cease to exist. Some try to accomplish this by force, others by clever coercion (missionary style). There are still others who openly preach tolerance but with an underlying rationale along the lines of people being misguided in the ‘choice’ of their god.
The saving of souls is the stated purpose but the real reason is the conquest of the mind. To have someone else believing the same nonsense as you, although obviously false, is a support for self-esteem and intellectual integrity.
Without any critical investigation, it is accepted that other religions are wrong. As history shows, this is a recipe par excellence for contention and warfare.
The religious desire to be rid of all other beliefs is motivated by the, “I am right” syndrome. Atheist desire to be rid of them all because they recognise, along with other effects, that the “I am rights” of the World have forgotten their humanity.
Unlike the pious, we wish no harm to them, but rather we yearn and strive for the time when all people are given the opportunity to attain their full potential as humans. This is not possible under the contemporary holy tyranny.
The power of religious infant indoctrination coupled with an adult herd mindset is seen only in true perspective when observed by an Atheist. We have no reason to hide from awful truths, nor do we need to embellish any perceived good in our ideology whilst glossing over any weaknesses. The same cannot be said of religion.
The attempts to understand nature, when science was non-existent or basic, led humans to create their own answer in the supernatural. God, with the help of science, has been pushed further and further back into a corner and kept alive in western democracies only by extreme mental gymnastics.
This ‘kidding of ourselves’ has far greater repercussions than most know or want to know. While the West carries on with its self-righteous piety, other parts of the World are upset by our beliefs. They do not believe our creeds, but consider we have ‘chosen’ the wrong god. Would it not be better if we, having once believed in gods and now reject them, could show that they are unwise in still clinging to them. They may recognise the benefits of scientific evaluation.
Let us consider some of the outcomes if this change does not occur and also examine some of our own cultural foibles.
Religion, a patriarchal business, has kept and is keeping women as virtual slaves in less educated countries and still has a deleterious impact everywhere. Women are told how to dress, how to portray their sexuality, whether they can work or not and at lesser rates, who to marry and how to organise their reproductive capabilities etc. Women are beaten, burned, stoned, killed, discarded and, as a generalisation, are treated as second rate citizens and worse.
It is estimated that one woman dies every five minutes from botched abortions. As opposed to the concept of a number of foetal cells with no feelings or personality that happened because of a chance encounter with billions of sperm, a woman is a living, breathing and feeling being. A woman, who in many instances is not educated in the understanding of her sexuality, and without choice in the matter, is made pregnant by a male and then is subjected to male laws as punishment. How reminiscent of the burning of witches is the ferocity of other women standing in judgement of their ‘fallen’ kinsfolk. How sick it is that they claim to be compassionate people trying to save the lives of the helpless unborn.
The real reasons are far simpler in both senses of the word. They believe the foetus has a soul and God loves souls. Fear of God for not doing anything, combined with a hope of heavenly rewards, produces a psychosis. In many ways, narrow-mindedness wreaks havoc, mainly on the poorer people of the world. Apart from the stated deaths of women, the conditions of unwanted children, born in unhappy circumstances, are too horrendous to even contemplate.
The so-called abortion debate is no such thing. There is only one answer to this apparent conundrum and that is that each woman must be in control of her own body with protection by law. Opposition to this stance has to be seen, befittingly, as a most heinous crime against humanity.
Of all the blunders for which religion is responsible for, Genesis 1:28 (dominion over the earth and all that is on it) has to be the pinnacle of insanity.
In the past the Earth could endure the relentless expansion of humanity and that passage was written in those days. One would think that our present population and technology, necessitates a different appreciation of that anachronistic verse. Instead, dominion has changed to overt exploitation sanctioned by people with heads so far up in the clouds of ‘god will provide’ no matter what, that they cannot see our imminent annihilation. Some even express attitudes of glee, as though the self-initiation of a second coming will make it all right again. Expending a little mental sweat to work out that the first coming was a hoax would be a far better way to spend their time.
Each generation has its dooms day prophets but this generation has more than enough reason to justify their predictions.
We cannot accept a situation with wars raging continuously all over the Planet, with weapons of mass destruction controlled from bunkers by hair-triggered minds and with an environment dissolving before our very eyes. With people and animals being treated as pawns in some macabre game and with religion being the cause for most of this unhappy state of affairs, Atheists are justified in shouting “enough!”
We still have the regrettable situation where religion is involuntarily thrust into the minds of children in their formulative years by child-minded adults who are themselves victims of this ongoing indoctrination. Children need to be taught to love people and respect our planet. The actuality of theism and not its facade has to be exposed at a greater rate than ever before. Atheists are involved in a battle for human survival and it cannot be either fought or won with the hard weaponry of war, but by commitment, reason and exposure of unsupportable primitive propositions.
No nobler a role in life has an Atheist, than QUELLING THEISM.
By David Nicholls