- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
1) Atheism is not "trendy". Atheism predates Christianity.
2) Religion is not "poetry". Religious authorities do not get into conflict with poets, they conflict with scientists, politicians, lawyers. In other words, people who attempt to describe and work with the world as it really is. Emily Dickinson was a poet. The apostle Paul was not. The Bible was written to get a group of people to conform to a certain belief, at which it has been wildly successful. The fact that people disagree over major tenets of religion does not mean it is a work of lofty, mysterious grace, but instead results from the fact that there is objectively no way to settle once and for all how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
3) "To be an atheist, you need to specify which god you are not believing in". With all do respect, it sould be obvious that the word "atheist" pretty clearly means "not a theist", in other words not a believer in any god, period. All gods are far more alike than they are different. Every religious person disbelieves in some gods; an atheist disbelieves in them all.
4) "To be an atheist means not having a sense of wonder." Hogwash. Pure bunk. Every atheist I know is amazed by the world we live in. I would even argue that the atheistic view of the world--our universe was created in a huge explosion, our planet formed over millions of years as tiny bits of dust gathered together, life on our planet arose over a billion-year struggle from the humblest of origins--is more (sorry) poetic than that of a bearded old man wishing everything into existence.
5) "Religion is art. It is stained glass. It is tales told by a hermit a thousand years ago. It isn't what the general public believes, or does, or worships" Get out of your ivory tower and look at the world the way it is.
6) When I decided I no longer believed in Santa Claus, I had no idea what the history of Santa was, what other conceptions of him existed (Kris Kringle, etc.), and no one suggested I needed to before I stopped believing in him--and rightly so.
