Entries associated with the tag "Atheism":

Hemant Mehta, the "friendly atheist" in his blog and this week's Reader, is congenial by temperament, heritage, and strategy. (He's speaking tonight at the Barbara's near UIC.) But that attitude also reflects his confidence that extreme fundamentalism will die out soon, and that supernatural belief will too, eventually.

Is this confidence justified? He says kids these days are too well-educated to fall for religious hoo-ha. The Pew Center has some evidence in that direction: of those born before 1946, 5 percent call themselves agnostic, atheist, or nonreligious. That percentage increases to 11 among those born 1946-64, 14 among those born 1965-76, and 19 among Mehta's generation, born since 1977.

But at this rate it will be a couple of centuries before believers are the same-size minority atheists are today. And trends of this sort have been reversed in the past. 

An hour and a half on the late train at the end of a long day is a recipe for walking insomnia -- can't get comfortable, can't sleep, can't concentrate on the day's mail, you know the drill. But the other night I got lucky, because my shoulder bag contained a fresh copy of Nothing: Something to Believe In, by Nica Lalli.

For Chicago history buffs it includes a child's-eye view of William Singer's mayoral campaign against Richard I. For religion buffs a dismayingly honest account of her various encounters with organized religion as the child of Italian and Jewish parents with no religious affiliations. For me, it did what a good book does. When I looked up, it was an hour later and my surroundings were unfamiliar. For a moment, I thought I'd read right past my stop.

No, it's not Robert Ludlum, it's Richard Dawkins. He mocked a British comic who professes belief in some sort of supreme being because he finds it "very comforting." The excellent Jessa Crispin of Bookslut is so fed up with Dawkins that she threatens to start believing in God herself. (Original story here.)

Dawkins was surely impolite to point out the foolishness. (My take on his book is here.) But was he wrong? Many years ago when I lived downstate, I drove my pickup to work piled high with miscellaneous junk tied on in various improvised ways. Someone at work commented that my load was "n----- rigged." (Trust me, ironic appropriation was not involved.)

I've always felt bad that I didn't call him out then and there. It would have been impolite, but there are times when impolite is right. When a Bush flunky says, "We create our own reality," it's good to point out that he's a moron. When someone says it makes sense to believe something because it's "comfortable," why should they be given a free pass?

That's not a rhetorical question. When and where do you say the impolite truth? Or, the other way: when and where do you wish you'd done a Dawkins?

Hemant Mehta, the Chicago-based blogger of Friendly Atheist, went to a Young Democrats of America fund-raiser and met the main speaker, Christie Vilsack, wife of former Iowa governor and would-be president Tom Vilsack. The reconstructed dialogue:

Us: We’re atheists.

Mrs. Vilsack: [Blank stare.]

Us: How does Governor Vilsack feel about church-state separation?

Mrs. Vilsack: “I’ve never had that conversation with him!”

Us: Interesting… Here are our business cards. [They say “Secular Student Alliance” on them.]

Mrs. Vilsack: [Reads the cards] “They have groups for everything, don’t they!?”

Us: *sigh*

Mehta's conclusion:  "Clearly we atheists don't exist."