Can We Be Good For Nothing?

So, in this season of hope, peace and good will, Catholic League president Bill Donahue has launched a campaign—“Adopt An Atheist,” is what it’s called.

Behold:

Here’s what our campaign entails. We are asking everyone to contact the American Atheist affiliate in his area, letting them know of your interest in “adopting” one of them. All it takes is an e-mail. Let them know of your sincere interest in working with them to uncover their inner self. They may be resistant at first, but eventually they may come to understand that they were Christian all along.

If we hurry, these closeted Christians can celebrate Christmas like the rest of us. As an added bonus, they will no longer be looked upon as people who “believe in nothing, stand for nothing and are good for nothing.”

 

What he is doing is just perpetrating the bigotry that religious nuts like him have towards people who happen to not share his set of beliefs. 

Religion could be dangerous, as it is; combine it with ignorance and hate and the resulting mix is positively lethal.

I have often said that those people who sincerely believe that they are doing the will of God are a dangerous sort. 

 

You can’t fight them, can you? And why should you? They are doing the will of God; by their logic, disagreeing with them is disagreeing with God. And who the fuck are you to disagree with God?!

Let's take a moment and watch this:

And you wonder why there are very few self-admitted atheists, especially in this country. Here, politicians hold a press conference to announce that they are going to ask God if it’s His will to let them run for public office.

You gotta admire them, those politicians; afterwards, they can claim that they won because it is God’s Will. And woe to them that dare go against them. They have God on their side, that means God isn’t on the side of their political enemies, and if God isn’t on their enemies’ side, the devil must be dictating to them. See the beauty of it? That’s the Philippine politicians' version of the Divine Right Theory.

There was even a politician who was convicted of raping an eleven-year old girl; he was always photographed in prison with his rosary very prominent on his neck, and polishing a statue of Jesus’ mother. (Hey look, he’s religious, he loves Mama Mary. Must be innocent, the poor guy.)

Makes me ill just thinking about it.

Religion does not go anywhere without his little brother, Hypocrisy.

Atheists are one of the most hated, most misunderstood, minority—anywhere in the world. It is easier to be accepted as a gay person than it is to be accepted as an atheist.

People think that humanity needs God in order to be moral, and they think that without a belief in some sort of a deity, humans will descend into chaos and anarchy.

By that logic--since Filipinos always trumpet the fact that we are the only Christian nation in this part of the world, and that we, as a people, are deeply religious, and believe strongly in God--our jails must be rotting away, for lack of occupants. 

Are there many self-professed atheist inmates in Philippine jails? That is funny, though not exactly ha-ha funny. Inmates in Philippine jails are busy polishing the statue of Mama Mary, or accepting Jesus as their personal savior. 
Filipino inmates are very religious--and I am not being ironic.

It’s time we realize that we do not need religion to be moral, and that we can treat fellow human beings with kindness and compassion without the threat of being roasted in hell for eternity if we do not.

We can be good here, in this world; not because we would be rewarded for it in the next life, but because it is the right thing to do.

Go ahead.