America doesn’t need more God. It needs more atheists.

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BidenPresident

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We need Americans who demand — as atheists do — that truth claims be tethered to fact. We need Americans who understand — as atheists do — that the future of the world is in our hands. And in this particular political moment, we need Americans to stand up to Christian nationalists who are using their growing political and judicial power to take away our rights. Atheists can do that.

Fortunately, there are a lot of atheists in the United States — probably far more than you think.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/10/03/kate-cohen-atheism/
 
In 2017, psychologists Will Gervais and Maxine Najle tried to estimate the prevalence of atheism in the United States using a technique called “unmatched count”: They asked two groups of 1,000 respondents each, how many statements were true among a list of statements. The lists were identical except that one of them included the statement “I believe in God.” By comparing the numbers, the researchers could then estimate the percentage of atheists without ever asking a direct question. They came up with around 26 percent.
 
People who are raised in a cult, like a religion are more susceptible to joining other cults. That explains the evangelicals and Christians following Trump. They are preprogrammed to follow a "leader". Trump is an atheist, with no understanding of Christianity.
 
BidenPresident said:
We need Americans who demand — as atheists do — that truth claims be tethered to fact. We need Americans who understand — as atheists do — that the future of the world is in our hands. And in this particular political moment, we need Americans to stand up to Christian nationalists who are using their growing political and judicial power to take away our rights. Atheists can do that.

Fortunately, there are a lot of atheists in the United States — probably far more than you think.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/10/03/kate-cohen-atheism/
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Probably confirms what one of the two asshats below posted in the past.
 
BidenPresident said:
We need Americans who demand — as atheists do — that truth claims be tethered to fact. We need Americans who understand — as atheists do — that the future of the world is in our hands. And in this particular political moment, we need Americans to stand up to Christian nationalists who are using their growing political and judicial power to take away our rights. Atheists can do that.

Fortunately, there are a lot of atheists in the United States — probably far more than you think.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/10/03/kate-cohen-atheism/
Click to expand...

I think what would be even better is if religious types actually represented God the way they are supposed to. Imagine having people actually follow the ways of Jesus rather than pick and choose their way through a book. Trump wouldn't have a stage. We wouldn't have had the Iraq war. We'd have national healthcare. I could go on.
 
BidenPresident said:
We need Americans who demand — as atheists do — that truth claims be tethered to fact. We need Americans who understand — as atheists do — that the future of the world is in our hands. And in this particular political moment, we need Americans to stand up to Christian nationalists who are using their growing political and judicial power to take away our rights. Atheists can do that.

Fortunately, there are a lot of atheists in the United States — probably far more than you think.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/10/03/kate-cohen-atheism/
Click to expand...

We don’t need less religion, or more atheists, politics and religion are two separate entities, what we might need is a separation of religion in politics, less religion in politics, which I believe was what the Founders were prescribing with the Establishment Clause
 
Religion should be a personal thing - the fact that it has become so prominent in politics has made me turn against it as a whole.

At minimum, it needs to be updated. How so many still trust the translations and words of people who existed in a dark, superstitious, misogynistic time is beyond me The Bible alone is rife with almost countless contradictions, and the OT portrayal of God is impossible to believe. What timeless being is so insecure and petty?

There is actually a ton of empirical data out there about the nature of our universe, why we're here and what happens in the great hereafter. That's what people should look to, imo. Not ancient texts that clearly have their own agenda.
 
BartenderElite said:
Religion should be a personal thing - the fact that it has become so prominent in politics has made me turn against it as a whole.

At minimum, it needs to be updated. How so many still trust the translations and words of people who existed in a dark, superstitious, misogynistic time is beyond me The Bible alone is rife with almost countless contradictions, and the OT portrayal of God is impossible to believe. What timeless being is so insecure and petty?

There is actually a ton of empirical data out there about the nature of our universe, why we're here and what happens in the great hereafter. That's what people should look to, imo. Not ancient texts that clearly have their own agenda.
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Is it those text, or the way some interpret and attempt to apply those texts?
 
archives said:
Is it those text, or the way some interpret and attempt to apply those texts?
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To me, it's both.

The texts are fascinating and amazing historical documents. They should not be a guide for living, imo.

But of course, many adherents to religion - every religion - use the words of the underlying texts to forward their own agenda. Listening to many modern Christians, I would expect to open the Bible and read about Christ spending all of his time condemning gay people and abortions. Many Christians are almost the opposite of what I would expect a Christian to be given what Christ actually spoke about.
 
Jade Dragon said:
I think what would be even better is if religious types actually represented God the way they are supposed to. Imagine having people actually follow the ways of Jesus rather than pick and choose their way through a book. Trump wouldn't have a stage. We wouldn't have had the Iraq war. We'd have national healthcare. I could go on.
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Whether one believes in the transcendent or not, religion is a powerful motivating and animating factor in human civil and moral progress.

Religion powerfully served the projects of Martin Luther King Jr , Ghandi, the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, etc.

Then you unfortunatly get people like Ayatollah Khomeini, the Spanish Catholic church, and Jerry Falwell actually harming human progress. So religious belief is often corrupted.

But I can't think of any atheists who were really important in human history in leading an important social and moral movement. That might change in the future. But for now very few people are actually reading Nietzsche, Marx, Freud, Christopher Hitchens and using them as benchmarks for human moral frameworks. Part of the problem might be that atheism is just a word, there is no underlying universal moral framework that guides atheism.
 
archives said:
We don’t need less religion, or more atheists, politics and religion are two separate entities, what we might need is a separation of religion in politics, less religion in politics, which I believe was what the Founders were prescribing with the Establishment Clause
Click to expand...

Fair point.
 
"If you are an atheist — if you do not believe in a Supreme Being — you can be moral or not, mindful or not, clever or not, hopeful or not. Clearly, you can keep going to church. But, by definition, you cannot believe that God is in charge. You must give up the notion of God’s will, God’s purpose, God’s mysterious ways.

In some ways, this makes life easier. You don’t have to work out why God might cause or ignore suffering, what parts of this broken world are God’s plan, or what work is his to do and what is yours."
 
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