"I feel that people who have superstitions have been victimized and do not see the world clearly. And I feel very sad for them.Julia Sweeney 18.Jun.05
Also, a teeny bit afraid of them.
But to be honest, I don't know how much I want this in my life. All these angry people. If I still had an assistant, I would have him or her going through these e-mails for me, but I don't have one and I end up reading them all. And it's just gotten to me. I mean, of course, they haven't convinced me. And I'm not going to be quiet about it. I just think that a daily journal about my views isn't the way for me to go at the moment. The blogging just seems to goad them on even further.
And today, for the first time, I seriously thought I should move or something. I got a little scared.
Eeek.
I will blog again someday, but not in the near future."
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there are ramifications "I actually think it is getting better for atheists in the U.S., despite the religiosity of the current administration," Las Vegas atheist Clark Adams writes in an e-mail. "Many celebrities are on record as nonbelievers, and it's not too uncommon to see an atheist positively portrayed on TV or in movies."
Others, though, label this argument "denial." They're quick to reference the many atheists who so fear harassment that they join atheist groups anonymously and others who are cast out of their families, refused positions involving children or relieved of jobs because of their nonbelief.
It's this group that pushes the separation of church and state, a debate energized during the 1960s by legendary atheist activist Madalyn Murray O'Hair, who proclaimed herself "the most hated woman in America."
They reject the argument often cited by Christian activists that the nation's government was founded by Christians. They argue that although some of the authors of the Constitution may have been religious men, they consistently maintained a clear boundary between their faith and their government. They note that until the communist scare of the 1950s, "In God we trust" wasn't the national motto, nor did it appear on paper currency, and "under God" was absent from the Pledge of Allegiance.
They point out that Bush - who as Texas governor declared April 17, 2000, Jesus Day - has awarded religious "armies of compassion" and other faith-based groups more than $3 billion in public funds since 2003. And they feel the steel in remarks by former California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown, now on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, who told Roman Catholic legal professionals in April that people of faith were embroiled in a "war" with secular humanists."
So it worked.
The little brothers and sisters of Eric Rudolph intimidated Sweeney right on out of there. Piccalo doesn't seem to have room or time to explore that, as she paints the scattered ragtag band of American atheists as eccentric losers.
The beauty of the scam is agents like Rudolph can open up the territory, the settlers can move in without having to take responsibility for the bloodshed, and their children can be brought up to think of themselves as entirely innocent, or guilt-free, which in that particular moral schema is the same thing.
Neither God nor God's organized institutions have to take responsibility for the lone gunmen that flame people like Sweeney.
Yet the work gets done just the same.
Clearing the land.
