Newsweek: The New Naysayers

Newsweek posted an article online about atheists. You know, those who don't believe in God and who will go to Hell and burn eternally while those in Heaven watch them suffer like a Big Brother/Real World/Survivor type of ultimate reality television.

The article points out a few interesting "facts" (facts is in quotes because what do we really know?).

• More Americans would vote for a homosexual than an atheist. And all this time I thought homosexuals were atheists...kidding, but that's what the religious fanatics would have you believe.
• 92 percent of Americans believe in God
• 6 percent do not believe in God
• 2 percent "don't know" (Again, what do any of us know?)

It's an interesting article that, for the most part, sides with atheists, in that the story articulates more about what a few increasingly predominant atheists think than what 92 percent of the population thinks.

There is one thing that is very compelling about the article, and that is the claim by one of the atheists that the war on terror is not about terror but is a war with Islam. I believe this to be true. Now, it may be one in the same, you skeptic. If you equate Islam with terror, then I suppose you're right.

But I don't think that most rational people would claim that the two are bedfellows. Islam, like Christianity, is a religion in which its believers really do, for the most part, believe in its teachings and is a peaceful bunch. Of course, as in anything, there are extremists. It is the one rotten apple that spoils all the rest in the barrel, so to speak.

I wonder how many of the Islamic terrorists really practice Islam? Or, do they use it as a front to terrorism, giving terrorism credibility amongst the true believers in Islam? I think there's something to this. One could ask whether Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, or the other American television evangelicals (televangelicals?) are doing the same thing. These guys are vile scumbags only looking to make a dollar (or millions, to be sure), spouting out hatred, calling natural disasters like Katrina God's payback to the heathens that live the Mardi Gras lifestyle and calling terror attacks retribution for New Yorkers' wayward lifestyle (they are a "blue state" after all, so they're all full of atheists).

It sickens me to think that many conflicts over the thousands of years of human existence have been rooted in religion. Everybody thinks their God is better than the enemy's God. Who cares?

Believe what you want to believe and understand what is real.