We’re living in a country where polling indicates almost any previously downtrodden group be they women, blacks, or even gays have a shot at being President or pretty much anything without being denied off the bat due to that classification. The approval numbers on all groups have risen demonstrably the past few decades. But not atheists. They still poll at very low numbers and admitting to being one is considered the only thing other than pedophile you can not recover from if you’re running for anything in this country. There are indications it could even keep you from getting a job if interviewers got wind of it though of course it’s not legally permissible to ask ones religious beliefs in a job interview.

But statistical polling indicates that upwards of 20% of people are without religious or spiritual belief. Playing the percentages some politicians must be atheists especially when you consider that with higher education comes an increased likelihood of atheistic type beliefs. Sure that sounds arrogant but it’s a fact. And if you look at the historical records of founding fathers and many subsequent presidents it is most likely a disproportionate amount of them were atheists and at the very least agnostics. Virtually all had contempt for religion, particularly Christianity, the religion whose adherents in this country insist we were built on.

But no politicians can admit this openly. It’d be like saying they like to fondle little kids. Even this Elizabeth Dole thing works as an example even though polling indicates that her putting adds out calling Hagan an atheist is working against Dole. Hagan rebounded because she’s contradicting the statement and pulling scripture out to defend herself against “bearing false witness.” It’s not backfiring on Dole because Hagan said “so what? What’s wrong with being an atheist?” If she had taken that intellectual approach which she may well actually believe, she’d probably be done. But like so many people in this country she doesn’t have the guts to go there. It’s the one place people are afraid to go though those polls indicate there are far more than you would guess by public statements. Not to mention those that are afraid to use that label even to themselves.

Of course we could get into semantics and argue definitions about what an atheist really means as opposed to those that call themselves agnostic. That gets a lot of people off the hook with themselves as well as the world. I was one of them for most of my adult life and sometimes still qualify myself that way. But I realized a while ago that doing this was a bit cowardly and playing into the public psychosis and discrimination on this issue. So even though I could in good spirit qualify myself as an agnostic at times, I find more and more I choose to go the A word route. This is in large part because I think for the sake of a more rational society not in thrall to the kinds of forces of ignorance and irrationality that have destroyed kazillions of lives for thousands of years and helped in large part dig this country a huge hole in recent years, we need to swing the pendulum away from religious forces. Important changes have never happened without a minority of people that weren’t so minor after all speaking up and taking their hits until so many others did so. And it appears this requires more and more people of good standing and social acceptability removing the stigma by admitting they are an atheist. Saying they are an agnostic won’t get the job done anymore than Thomas Jefferson calling himself a Deist turned this country away from the kind of disease he saw religion as in his time.

So I think more people need to go the full monty here and reveal themselves to themselves and others as atheists. Even if they hold out that human hope, traceable in the brain I might add, that there is a spiritual element of something “else.”

But it appears they wont because they know they will be judged harshly. Some wont because they themselves see that designation as too horrible and final even though I don’t think the designation itself has to wipe out all possibilities. I’ve been there in that new-agey existential place. People ignorantly think classifying yourself as such is some kind of statement on your unhappiness or negativity and don’t want to hear about the journey from there to here. As if their own belief isn’t a statement of their own issues.

But I spent many years long before anybody in this intellectually dismissive area knew me, years going through all the various levels of quasi religious and spiritual belief. The designation Atheist is not one come to lightly. It is not a personality trait. It is hard won. And earned. I read religious texts quite voluminously. Explored all avenues. It was through Joseph Campbell that I came across Thomas Mann’s notion that though mythological representations of the world were characteristic of the early and primitive stages of collective humanity, their symbolic expression and understanding is mature and advanced in the later life of the individual. I took that to heart for a long time. Even when I was beyond any literal acceptance of scriptures of any religious denomination I was all on board for a more metaphorical understanding and the pedagogical value of all that past wisdom and what it can tell us.

I did copious tomes relating to the subjects that were going to answer the big questions that a degree and a good job could never do because I was interested in, “higher truths.” From the modern scholars in the fields of religion and symbol such as Houston Smith and Joseph Campbell to the ancient fathers of divine reckoning such as Augustine, Maimonides, and Averroes, to the Upanishads and the philosophers from the Ionians to the transcendentalists, I made sure I was covered spiritually and rationally and finding a blend of the two. Looking for an educated, syncretistic and non-biased consensus of religious and philosophical thought that tries to be as secular and devoid of prejudice as any modern sentient being should be I got my “higher energy,” groove on.

I naturally gravitated towards Buddhism for seeming the best extant belief system representing these ideals. I saw myself wanting to become a transcendent Buddha-like being rising above my surroundings and keeping my place in perspective while staying connected with a protective collective consciousness.

I rationalized this East/West contradiction between the meaninglessness and the importance of the individual even though it sort of made me feel somewhat like a bloated insect or Superman in the second movie when he is stripped of his powers and gets beat up in a diner. I was not a believer but ok with religion. Joseph Campbell was my favorite philosopher and if you doubt what this means check out his books or just watch the PBS miniseries with Bill Moyer. But what this meant to me was an appreciation of religious thought from a literary point of view as well as an avenue towards a greater psychological understanding of the human experience.

But what I’ve since evolved into believing is that like many things I once romanticized, religion wasn’t deserving of even that kind of academic respect and that the psychological truths it revealed were mainly of a negative kind that should be understood in order to rise above and vanquish rather than wallow in or pay homage to them. I believe the absolute destruction of minds and bodies that religion, and this means the idea of god itself because any attempt to divorce one from the other is dishonest and not recognizing gods roots, has been responsible for is so far beyond being balanced by whatever force for good its been as to have reached its point of diminishing returns centuries ago if not earlier.

Now some “spiritual,” people always argue that god and or spiritual belief is not the same as religion. Ancient people’s entertained spiritual beliefs before organized religion co-opted the ideas. But just because they didn’t have the resources, intellectual foundations, or leisure time to create a society where those achievements could be realized doesn’t mean there wasn’t a primitive institutionalization of god and spirit. Or nature. Or whatever it was though of a the time. Modern psychological and brain studies reveal much of the inherent sameness of all beliefs throughout human history. Any lack of the seemingly more hateful and guileful practices of what we call religion likely wasn’t because they were any more enlightened and it’s sort of galling when people carry on as if these were simple virtuous creatures who had some higher communion with god or the spiritual element. You need look no further than those same earlier humans careless disregard of life, savagery, and primitivism to see how virtuous or innocent they really were. But many so called spiritual people go through that same process of romantacization almost fetishistically in their regard for a people they would kill to get away from if transported back to live amongst their ignorance, savagery, immorality, and careless disregard for life, especially the life of those not of their tribe.

But somehow these creatures were more enlightened?

Actually you have to give religion and its organizing the whole god-spirit idea for helping to create more morality. Not less. As humanity got more civilized it probably needed a kind of law that religion could provide. Problem is we’ve outgrown it intellectually and have better supports in place. And we also have the kind of technology in place that can turn all those negative religious ideas like apocalypse and judgment days into a self fulfilling prophecy. The ability for unsophisticated peoples to make sophisticated destruction has far outpaced their ability to understand how unsophisticated they are.

And it’s also responsible for many smaller apocalypses every day. The litany and list of wrongs, hate, death, bloodshed, mutilation, savagery, slavery, war, vandalism, theft etc etc etc tied to human ideas of god has filled up thousands of books. There is no end to the indictments. And an insistence on a greater spirituality is at all of its roots. It’s not just religion divorced of a truer more innocent transcendent spirit. Again, there is no record of any humans ever living under this kind of bliss. It’s like the romanticizing of the Native Americans we do. Most of it comes from our guilt. And we should feel some as the beneficiaries of genocide. But Native Americans were pretty damn savage themselves and were brutally killing each other and making silly wars of territory and tribal differences on themselves long before we showed up.

An innocent spiritual state of man has never existed and much of the idea of it is connected to the Eden myth and the myths it itself descended from. Once again tying god, spirituality, and religion together. Call it a utopian metaphor at its best but the truth is that the idea has not had a utopian effect on humanity and we are intellectually advanced enough now to live moral and upright lives without fear of hell and hoped for reward of some kind of heavenly realm or well placed reincarnation. Saying god isn’t responsible for the sins of religion is like saying guns shouldn’t be blamed for what bullets do.

But being the long winded fucker that I am I’ve long since gotten away from my point. That is that we live in a culture where you are judged and convicted in one way or another if you don’t have any belief in something invisible or lack that all important mark of distinction called faith. This idea that faith is a virtue just fills me with so much sadness it’s almost incomprehensible. The people that say this are just lucky that men of invention and progress didn’t feel that way or they’d be pulling carts to market, pissing outdoors, and staring at a very empty place where their TV’s are. Not to mention dying a lot quicker and easier. Which I guess I did just mention. But it’s kind of a biggie.

Belief in nothing simply because it’s unbelievable is not a virtue. It’s a weakness. A flaw. A glitch in rational processing networks. I continue to hear people defend this by saying “that’s why its faith, because it doesn’t have to make sense and wouldn’t require faith if it did.” Or something very much like that. This is the kind of circular self-justifying thinking I think that religion has perpetuated as part of their self defense mechanisms. Just like they’ve brainwashed people into thinking an atheist is a potentially dangerous outlaw from moral goodness and unworthy of trust they have spun myths like those of the tree of knowledge into this self perpetuating idea that questioning the madness and attempting to know too much is evil.

Scripture and holy writings are filled with allusions to this idea that has flat out basically said that its not supposed to make sense because its lack of sense is a test of your faith and worthiness. Questioning it beyond that makes you unworthy and some sort of infidel. It’s the same principle the GOP has been using in this country both in creating the idea that questioning America makes you unpatriotic at best or a terrorist at worst and the propaganda that the media hates them so when they call attention to any lies and inconsistencies in their stories it should be overshadowed by the messenger itself who are made up of godless liberals who have no faith.

And there are so many more connections. Too many to list or for me to begin remembering right here and now. But all point to how religion and its roots have poisoned us and continue to poison. And because decent people wont admit to where they stand on all this they help perpetuate the irrationality. If no one takes a stand for reason will never make a stand.

Or stand a chance.

Instead we continue catering to irrational prejudices and ridiculous ideas like being a person of faith somehow correlates with an earned respect or being hard working true Americans and other such preposterous fictions that don’t hold up to any level of scrutiny operating at a higher level than Sarah Palin.

But they are still axiomatic in America.

Of course I’m not implying that my occasional stands on this issue are influencing anyone. I know very well no one cares what I believe and that I am no paragon of success and standing in society that could make people say “hmm, if he’s an atheist maybe I need to reconsider.” I’m small potatoes and do what I can on my level. The best I can claim for the cause is that when I tell people at work they refuse to believe I’m a complete atheist because they think I’m too trustworthy, nice, hard working or whatever, to be without some faith. Of course I take this as more of a sad commentary on their ignorance than my own good standing in their minds. But I guess it’s a small something in my favor.

But I kid myself not that if I started telling some of these people what I thought of their work attitudes, never mind their beliefs, or pushing them harder on job related issues, they’d suddenly find me less a nice guy and start wondering about that whole atheist thing.

And it’s not just with the types of religiously minded people at work. I see the attitudes from those that are in that more synergetic, synergistic spiritual place I used to be in. Granted they are not all going to draw horrible moral implications but they do form judgments and minimilizations of my beliefs and attitudes simply because they come from an atheist or the type of personality conducive to atheism.

I’ve seen that attitude at play towards me. I’ve heard the stories of others. I’ve seen the statistics. The A word conjures up an immediate bias whether distrust, hate, or just dismissal. It’s not very romantic. I don’t know one woman who would be entirely ok with dating an atheist. Tolerant of one maybe. Spending ones life with one? Nope. And I do have to look back at my earlier religious tolerance and amorphous and Buddhist spiritual periods and se how the expectations of the culture played into them. Let’s face it: modern girls dig a guy who expresses those kinds of thought out and tolerant yet evolved and non dogmatic beliefs. It’s the best of both of worlds satisfying modern desires for a poetic soul and ancient longings for a trustworthy rigidity playing into nesting instincts. And it’s just plain cooler and sexier to express ones self in that way and it has been for a few decades now. Post hippie spirituality or whatever it is, it’s real. and I think like many men drifting almost unconsciously towards the accepted belief system of the desired female in centuries past many of us drift towards this sexier modern variation on god and spirit.

And I could do it. As I’ve said I’ve been there, read the stuff, talked the talk, walked the walk and yes even regaled a few women with my take much to their satisfaction and respect. But I would be dishonest to continue as if I hadn’t learned and experienced so much more since then. And likewise many are out there having experienced and learned so much more that fills them with ideas contrary to the establishment of not only religion but pop culture spirituality. Many of these people are actually in positions of influence and could make a difference by their example and intellectual honesty.

They could push the envelope.

But it’s still the A word.

I love what guys like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and even Bill Maher have been doing. Their challenges and the popular responses are positive moves in the direction of more openness and acceptability. But at this point they can still be dismissed as scientists, humorists, or provocateurs. Without politicians, musicians, actors, athletes and other prominent and accepted figures getting in on it we’ll never have completely honest political discourses during campaigns, we’ll have these lowest common denominator dirty tricks, and many will forever walk around feeling intellectually repressed and alone rather than physical in bondage.

And I’ll take that over physical slavery. Believe me. I am a rationalist after all. But if the stats are on to something there are quite a decent amount of us and most will never find another accept in the blighted nothingness of cyberspace. And people shouldn’t have to live their better lives on the internet. IF irrational forces continue to win the day we may see more of that congresswoman calling for an investigation of un-American elements in Congress and the Senate. She of course means liberal. And to many being godless is part of that description. And though they can’t admit it many of those politicians are almost certainly closer to being an atheist than a Christian. This is part of right-wing code. It’s not a stretch to project this towards a day not too far off where a McCarthyism of faith goes on and not only politicians lose their positions but it costs anybody willing to speak out their jobs.

Or worse.

And if the many who are nowhere near being on the same page with these people don’t come out of the closet they’ll only empower this ideological class-cism. Or at the least if they stop being dismissive of those that are out a counterbalancing force for reason and tolerance can be created. And that will permeate multifold levels of society from politics on down. Because I think some of that dismissive attitude that even some agnostics or undefined spiritualist have is because those that choose the A word label have gone farther than they themselves are going and need to engage in their own private god’s elitism however amorphous he-she-it may be just as much as the religionists do.

Again, humans have similar brain makeups and motivations however differently expressed. I really think if people accepted these facts of anatomy, biochemistry and other disciplines they could see the value of not letting their personal needs color their public choices and instead making external decisions based on the rational. That appreciation can come of further discussion an openness on this issue even if people continued privately to engage their particular religious practices. But only a rational turn brought on by the kinds of disclosures I’ve been talking about are going to get us there.

Granted I wish they’d turn from religion altogether. But the right to not do so is as fundamental as the right to not have religion mixing with public and government in this country. But the latter hasn’t been honored in a long time. And it never will be until more people speak up. That’s the message at the crux of Maher’s Religulous and the efforts of people like Dawkins. I just saw the former and I guess that’s why I’m more moved to go on about this despite the movie not telling me anything I didn’t know. Still well worth seeing and very funny in my opinion. But until more in the public sphere break with our notions of god they will always be as minimilized as most media have still made them despite the success of the movie and the books.

And so will I. Expecting anything else of you requires too great a leap of faith. And as lonely as this world is I won’t take the lure of the apple religion has literally and figuratively offered to draw me into its easy acceptance. At least not yet. And the fact that I have to qualify that statement scares me and proves just how easy it is to fall prey to the bliss of ignorance and the charms of automatic community and companionship. And how much I want things to change before I feel the need to play make believe along with most of them.