Live Q&As

As it happens a suit is underway in MA intended to remove god from the pledge on the basis that it does harm to nontheists (a new tactic). I am consulting on that project. The judge refused the 1st attempt by the state to have the case dismissed.

According to recent Harris and Gallup surveys as many as one in five Americans are at least skeptical about the existence of the gods, which at 60 million is similar to evangelicals & Christians. However, a large portion identify as spiritual and may believe in some sort of higher power, so they will not describe themselves as atheists. In any case the discriminatory attitudes against atheists discourage folks from calling themselves that, it's a problem for pollsters (similar to the reluctance by many to admit being liberal or a feminist).

I made a mistake on the last question so will answer 2 of them here.

As far as I know no one has ever run on an atheistic platform. Even in the most secular voting districts it would probably not be a particularly useful position to take.

In some areas such as the southeast and midwest them there atheists probably make up less than 5% of the electorate. On the coasts it will be markedly higher espeically urban areas, maybe a quarter to a third in NYC or San Francisco.

The great majority of nontheists are progressive liberals. However, there is a large minority, maybe a quarter to a third, that are libertarians in the mold of Ayn Rand. For example I have info that David Koch is an atheist.

Of course the Christian Bible contains the 1st explicit description of socialism enforced by death (in Acts), that the religious right is anti-socialists is one of the geat political scams of our time.

Darn right a boss giving someone a Bible etc. is inappropriate. How would he like it if he got a copy of Darwin, or Ayn Rand's views of atheism? Unfortunately religious folks are often very touchy about this sort of thing, so your boss is not likely to be trying to engage in a back and forth.

If it does become a problem over time you might want to show him the WP op-ed this essy is a follow up to. I hear others are using for such purposes.

This atheist boss is being a jerk as well. However, their are issues about religious persons wanting special treatment. That leaves atheists out in the cold yet again.

By all means write your representatives. Heck, send something to Obama. Your activities would be adjusted to where you live. If you are in a fairly liberal secular state you would probably orient more towards the federal level. If you are in a more theoconservative red state local and state politics is important.

There are lobbying groups, including one whose title is something along the lines of Separation of Church and State, you can look them up.

Freethinker is good. I tend to use anti-supernaturalist  since I'm opposed to all forms of unsubstantiated supernaturalistic and paranormalistic belief including god, ghosts (which nearly half of Americans believe in), poltergeists, bigfoots, ESP etc.

You may well have a legitimate complaint. It would be interesting to know how these matters are handled in other western democracies where nontheists are the maority, there is not much research on the subject.

The reason religion matters in the US despite it being the 1st country to go to such lengthes to keep religion out of gevernment is because a large majority are religious, and a major minority insists that religion play a big role in government and society. The theoconservarive  minority has leveraged its power by allying with the corporations withing the Republican Party. As I have pointed out in my research (www.gspaulscience0freligion.com) this is ironic in that the corporate-consumer culture being pushed by capital is doing more than anything else to secularize the country! The way the demographics are going the religious right should become increasing irrelevant in coming decades (new Gallup data even shows creationism starting to slip as proDarwin atheists continue to rise).

I have conducted an extensive comparison of socioeconomic conditions in 1st world countries(www.epjournal.net/filestore/EP07398441_c.pdf) that shows that among other items Americans are overworked. The overall results show that the more irreligious and progressive prosperous democracies are, the better are the societal economics conditions. Folks in secular democracies live longer, don't kill each other nearly as often, have lower abortion, STD, teen preg rates, mental illness and so on. In part this is becuase good societal conditions suppress religiosity, which means it is not possible for a highly religious country to be socioeconomically successful.

Here we get into tricky issues. There is a problem with religious persons who request respect about their beliefs, but are not willing to do so towards others with differing supernaturalist opinions, such as Scientologists or Psychic readings. So I will ask you to consider if you are as tolerant of other's spirituality as you are of yours, to the degree you would think it OK for a president to discuss the issue of ghosts they way they do God.

In the broader picture, the research I am contributing to indicates that what is likely to happen is that in following decades the US will become markedly more secular as has already happened in all other advanced democracies, with the religious right continuing to shrink and lose power (a recent PEW survey found that the Republican base in actually getting smaller, they may prove unable to mount political movements like the Tea Party in the future). If that happens then the church and state issue will largely solve itself.

The problem with this view is that belief in a god is no more or less established than belief in other entities and powers such as ghosts, fairies (which Conan Doyle once wrote a book in support of), astrology and so forth. In this society it is considered entirely legit to strongly criticize paranormal beliefs, so why not religion? It's OK to strongly criticize positions on politics and morality, so why not religion? A forceful debate is a good thing, I am leery of religious persons setting a special protective bubble for themselves.

After lobbying efforts it looks like the military will be accepting atheist chaplins. It's the term for the job description.

Actually, a fair number of Republican libertarians are atheists, David Koch being one. So if you are an Ayn Randian disbeliever the Repubs are an option, not that you are likely to get far (at least until the country secularizes enough that the party has to pay more attention to nontheists).

The only viable belief in that which can be effectively demonstrated to be true, such as the earth being a sphere that orbits the sun, organisms evolving over time, or George Washington being a president. It is not entirely possible to disprove the reality of gods, but the same is true of ghosts and believing in either is not tenable with the current evidence. What can be disproven is the existence of the good God Christians believe in, I published the refutation in the Philosophy & Theology paper at my website. It is one reason trying to run countries on a godly basis won't work.

The United Way is a secular organiation, American Atheists is atheistic of course. Secular merely means it is at least neutral on religion, like our government is supposed to be. Atheist is a subset of that. Religious folks do have a practical point that secular societies do tend to lose religion

You are entirely correct that people of various religious sorts often object to the monotheism often implied by government statements as per the pledge. They often ally with atheists in legal challanges.

Check out Phil Zuckerman's book Society Without God in which he interviews Danes who express exactly the sort of live life and don't worry about the mythical heaven stuff you mention.

There is a correlation between how well run societies are versus how religious they are with the most secular doing the best

(www.epjournal.net/filestore/EP07398441_c.pdf), so the idea that the degree of religiosity does matter cannot be dismissed, although it is usually misunderstood.

Gallup stats show that god disbelievers have quadrupled since the 60s and doubled since the 90s, with 20% these days being nontheistic to some degree. Looks like the US is heading down the secular path like all the rest of the west.

As far as I know yes.

Debating matters is part of being human, so I'm al for it. Good point about doing more about social ills, and it happens that the nations with the best overall conditions for kids are the most atheistic.

You are asking the wrong specific question in that it is probably  not possible to completely disprove the existence of gods. Much more important is whethter a good god can exist. I have gone further than anyone in doing that at in the peer reviewed

(gregspaul.webs.com/Philosophy&Theology.pdf). It shows that the massive loss of the children (50 billion dead kids so far) makes it impossible for a truly loving creator as most Christians believe in to be real. Aside from the cruelty of allowing such massive suffering by children, it wrecks the classic free will hypothesis.

They do it because it still gets votes. In Canada, Europe etc it can actually backfire.

I suspect it could now be done in some of the most secular districts. However, it would hurt anyone shooting for really high office such as gov or prez.

Am not sure who the "Bad" atheists are. Dawkins, Harris? They have been very effective in rallying the base and are serving much the same purpose as in their faces gays have done. The stats show if anything an increase in the rise of atheism since the start of "New" atheism.

Dicey question. Strict Buddhism is actually atheistic, so some consider it a philosophy rather than a religion.