>>>This is something I wrote on August 1st, 2005.<<<

I’ve made a couple posts giving contradicting angles on where atheists stand in our society. In the first, I argued pop culture, and American daily life in general, is atheistic. In another, I made a joking proposal on improving the image of atheists, but noting that there’s a real problem. When making the second, I vaguely felt the true situation was paradoxical, but couldn’t exactly describe it.

A recent incident illuminated, for me, exactly what’s going on.

I showed this article from /InsideHigherEd/ to my girlfriend, a wiccan, and asked what she thought. Her response was, roughly, “Good. I don’t want my doctor telling me ‘ you can be cured if you accept Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior.’” Perfectly normal type of reaction. Based not on the idea that religion is bad, but the desire not to be told one’s own is inferior.

So doctor’s refrain from saying “you can be cured if you accept Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior.” Ditto saying the Shahadah, practicing Buddhist meditation, or performing a Wiccan ritual. Doctors end up acting /as if/ none of it’s true. Repeat for all aspects of society.

End result: mainstream histories of various religions, unobjected to by religious people, explain everything in human terms, treating the possibility of real revelation as too trivial to mention. A reader unfamiliar with Bertrand Russels’ attacks on religion could read /The History of Western Philosophy/ without noticing the strong atheistic subtext, but only because such is the subtext of mainstream history. The religious still don’t rebel, however, because they’d rather have people act as if their beliefs are false than explicitly say so.

Nonetheless, the country still feels it very important to have /a/ religion, even if it can’t decide which one. Hence the inviability of atheist politicians. And, hence, feelings of discomfort in society from both the religious and irreligious.