Can atheism be made less awful in 2014?

[WackoJacko]

I suppose I realised, like you, I was an atheist all along too when it came to marking forms.

The Four Horsemen I have a mixed feeling approach to, I am glad atheists are reaching a critical number (thanks to Harris, Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennet and others) whereby it is becoming easier for people to be not only honest with themselves but other people about their atheism.

I suppose I take a Sam Harris/Richard Dawkins approach that the 19 men on 9/11 all had faith, perfect faith so much so that they would be willing (and happy) to die for it. That kind of belief is scary to me and we need to face up to it before anything can be done to tackle it but that's another matter.

9/11, awful as it was (and still is for those impacted), needs to be put into proportion. I will say what I have always said which is that there are good and bad atheists and there are good and bad believers but very few atheists kill in the name of atheism.

Dawkins is a fantastic orator when speaking about science, his books are brilliant but let's remember he's a biologist first and foremost (and a distinguished one at that). I feel it is the length of these books that really allow him to explain matters rather than being constricted to x amount of characters in a Tweet. It is a shame really most people "judge a book by its cover" and say things like 'Oh he's that atheist who wrote that Devil book' and won't entertain any of his ideas when in fact he really is very interesting.

Hitchens, though perhaps not the most likeable character, stuck with his atheism and assured everyone that for him there would be no deathbed conversion and he didn't want rumours otherwise, to not falter from that path is very admirable. He had a fantastic command of language and admitted religion could achieve good but it was outweighed by the many evils and that secular methods could achieve that same good and indeed usurp it .

Dennet takes the compatibilist (soft determinism) approach to free will and reasons it well. I say even if free will is an illusion it makes no difference, it makes no difference to us. I feel as though I have free will even if I don't. And I'd say determinism is sound but it's when they start making these leaps that then we can't be responsible for our actions. Well you've still got to lock someone up if they're going round murdering people to protect the innocent. ("It wasn't me it was my neurons"). There's obviously a little bit of that creeping into everything, responsibility, being adult about things. But yeah it doesn't change a thing. I feel that I make my own choices and if I don't I certainly feel like I'm choosing so yeah it's not even worth worrying about.

Harris speaks his mind, an admirable quality in any case, sadly this is what people brand as "racist". It's not racist, (Just want to clear it up Islam is no a race. Understood? Cool. Moving on.) it's wrong to pick on individual Muslims and blame them for 9/11 obviously but the religion itself is scary.

All of this said, you don't have to be scared of us. It's a nice thing to be an atheist. Atheists are from all walks of life, they're waiters, they're bus drivers, they're taxi drivers, they're people who serve you in shops. We're not strange, weird people.

I do however look forward to the day a critical number of people are "out" as atheists because that will hopefully make it easier for other people and raise consciousness to the fact there's nothing terrible about being an atheist, we're nice people. We just have a slight difference of opinion about the cosmos and the way things are organised.

I also hope consciousness will be raised to the fact that to be an atheist is a realistic aspiration, and a brave and splendid one. You can be an atheist who is happy, balanced, moral, and intellectually fulfilled.

Freedom of speech to me one of the most important things discovered, and I'd fight for that right. And even though I don't believe in God and I treat all religions the same, even though I believe they're wrong, not morally wrong, if someone said, 'We're banning religion,' I'd march to not ban because it's your right to believe what you want, and it's your right to be wrong, and I'll fight for that right.