First, let's get this out of the way. Yes, IN GENERAL atheists have a harder time with their belief system than I do. As a Jew I still don't fit in everywhere (I still get really oogy every time I'm at somebody's house for dinner and the grace for said dinner makes reference to Jesus Christ), but because essentially Jews and Christians believe in the same God I can make do. In theory, I could run for public office without fear of disclosing my religion, and though I would run into some anti-Semitism it wouldn't be nearly as bad as an atheist would have it if he/she attempted to run as an Atheist. MY "persecution," however, is in a lot of ways more insidious than the general problems atheists have, because atheism in a lot of ways is a left/right thing--most of the atheists I know are on the political left, and it's fairly easy to move somewhere more progressive and accepting of * gasp * not believing in a God.
As a progressive who IS religious, I don't have that option. I get harassed by people who are supposed to be my friends and ideological allies because I am stupid enough to believe in God.
The thing is with a lot--not all, mind you, but a lot--of atheists I know is that they are in many ways as fundamentalist as the wackos on the Christian Right we know and love. Whether being born to parents who are atheist/agnostic to begin with or to parents who tried to raise them in a religious tradition, they have come to the decision either that there is no way of knowing that God exists or that He/She/It does not exist altogether. This, on its own, is fine. I am a bit of an agnostic myself--I'm probably about 98% that God exists, but there's that little niggling bit that isn't sure. And I'm OK with the little niggling bit.
What pisses me off is when people go off on screeds on religion as a whole, assuming that because the Religious Right is completely misinterpreting their own scriptures it stands to reason that religion as a whole is debunkable; when they say stuff like "You're an intelligent guy--how can you believe in God?"; when, as in the comments in Pounder's original diary, it is implied that atheists are more moral because while religious people are working off an incentive/punishment model, atheists do the right thing for the sake of doing the right thing. (Never mind that theists can ALSO do the right thing for the sake of doing the right thing, such as in Judaism where the whole concept of an "afterlife" is played down significantly.)
Believe it or not, folks, religion and rationality CAN co-exist! Let's take that most inflammatory of issues, creationism, as an example. I, personally, am an Old-Earth Creationist--I have seen too much of how this world is complex and beautiful and terrible and all at once to believe that the universe does not at the very least have a Watchmaker. Before you lynch me for being a right-wing mole, however, please note that my belief in this theory is RELIGIOUS IN NATURE ONLY. Unlike our friends in Kansas or rural Pennsylvania who want to put creationism/ID in science textbooks, I think that creationism, whatever the hell you call it, is at its core unscientific--there is actual, physical proof that evolution occurred, and creationism is just something you read in a book with no outside verification, or even the CHANCE of outside verification. So, I would never impose my belief that Something gave the universe a "push" to start the Big Bang and the evolutionary process, and ESPECIALLY I would refuse to teach it outside of a religion class because it is only that--a belief, and a personal one at that. Yet how many of you started to write a flame when you saw the words "I, personally, am an Old-Earth Creationist"? Even if someone is able to separate the "How" (Science) from the "Why" (Religion), there are people waiting to yell at them for even insinuating that there can be a religious component to the issue.
I am so sick of the implication by people on this side of the political spectrum that religion is the root of all evil. Folks, I don't know about the people who make the nightly news and are the talking heads on Faux News, but I belong to a LIBERAL religious tradition. Religion, in my worldview is not there to be the "Fire and Brimstone bum-bum-bum-bum ROW, YOU BASTARDS" so many people seem to think it is; Religion is there to uplift the downtrodden, to provide shelter to the unsheltered and food to hungry--the liturgy I read says all this, because as Jews are reminded every year at Passover "You too were once strangers in the Land of Egypt." It really isn't my fault that Fundamentalist Christians have co-opted the perception of what religion is supposed to be about; I have to try that much harder to counteract the negative perception through working towards social justice, but because the psychotic people are on TV, my work, and that of my the other religious progressives, goes largely unnoticed.
Also? It's been said before, but it bears repeating that the patronizing and condescending attitude toward religion on the parts of many people on the left is really harmful to the Democrats come election season. For better or worse, America has a fundamentally religious culture. I am not asking atheists and agnostics to buy into that culture or even to stop their crusades for the separation of church and state. (I am as much for that separation as anyone, despite my religiosity, for the same reasons I'm against teaching creationism in schools--religion should absolutely be a personal and private affair.)What I am asking for is acceptance of the culture. What do you think the Hindrockets and Jonah Goldbergs of the world think when they come over here for opposition research and see comments like those in the response to the Pounder diary? And I know a lot of you don't care what Jonah Goldberg thinks, but you should, because the man has an audience. If he convinces said audience that us libruls as a whole are Godless Heathens, that counts electorally as an Ungood Thing.
This really isn't a screed against atheism/agnosticism. I have nothing but respect for people who have determined that they are secure enough to admit that they don't know about such things, or that they see the workings of life empirically (honestly I wish I could do that). I am just asking for the same level of respect--the acknowledgment that just because someone is religious doesn't make them a total nutjob.
I am a religious Jew. And I am a progressive liberal. And I am ashamed of neither.