To : Tom Breuer Subj: athiest or not? On 06-02-94 22:22 Tom Breuer commented on athiest

From: Lois Frankel                                     11 Jun 94  07:33
To  : Tom Breuer
Subj: athiest or not?

On 06-02-94  22:22 Tom Breuer commented on athiest or not?,
 to which I exclaim:

TB> did with the way I truly believed. The more stridently
TB> athiests and agnostics deny the existence of God, or the
TB> truth of religious claims, the more they betray religion's
TB> deep hold on them.

You're assuming that such atheists were once religious. I am 
not now, nor have I ever been, religious (nor did any family 
members attempt to thrust religion upon me, since my parents 
are also atheists), yet I have often "stridently" objected to 
religious claims--primarily for three reasons:

1.  As a person devoted to rationality, and educated in the 
methods of reasoning (Ph.D. Philosophy, University of 
California, Berkeley), I am offended, on a purely intellectual 
plane, by such absurdities as religion.

2.  Religious thought (at least of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic 
varfiey that pervades Western society) provokes immorality in a 
number of ways: by encouraging blind obedience to authority, by 
subordinating reason to faith, by enforcing patriarchal 
"morality" that makes some people masters and others slaves, 
and by "inspiring" persecution of those who do not follow the 
party line of "religious correctness."

3.  In the United States, certain religious groups attempt to 
enforce their viewpoint on the rest of us, to subvert the 
separation of church and state.

Yes, if people would keep their religious beliefs to 
themselves, they would be (relatively) harmless. But since 
those beliefs usually involve certain objectional forms of 
behavior towards other people, I don't think we can afford to 
just shrug it off.