Tag Archives: atheists

Another stake through the heart of “religious freedom”

Well…finally, the supreme court the other day drove a stake through another claim of “religious freedom” from a case in Washington State when they turned aside claims by some religious pharmacists who claimed that to have to fill prescriptions for birth control violated their first amendment rights to their free practice of religion. Now, maybe, this will drive religion back to where it belongs, in churches and not being used to force these fanatic’s warped view of religion on their customers….one thing that struck me was Alito’s petulant dissent that the only source of moral and ethical behavior is religion and by not allowing people to force their religion on others, religious freedom will die….that’s a paraphrase, not an actual quote but you get the meaning…and, as an atheist, I take extreme exception to this religious fool trying to tell we atheists can’t be moral or ethical…but, I assert that an atheist choosing to live his or her life morally or ethically without the fear of retribution that comes with religion puts our morality and ethics on a different level than when derived from religion….after all, with no hell to fear or no vengeful god to appease, we live moral and ethical lives because it is the right thing to do…and it’s our choice….

Here’s the thing…

Well…have had this one percolating away in my head for the past couple of weeks once I read a screed by one of the “Christians” on the right that was an attack on we atheists and our values…saying that you can’t be a good person or have values that contribute to society without religion. I’ve got news for all of these supposed “Christians”…we do okay without religion and here’s why…we do have values of our own, values that include treating everyone as we would like to be treated and trying everyday to be a better person than the day before…and, here’s the key…we do that because it’s the right thing to do and WE decided that it is…it wasn’t decided in response to some threat from an imaginary super being that lives in the sky…it wasn’t decided to get any “reward” in an imaginary afterlife…it wasn’t decided to avoid the punishment of an imaginary hell that religious people are afraid of. We of the rational persuasion look at the world for the reality that it is and know the only hope for a better one is for us to do something about it…not to waste our time wishing and praying that things will magically be different. We also know that this is the one and only life and the only reward there is is to do the best we can to live a good one….and that’s what most of we atheists do….and we won’t be denigrated by those that believe in fantasy and magic…go live your lives in your fantasy world but leave us alone to live in the real one….