Our Humanity, Naturally

long live Jesus!

I'm one of those weirdos that while I believe in the divine have no use for religion. So I find this article very promising. Religions are meant to be divisive in the way nationalism is.

I find some aspects of this article just as divisive as it suggests religious groups to be. For people who claim to be scientific and open minded, whether you believe religion to be a delusion or not the fact is that many people benefit from religion psychologically and otherwise. You describe groups like the SSA as "a sensible means of combating religiously motivated activism." You are either making the assumption that all activism undertaken by religious groups is bad, or for some reason just want to combat all religious activism because you dislike the idea of religion influencing anything. Either way, you're ignoring the great prosocial behavior and contributions of religious groups to various communities, including but not limited to caring for the poor and destitute, the environment, and civil rights. You may scoff at that last one because of many "religious countries'" track records, but the religions themselves call for good while politically motivated individuals contort the religion for their own means.
Your comment about the "religiously motivated 9-11 terrorists" also is making the assumption that the religion itself is to blame when the vast majority of the Islam's believers condemn the attacks and will swear that the religion does not in any way condone or allow such acts of violence. You also completely ignore the sociopolitical motivations of the attacks that far, far outweigh any religious motivation. Religion has proven to be a very effective scapegoat for all parties.

Maybe the 9/11 terrorists would not have committed their acts if they were atheist. Maybe Hitler and Stalin wouldn't have committed theirs if they feared punishment from God. I don't think blaming religion or non-religion is the answer. It's more important to work towards peaceful coexistence with all beliefs. That may sound naive, but even without religion people will find other things to divide themselves with. You can't wipe out everything. Might as well try and work together with what we have.

hitler was christian thats why he wanted to kill jews and homosexuals and the pope was in favour of him
nazis wore GOTT MIT UNS in their belts, which means god is in our side, stalin thought he was god and was raised religious
about me, my family was persecuted by the spanish catholic inquisition and a lot of "sinners" or jews were killed or tortured.......

find it funny/cool that the biggest group of atheists were at Harvard...as Satoshi Kanazawa asked in a previous blog if there was a link between being atheist and intelligent people. heh

The growth of the SSA is a very encouraging development in a number of ways.

For example, I hope I live to see the day when competence and good ethics are more important traits in the election of our political leaders than a willingness to kowtow to primitive religious superstitions.

It's young people like those leading the SSA who will help that day arrive!

I'm sorry, but I have to take SERIOUS issue with the assertion that today's campus atheist activists are "Well funded"....

I'll start by saying I'm speaking from a place of experience, having helped organize the Dalhousie Atheist Community for a few years ( http://dalhousieatheists.ca/ ) here in Halifax, NS. I am intimately familiar with the avenues available (not not available, as it were) for obtaining student group funding. Usually, the student union will offer a $200-500 grant at the beginning of the year to groups that apply, and this varies widely between institutions. That's usually IT unless the group organizes some form of fundraiser on their own.

I'd like to think, yes, that we're slightly better organized. That's owed in part to the recent success of books by the new atheists, and partly to organizations like CFI On Campus and the Secular Student Alliance, but when you look at the cultural competition (e.g. Campus Crusade for Christ, which has an annual operating budget surpassing $500 MILLION DOLLARS), this assertion falls pathetically flat on its face. The parent organization of our biggest affiliate hub (CFI On Campus) has an annual (national) budget of only maybe $2 million dollars.

The other, the Secular Student Alliance, is run by gracious wage slaves who work 40+ hour weeks for paltry salaries paid almost entirely through donations by the affiliated groups, so the author of this article can go fuck himself, actually... (*slightly miffed*)

By the way, a one-time 'large' donation (whatever that means) to the SSA like the one mentioned in this article DOES NOT somehow ensure eternal financial liquidity.... Campus Crusade for Christ on the other hand has hundreds of churches and religious organizations funneling money into their coffers year-round.

Don't make shit up, please. People tend to notice.

I should mention that BOTH the SSA and CFI are run by gracious wage slaves.

The SSA might be growing, but will it keep all of those members--and for how long? As people age and have their own children there is often something that makes them re-visit the question of God's existence. A good number of these people will return to God or find God for the first time. All those secular sociologists in the 1960s who predicted the end of religion would come have been proven wrong. I have a good number of agnostic and atheist friends and I love them. But most often the reasons they give for their atheism are recurring philosophical themes (such as the problem of evil) or reasons that stem from not having a sophisticated philosophical understanding of God (who caused God?--as if God were a physical being). Fortunately, there are whole bunch of sophisticated scientists and theologians who are answering these questions in books that engage the new atheists. Religion, because it speaks to the spiritual nature in man will never be eradicated from the earth.