Yesterday I linked to an article which demonstrated new lows in an assault on atheism. Luckily, today there are a couple articulate letters rebutting the article.
The first letter from Jonathan Williams lays out a nice atheist creed:
I do not believe in deities mainly due to the lack of empirical evidence to their existence.
Natural phenomena can and should be explained without resorting to the divine.
One can live a moral life without the promise of a reward or the fear of punishment.
People should be judged by their actions, not by their beliefs.
It is easier to follow and obey than it is to create and to learn.
I value life because it is fragile, fleeting and finite.
Humans knows they exist and thus believe they are too important to cease to exist.
One doesn’t believe who doesn’t live according to his belief.
Truth cannot be determined by majority vote.
The moral is the rational.
The study of ethics pre-dates Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
The basis for ethics is empathy.
Happiness is the only good. The place to be happy is here. The time to be happy is now. The way to be happy is to make others so.
The second article from Julian Peterson identifies the extreme intolerance in the article:
Blinded by his own bigotry, the writer fails to see what is patently obvious to the rest of us: that this article crosses the line of good taste and that it serves to reinforce, through misinformation those negative stereotypes long prescribed for atheists.
Finally, Nicole Gaal also points out the discrimination:
To be placed in the same category as Hitler and a few other tyrants is utterly ridiculous. Even to be called rude and told my belief is odd just because it is different from yours is close-minded
The best thing to note, however, is all three letters came from atheists in Colorado Springs! No need for a (inter)national letter writing campaign, just make sure you fight ignorance and intolerance at home.