Why Are Atheists So Angry?

Sam Harris on the Huffington Post:

While the religious divisions in our world are self-evident, many people still imagine that religious conflict is always caused by a lack of education, by poverty, or by politics. Yet the September 11th hijackers were college-educated, middle-class, and had no discernible experience of political oppression. They did, however, spend a remarkable amount of time at their local mosques talking about the depravity of infidels and about the pleasures that await martyrs in Paradise.

How many more architects and mechanical engineers must hit the wall at 400 miles an hour before we admit to ourselves that jihadist violence is not merely a matter of education, poverty, or politics? The truth, astonishingly enough, is that in the year 2006 a person can have sufficient intellectual and material resources to build a nuclear bomb and still believe that he will get 72 virgins in Paradise. Western secularists, liberals, and moderates have been very slow to understand this. The cause of their confusion is simple: They don't know what it is like to really believe in God.

The United States now stands alone in the developed world as a country that conducts its national discourse under the shadow of religious literalism. Eighty-three percent of the U.S. population believes that Jesus literally rose from the dead; 53% believe that the universe is 6,000 years old. This is embarrassing. Add to this comedy of false certainties the fact that 44% of Americans are confident that Jesus will return to Earth sometime in the next 50 years and you will glimpse the terrible liability of this sort of thinking.

Nearly half of the American population is eagerly anticipating the end of the world. This dewy-eyed nihilism provides absolutely no incentive to build a sustainable civilization. Many of these people are lunatics, but they are not the lunatic fringe. Some of them can actually get Karl Rove on the phone whenever they want.

While Muslim extremists now fly planes into our buildings, saw the heads off journalists and aid-workers, and riot by the tens of thousands over cartoons, several recent polls reveal that atheists are now the most reviled minority in the United States. A majority of Americans say they would refuse to vote for an atheist even if he were a "well-qualified candidate" from their own political party. Atheism, therefore, is a perfect impediment to holding elected office in this country (while being a woman, black, Muslim, Jewish, or gay is not). Most Americans also say that of all the unsavory alternatives on offer, they would be least likely to allow their child to marry an atheist. These declarations of prejudice might be enough to make some atheists angry. But they are not what makes me angry.

As an atheist, I am angry that we live in a society in which the plain truth cannot be spoken without offending 90% of the population. The plain truth is this: There is no good reason to believe in a personal God; there is no good reason to believe that the Bible, the Koran, or any other book was dictated by an omniscient being; we do not, in any important sense, get our morality from religion; the Bible and the Koran are not, even remotely, the best sources of guidance we have for living in the 21st century; and the belief in God and in the divine provenance of scripture is getting a lot of people killed unnecessarily.

I'm not sure where Harris got all his numbers, but they are basically in the ballpark. The "Jesus rose from the dead" number that I could find was closer to 75%. In any event ... scary stuff. If you said that 75% of Americans believe there are aliens, most people would think that the country was obviously delusional and that this country should not have control of a nuclear weapon. So, why is Jesus rising from the dead any different? The amount of proof for either is nonexistent. Some might even argue that there is more compelling evidence for aliens than for the Resurrection.

As Harris puts it, we are now "... a country that conducts its national discourse under the shadow of religious literalism". And this is "unique among wealthy democracies". This is while Japan and the U.K. are among the least religious societies on Earth. Allowing faith to govern you personally is fine. Everyone needs to come to their own truth through whatever path they choose. It's when that "dewy-eyed nihilism" by our leaders allows them to ignore global warming and to provide quaint solutions to the transmission of AIDS (abstinence-only) that we have a problem. Your personal beliefs are now jeopardizing my children and grandchildren. If you don't cash in the bet that you are making, you probably won't be around anyway. But your children and mine will be. And what kind of world will we be leaving them?

"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." -- Stephen Roberts