I really struggled with this post, but in the end felt compelled to put this out there. The election process that we are all being subjected to, the process that will ultimately choose the leader of the free world, is a joke. Instead of intense focus on the candidates’ perspective on the real issues that our nation faces, there is distraction after distraction and meaningless investigation into issues of faith. This is happening with both parties, and with people who may or may not actually be “religious” at all, but our process mandates that they act the part of the pious politician in order to participate and at least have a hope of being elected. During a debate a couple months back three Republican candidates, asked about their views on evolution, expressed concern with its validity, one of them saying that it is as yet unproven. Huh?
I think the Democrats are worse, though. This is because their sudden conversion has more to do with having parity with their Republican counterparts and not alienating the vast majority of people in this country who believe in a god. I get that, but it totally chaps me. What of science, of reason, or rational thought? What of the responsibility to not mislead? It is depressing, really, to realize we have another eleven months of this process and the exposure to candidates who may best be described as disingenuous. What has happened to our country?
I seek reassurance. Something I find interesting is the catalog of confirmed non-believers, of atheists, who have constructively and positively influenced our society and our culture. Here is an incomplete list of known atheists that I find reassuring in these times of feigned religiosity, offered in no particular order:
Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, Noam Chomsky, Sean Penn, Woody Allen, Albert Camus, Arthur C. Clark, Isaac Asimov, Carl Sagan, Benjamin Franklin, Ayn Rand, Charles Darwin, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Bertrand Russel, Kurt Vonnegut, James Madison, John Adams, James Joyce, John Lennon, Walt Disney, Oscar Niemeyer, Frank Lloyd Wright, George Orwell, Charles Schultz, Mark Twain, Thomas Jefferson, Susan B. Anthony, William Howard Taft, Thomas Edison, Stanislaw Lem, Ian McEwan, Richard Dawkins, Richard Dreyfuss, Christopher Hitchens, Steve Wozniak, PZ Meyers, Angelina Jolie, Lance Armstrong, David Attenborough, Eddie Izzard, Penn Jillete, Ira Glass, Dick Cavett, Ingmar Bergman, Clive Barker, J.G. Ballard, Brian Eno, Ferdinand Piech, Gore Vidal, Ted Turner, Bruce Sterling and Steven Soderbergh
I would like to point out that there are five former presidents on this very incomplete list. We can dream. I leave you with the following quote:
“This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there was no religion in it.”
John Adams
Former President and Founding Father of the United States
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