By August Berkshire

When dealing with religious people, I can usually maintain a calm, even friendly, demeanor.  This is because I think atheists have already won the intellectual argument (whether religious people acknowledge it or not), and now we need to win the emotional argument and the political argument.

 

But when it comes to politics, reason is often lost on Religious Right politicians who wish to increase their power and impose a theocracy on the rest of us. This year has been one of the worst in that regard that we have seen for a long time.
And so it was that when it came to our Day of Reason event inside the Minnesota State Capitol, I spoke in terms more harsh than I usually use. I believe it was warranted.

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America is under attack by Religious Right Christians. They are attacking women, gay people, workers, voters, doctors, our educational system, our healthcare system, nonChristians, and the poor.

Their policies will result in a loss of civil rights, intolerance, ignorance, illness, suffering, poverty, physical violence, and death.
There seems to be very little they won’t do to appease their jealous, bloodthirsty god. There seems to be very little they won’t do to desperately try to beat back the tide of knowledge, equality, and freedom that is in the process of relegating their religion to the dustbin of history.

Confronting this assault, we who are celebrating this Day of Reason must stand strong and redouble our efforts to promote health, education, freedom, and equality.

If we are to have faith, it must be faith in our fellow Americans, especially young people, to throw off the shackles of superstition and restore our country to the ideals of the Enlightenment from which it sprang.

To paraphrase the atheist and humanist Bertrand Russell, through science and compassion we can make this world a better place to live in.

Thank you for coming here today. Let us turn a Day of Reason into a Lifetime and a Society of Reason.