Atheism on the rise

So this weekend was kind of strange on the movie viewing scale. Tamile and I ended up watching Religulous and then the first part of Root of all Evil. Both of which are pro-atheism or anti-religion movies. They both brought up a number of the same points and even interviewed some of the same people. The point stressed by both of the films were the dangers and the threats caused by organized religion such as;

• Muslum Terrorist - Who are doing what they do because of their understanding of their faith and how they will be rewarded because of those beliefs.
• Intelligent Design - Christian fundementalists attempts to control what is taught to the children of America.
• Faith based governments - Ruling a society based on faith rather then on fact.
• The Environment - Some Christian fundementalists believe that the Earth was put here for our use.
• Control - The control some faiths put on their members.

Those where not all of the examples but the ones that leap to mind as I type this. In Religulous Bill Maher also went to great length to stress some of the things he found to be the aburdities of faith based believe. which at times made his movie a little funnier than the documentry that Richard Dawkins put together.

The highlights of both had to be the interviews. Both of them spoke with people of various levels in faith based communities and religions. I was most surprised by some of Bill Mahers interviews outside of the Vatican. One points raised by a priest there was the Jesus Christ was number six on a list of Gods or Saints that the people of Italy were likely to pray too.

In the end the thing that struck me most was how little impact this had on my own beliefs. When I held the same light that both Richard and Bill were using to my own faith, I felt it stood its ground fairly well. We don't promote the same violent ideals the others do, we have a pretty free live and let live ideal to the way we live our lifes, we are as a general rule environmentally aware, and finally our belief in personal growth and responsibility tend to make us more aware of what is happening in our world. As opposed to the faiths who are living their lives on this plane of reality only to move forward afterwards into a paradise. That paradise based belief can easily be seen by someone as saying my life will be better after I die. For pagans if we end our lives we only have to come back and do it all over again.

To finish off I wanted to share this CNN article I found "America becoming less Christian, Survey finds."

http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/wayoflife/03/09/us.religion.less.christian/index.html