Miscellanea Agnostica

Today I read an opinion piece in the (UK) Guardian (WebCite cached article) about how the speakers at the recent CPAC conference have, essentially, implied that they are at war with secularism in the US. Secularists and other types of non-believers are no longer welcome — at all! — within the conservative/Rightist movement. The few remaining such folks (the article cites Rep. Ron Paul, R-TX, and N.Y. Times columnist David Brooks as examples) have effectively been marginalized and are ignored by the rest of the movement.

The people who are currently waging the so-called “Culture War” are engaged in a very real struggle which they do, in fact, visualize as a “war.” They believe themselves to be the sole defenders of western civilization, fighting a rearguard action against the forces of “secularism” (which they variously label “secular humanism,” “secular progressives,” etc.). They truly believe that “Secularism” is trying to destroy them utterly. In their minds, their very lives are at stake!

Their effort, of course, is to make the U.S. into what they want it to be … a religious country in which everyone is Christian like themselves (except perhaps for Jews, but even that’s not a sure thing). Toward that end they have rewritten history to make it appear that the country was — in their words — “founded on Christianity” (even if this is a lie; WebCite cached article).

Furthermore, they present themselves as the sole remaining arbiters of morality in the world and claim that “Secularism” is equivalent to lawlessness and immorality, a system in which everyone preys freely on each other, as viciously as they can, and in which atrocities are not only possible, but common. The forces of “Secularism” wish to conquer the US (they think), impose tyrannical “socialism” or even “communism” on the country, and — if needed — slaughter people by the millions in order to retain control. (They know this, of course, because Josef Stalin and Pol Pot did pretty much the same thing in the USSR and Cambodia respectively, and they somehow know that all Secularists in the US live to emulate these two heroes of their movement.)

In short … these religionist Rightists live in a world of delusion, in which there is no difference between merely not being religious, and wanting to utterly destroy religion and kill everyone who is religious; or between merely being a “secularist,” and being a vicious, bloody, evil autocratic tyrant who lives to slaughter people by the million.

In short, they cannot tolerate non-believers or the irreligious, because — in their delusional world — they consider the mere existence of such people to be a very real, vital threat to their own lives. They will tolerate nothing other than total capitulation to their own religion.

Since that is the case, I’m posting this “Non-Believer’s Manifesto.” Not that I presume to speak for all non-believers — no single person or even an organization can do that — but because I am one non-believer with one response to the religionists’ challenge:

Thank you all for your time.

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