Atheism and Freedom

During the past year there has been quite a backlash against religion. I'm thinking here in particular about Richard Dawkins' book 'The God Delusion' and Christopher Hitchens' book 'God is not Great'.

I've been an atheist for most of my life. And as an an atheist I'm free, free of fear (of God, fairies, Flying Spaghetti Monster or any other made up deity) and free to think for myself. I have no need waste my time attending pointless ceremonies to venerate a supernatural creator. I don't have to take the unexplained 'on faith'. I have no fear that I'll be subject to unending torture because I might have missed some pointless ceremony or been judged to have fallen short of a standard of behaviour that just about nobody will ever achieve.

Religion has been and still is used to keep people in line. There's not really much difference between Religious states, Communist states and other fascist states. The fact that Communist countries are 'godless' or atheistic is irrelevant. The object of the fascist state is pursuit of the power to control people's lives not the pursuit of atheism or religion for their own sake.

Am I a moral person? I like to think so. I obey man made laws. I like to think I treat people decently but that's not because of some 'faith' but because I'm a human who's brain has evolved this innate behaviour and whose behaviour has been learnt from his parents, teachers and peers.

Finally as an atheist I don't think that my lack of belief in a supernatural creator should be forced on anybody or that I should be able to 'prove' that a supernatural creator doesn't exist. I would ask those who think that atheists should be able to prove that God doesn't exist to prove that the Invisible Pink Unicorn or the Flying Spaghetti Monster don't exist, I'm sure they wouldn't believe such ridiculous notions.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_spagetti_monster and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_Pink_Unicorn