I’ve received a few emails (okay, very few) from readers asking me why I don’t seem to be doing much if any writing concerning atheism. The reason is simple: there’s really not much to write about. I mean, I can replay the same old tropes, in their current form based on what I happen to read about, but there’s really nothing, iin my mind, noteworthy of any commentary. Times have changed where, just a few years ago, there was plenty to write about, or produce a podcast. Today, people, most, seem to have moved on to their lives, as they should.
I’m still willing to write about atheism, when there’s something that’s not just a rehash based on current events like when some town won’t take down a cross or remove “In God We Trust” from their city hall. That’s all it seems to be about today and yes, I’m all about separation of church and state but to be honest, it becomes boring after a while. Al those people that deny evolution? Well, instead of writing on it over and over here’s my final word to those people: go buy a book. If those same people want to believe that a bronze age book has all the scientific answers they’ll ever need? Great. Just like anything else, whatever you want to do in the privacy of your own home, go for it. Just don’t ask everyone else to listen to your nonsense or force everyone else’s children to learn it.
that’s pretty much alll there is to discuss and of course, writing here, I am doing nothing more than those that attend a religious service: I’m preaching to the choir. It’s rarw today to find anyone comment on atheist blogs anymore that are religiously oriented and disagree. I don;t think I’ve scared anyone away, it’s just that they don’t care what atheists think of their belief and that’s okay. I’m the same way about their belief.
I’ll still write about atheism, when I think there’s something new and interesting to discuss, but right now, there are so many other everyday topics that involve everything but atheism to write about nowadays.
Conservative Skeptic 
I’ve always thought that we should lose interest in atheism because it should become irrelevant, assuming that religious belief declines. Unfortunately, it isn’t declining at the same rate everywhere. I see little evidence of any decline here in Mississippi, and that probably has something to do with why I still write about it. I think that the audience for blogs on any topic has shrunk considerably in the last 10-15 years. That makes it hard to know whether people are losing interest in atheism, blogs, or both.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I was thinking about, just a few years ago, how many “active atheists” there were online when I wrote this piece. Today, many of those same people are still around, but I never see them mention anything about atheism, or even skepticism, anymore.
LikeLike
Vjack,
I live in Mississippi as well. RURAL Mississippi at that.
Religious belief in MS definitely gets its batteries recharged during an election year. Especially since they slapped the new logos on the license plates.
My family knows I’m a non-believer, but they take no issue with it. In fact they prefer not to make it an issue. Its just something we don’t discuss openly. They don’t judge or throw scripture at me. In fact I haven’t seen any of them in a church since I was a small child. If they were in one recently it was a funeral or a wedding. I would classify them as secularists. They believe in god, but they’ve got way too much class to try and impose their beliefs on anyone else.
There are at least less than half a dozen Christian denominations that have knocked on my door in the last 10 years, got to know me for a few minutes, and now knock no more.
LikeLike
Oh Jack, that is funny. I had no idea you lived in a region of the country that was as overtly Christians as mine. Well…not funny, but you know. What are you going to do? I just live my life, often interact with Christians and we get along. It is for each to decide for his or herself (and any other sort of self) whether to be confrontational or not. I chose not. Religion is declining, even if deity belief is not. I am not going to spend my life fighting something that is of the least importance to me. I know who I am. I know how we are raising our young ones and if others never know that we are atheists, I don’t care. Too much else to worry about in this country and the world.
LikeLike
I will always be a skeptic. Skepticism is humble. I find humility in the pursuit of truth, not the presumption of it.
I’m an atheist, but I don’t love atheism. I don’t crusade for it, carry a flag for it, knock on doors for it, pull public crosses down, try to get churches bulldozed, or try to pull plugs on nativity scenes. Which is why I’m a secularist, not a totalitarian. Does that mean I respect religion or theology? No. I don’t care for either, unless it threatens my freedoms, then I care about em the same way I care about typhoid or rabies.
Atheism, for me, is nothing more than just a single position I hold on a single issue until religion can meet their burden of proof. That’s it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Absolutely agree with you, Anon. My son used to say when asked about God, that he simply does not ever consider it. Not part of our lives. Makes for interesting forum discussions, however, but there are better ways to represent ethical atheism than fussing about it. Living it, even online, is one of them.
LikeLiked by 1 person
With religion such as it is, firmly ingrained, progress is slow to educate the faithful. There is a different track that might work. God and all gods are irrelevant because the supernatural realm doesn’t exist. The world of the supernatural, the great beyond is a creation of the human mind. The delusion was excusable back then, but humans should be a bit smarter after all this time. Religion is a scam selling the delusion of heaven and an afterlife. The supernatural was created by the human brain way back, when it had a lot of explaining to do and made up a lot of the answers. . GROG
LikeLiked by 1 person
My point was simply this: Not long ago there was a lot of online traffic from atheists. Today? Not so much even though many of the same people are there.
LikeLiked by 2 people
What sites are there? I’m not into many. Thanks
LikeLike
Unless, Grog, there is something that we don’t know about yet, something weird, yet not unexpected, which might have given rise to deity belief. Possible, yet not probable…but possible. Who knows what might be found a few centuries down the road.
Wouldn’t you love to be around to find out such stuff? I would, but my body won’t last that long…reincarnation with intact memory? Hmmm…
LikeLike
It is interesting seeing the panorama unfold. The situations around the world are truly mind boggling. That’s what is great about life, another day to be part of the show. GROG
LikeLiked by 1 person
Grog, that is the problem with delusions; the mind in which they occur has a great deal of trouble ignoring them. And, if they bring comfort, there is little need to encourage it to. Faith in their deity means too much to believers for them to consider they are suffering from a delusion, even when that faith demands the ultimate sacrifice. I don’t think there will ever come a time when the gods aren’t a part of the human story.
LikeLike
The delusion will continue so long as parents keep telling the story to their children about heaven and their heavenly father! As Sam Harris said, “… it is obvious that an utter revolution in our thinking could be accomplished in a single generation: if parents and teachers would merely give honest answers to the questions of every child.” This is in the Epilogue of The End of Faith, p.224. GROG
LikeLiked by 1 person
Oh gosh, there are still some rabid forum sites in the atheist world online. I deleted them from my bookmarks, but there are search engines one could use, if one chose.
LikeLike
So you don’t think the fact that 42% the adult population of the USA believes that we are in the “end times” (Pew Research Center) and that Jesus is due down here any time soon, is worth ridiculing? Not even when you consider that many of them are looking forward to global nuclear obliteration? And that several of those could be holding responsible positions within government and the military? Atheists have fallen asleep at the wheel. My new web site is http://DynamicAtheism.com and it is designed to upset not only godists but drowsy, moralistic atheists as well.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Well, AA, it is nothing new, as for many hundreds of years they have been expecting the return of Jesus, etc. Sometimes I think we must be in end times, just not the Biblical one. I worry much more that Islamists could be holding “responsible positions” that could effect TEOTWAWKI. After all, waiting for it is not instigating it.
Oh gawd, I am so drowsy today in my moralistic morass. Well, heck, that IS how you spell “morass.” I am surprised that “South Park” never used the word…
Yeah, I will visit your site, AA. Are you outraged by Conservative Atheists? Just so I am prepared, cuz I got so tired of the idiocy of Lunatic Left Atheists a long time ago. Talk about moralistic asses…
-Jeanne
LikeLike
Kermit the frog! Really? Kermit the frog?
LikeLike
EXCUSE ME… Where are the naked men on your website front page? You are obviously one of those sexist pig adolescent males, who need to exploit women for your gain. Disappointed…tsk, tsk. I thought you were a semi-intelligent serious minded atheist set to bring us old folk to outrage over the “rule of Christians” in America. Kermit the frog now makes sense.
From AA’s site:
<>
If you could have stated that without the T&A, I might have continued. As I can’t abide curry, I guess I should just roll up into a ball and die. Wait, I like sex, humour (oh a Brit, eh?) and Music, except Rap and most Hip-Hop and Jazz without melody. I could be an atheist! LOL
LikeLike
Jim, what happen to the edit button?
From AA’s website:
WARNING – This web site contains material that will offend some atheists. If you are one of those conservative types who insists that an atheist web site should be dull, boring, stuffy and righteous, kindly leave the room.
To me, Atheism without Sex, Humour and Music is like rice without the curry. My life has been a rich mixture of all four components and I have no regrets about anything. Well, I do have a few, but that’s another story…
LikeLike
Sorry, but this year, I downgraded from “business class” to “personal” which means anything I installed for users, went away. I’m not going to pay $300/yr for a blog when it’s not for any business purpose. I can afford it, but it’s really an expense without a purpose.
I don’t know what you’re referring to specifically about AA’s site. If he doesn;’t like conservatives, fine. I won’t subscribe or even visit and comment. It sounds from that which you quoted, he doesn’t want us around.
On the other hand, I don’t discriminate at all. I don’t care about political or social ideology. Say what you will here as long as it’s not a personal attack against someone else.
LikeLike
No, I am okay without an edit button. I had no idea it cost anything to have one on the site.
AA’s site is full of T & A and I didn’t go past the link to the Home Page. Because I am a “drowsy, moralistic atheist” like you, I am not interested in finding out how outraged AA is at me or you, nor in being further upset.
I will behave myself from here on out and not attack adolescent idiots when they diss old conservative, ethical atheists that are standing in the way of total destruction of Christians and Christianity.
How can you claim that you do not care about political or social ideology? As a conservative skeptic, it is what you blog about. Shouldn’t I be confused?
LikeLike
What I was referring to was that I don’t care who comments here. The person may be liberal, progressive, or conservative. They may like or dislike what I write about. Just don’t be nasty and make personal attacks. That’s the only real rule.
LikeLike
Got it.
LikeLike
I have an atheist blog, but I don’t write as much as I used to. I’ve pretty much said all I want to say there.
But I write a lot of commentary on others’ blogs, and a lot of that is not about atheuim as it is respect for atheism, and atheists. Religious believers read what the ignorant write about atheists, and pass it on as truth. Meanwhile, what they are saying is as far from truth as it is possible to be. So I challenge them to learn the truth. Most ignore my challenges, they prefer their “fake news” to reality. Every once in a while, however, I give someone pause to reconsider what or who atheists really are. We are not their enemies, and while we might not be friends, there us no reason not to be.
And I will go on doing this, because there is so much bullshit out there about us. We deserve respect as much as anyone else, and we don’t earn it by confrontation. We earn it by being reasonable, and treating others reasonably. Is that too much to ask? For some, yes, they refuse to be reasonable. But there are some who are willing to listen, and learn. They are our allies. And everyone needs allies.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Rawgod, you must ignore my initial posts on this topic, as I was overindulging my pissed-off self that I keep in most of the time.
Yeah, me too. For more than a decade, I have tried to be a reasonable atheist, who presents as any other friendly person seeking civil discourse, while representing ethical atheism from a place of love and not hate and encouraging mutual respect.
As conservatives, our best allies are Christians in the political realm. I have more in common with most of them, then I do with atheists.
LikeLike
That is to be expected, but not being a conservative (I am in fact a responsible anarchist as I believe in govt equally as much as I believe in gods), the closest I can say I am to a normal political/economic system I will admit to is being a socialist.
LikeLike
Oh, are you a Voluntaryist, then?
LikeLike
Never heard of a voluntaryist. I believe people should be allowed to learn to become responsible for themselves which they are not allowed to do in our present societies. They are taught to rely on the corrupt entities of religion and capitalism/government. And the longer it takes those entities to give up control, the longer it will be before all living beings can be totally free. That is what I have believed for 50 years now, and I see no reason to change.
LikeLike