I don;t know if that I’m just used to being denigrated, being an atheist, that the volume on atheism has retreated, or that I just don’t care (and never have) about anyone’s opinion about my beliefs/disbelief. I’ve never hidden being an atheist. I don’t go around evangelizing atheism, but if the topic of spiritual belief comes up amongst friends and I’m asked, I have no problem letting everyone know that I’m a non-believer. So what? There was a time, yes even during my lifetime, when it was not so much acceptable to be a Mormon and in my parents lifetime, Catholicism was looked upon very skeptically (JFK had to actually say, in 1960 that if elected, the Catholicism would not guide his policies.) and I’m certain of you ;ppl around just a bit, you’ll find people who are prejudiced toward other religions or denominations. Consider Islam, as an example.

I don’t recall, as a kid, being prejudiced toward anyome for anything. Of course, my dad was in the military and our friends and neighbors, on base, were of pretty much every race, creed, and color. I never knew, for instance, what racism eas, until my dad retired, in 1969. What a wakeup that was! In the town where we lived, there was a road that separated where the black people lived and where the white people lived. No. I’m not kidding. Hispanics were ”sort of white” (yes, I was told that at the time) so they were treated differently. It would be an understatement to say the situation was odd to me. I’ve lived my life the way I was raised: not to look at or judge anyone by anything other than who they were. Oh, my parents, although being staunch Democrats, were not very liberal, but they were human beings that believed in the equality of everyone.

It surprised me the other night, while I was listening to a TV show, I think it was one of the opinion shows on Fox where I heard something that made me actually start paying attention to the segment. Unfortunately, what I heard was at the end but it was enough that I stopped ehat I was doing and had to ask myself if, even today, there were people that were that dumb. My answer, to myself was of course, yes, there are people that dumb. And now they’re on TV. I don’t know if people realize or not, but atheism is not an ideology like conservatism or liberalism. Atheism is not a political party although most polls show a majority of atheists vote liberal (in the US). I have to remind some friends of mine, most conservatives, but a few libersals as well, that atheists do not worship Satan. Seriously. How hard is it for anyone to look up in a dictionary the basic definition of atheism? There are some that take atheism a bit further than what it was meant, but overall, I think the majority of atheists are what I would call ”dictionary atheists” in that they doubt the existence of god(s).

So I digress. The show that was on, I think they were discussing the state of America since 9/11/2001. Are we better off than then? Etc. One commenter couldn;t help but say that in the last decade at lest there has been a rise of those that would take away rights of Americans:Marxists, Communists, (blah, blah), Atheists. That’s what caught my attention. After all this time, on national TV, one of the reasons America is going to hell in a hand basket (my dad used to use that expression) is because of atheists. As far as I know, atheists are not that well organized to be able to cause trouble for any society anywhere. there’s some twenty or so countries where we’re hunted. In around fourteen of the same, we can be put to death for just being non-believers. In America? We don;t have much of a voice and even if Antifa and Black Lives Matter, as well as the Proud Boyd were rife with atheists, well, they certainly don’t advertise that do they? Can you think of an organized group that are made up mostly of atheists? If so, do you have the power to herd cats?