TONY MONCHINSKI

America can be a very scary place to live if you’re not religious. Not as scary as Saudi Arabia, Israel or any territory overseen by the Taliban, but still a far cry from the freedom of (and from) religion enjoyed in many European countries. What frightens me most about America’s religion fetish is not the frothing, screaming supporters of Alabama’s self-proclaimed Ten Commandments Judge, Roy Moore, but the way nonbelievers are looked down upon by believers.

Look, let’s get a few things straight from the get-go. I’m an atheist and I make no qualms about it. People always ask me, Do you believe in god? But that’s a loaded question. Asking if I believe in god supposes there is a God to believe in. Show me proof of a god, any god and I might change my mind.

As a non-theist, I’m confident there are no gods, heavens, here-afters, whatevers. If I’m wrong and there is and I show up at a set of pearly gates, I suspect I’ll cop an attitude similar to that voiced by Groucho Marx when he said he wouldn’t want to be part of any club that would want him as a member. If I’m right and this is all there is, I’ll never know, nor will any theist.

Does the thought of nonexistence after death trouble me? On a certain existential level it leads to many nights lying in bed staring at the ceiling, but I always figure death is going to be similar to the point in time before I was born.

One thing I like a lot about America is our separation of church and state. Unfortunately the Bush administration is taking concerted steps to tear down that wall. Army Lt. General William Boykin said that Islamic extremists hate the US because we’re a Christian nation, because our foundation and roots are Judeo-Christian. He went on to say that the enemy we face is a guy named Satan and that a Muslim Somali warlord was captured because I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol. Many were disappointed when President Bush couldn’t even find his warlords in either Afghanistan or Iraq. But what do people really expect? Bush considers himself born again, remarking to a Texan evangelist during the 2000 presidential race, I feel like God wants me to run for President.

If I were Christian, if I were religious, maybe I’d rest better at night knowing god is on our side and that god is a badass mother to boot. What else do you call a deity who levels Sodom and Gomorrah because its inhabitants are mostly gay (homophobic?), who conceives of women as secondary to men (sexist?) or tortures his followers with all sorts of ills just to test their faith (sadistic?). Somehow these adjectives fail to come to the lips of any god’s chief adherents. Instead we are counseled that God is all-good, all-powerful, all-knowing and that condoms don’t stop AIDs (Vatican: Condoms Don’t Stop Aids, The Guardian, 9 October 2003). Can anyone understand what psychological torment the thought of an all-knowing god caused me when I was going to the toilet as a small boy, embarrassed that god might be witnessing my every exertion?

The Supreme Court is going to decide this spring whether the words under God in the Pledge of Allegiance are constitutional. Justice Scalia has recused himself from the case. That’s a good move, because this is the same Scalia who criticized death penalty abolitionists by explaining that for the believing Christian, death is no big deal. For those of us who think who believe that we get only one shot at life, however, death is a very big deal.

On a day-to-day basis, we atheists have reason to gripe more than we do. I don’t like carrying around money stamped with IN GOD WE TRUST. As a schoolteacher, I don’t appreciate the fact that science teachers in many parts of the United States are supposed to spend an equal amount of time on the theory of creationism as they do on the theory of evolution. Most of the civilized world considers evolution a fact. So, why don’t many Americans? Maybe if our bonobo and other chimpanzee cousins could speak English they’d explain it to us, but they can’t.

Dating is a pain in the ass when you’re an atheist. I remember meeting all these attractive, intelligent women who, when they’d unload their spiritual quasi-religious beliefs into the conversation (invariably mentioning The Celestine Prophecies) would look at me like I had an oozing sore on my lip or a conjoined twin jutting off my hip because I wasn’t religious or spiritual (for anyone failing to see the admittedly tasteless humor in that last simile, don’t go and check out the new Faralley brothers film).

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not putting religious people down. Religion serves an important purpose for some people. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless worldÉ, opined Karl Marx. It is the opium of the people. Sometimes it brings them together when it isn’t dividing and killing them. I find a lot to admire in religiously inspired anti-war activism like that of the Berrigan brothers and the Ploughshares Movement. Imagine, however, if I told you that a guy (gods are, invariably it seems, male) named Phil was talking in my head and telling me things. You’d probably walk away from me quickly with a nervous backwards glance. So why aren’t more people looking to involuntarily commit Bush, Boykin and Ashcroft, all of who claim to be guided by a divinity?

By the way, Lt. General Boykin, one mustn’t assume that the US was founded as a Christian nation. 1796’s Treaty of Tripoli specifically states, the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religionÉ (words written when America was, again, battling Muslims).

In 1954 the words under God were added to the Pledge of Allegiance as a knee-jerk reaction to godless communism. It’s time those words were dropped. Once upon a time Americans said the Pledge of Allegiance with an arm extended straight out to the front, until the Nazis made that a less than attractive pose for patriotic Americans. Times change and so must we. Non-theists have been crushed under one god or another for way too long.