Don't Be Skeptical
Just About Religion
Michael Morrison
From: "Michael Morrison"
To: "Positive Atheism" <editor@positiveatheism.org>
Subject: Right-wing atheist
Date: Thursday, June 14, 2001 1:42 AM
[In his dispatch describing the May, 2001, issue of the print edition, Cliff wrote:]
We also hear from someone you'll probably never meet at your local atheist group: a right-winger who is also a hard-line atheist.
One of the reasons I am an atheist is I oppose all superstition.
Yet I find an awful lot of alleged atheists buy into another superstition, one terribly like belief in "God."
That superstition is "the state."
Left-wing atheists are the prime offenders, but a "right-wing" atheist must be one too.
The state is frequently the villain in imposing some kind of religious belief, such as Sunday closing laws; but there is the non-religious moral code the left-wingers are willing to impose, such as economic laws or "civil rights" laws.
(Both wings are guilty of imposing the vicious "Drug War" on us.)
I wish atheists would be consistent: Believe -- in all fields -- only that which is provable.
Don't be skeptical just about religion.
Heck, that's easy.
Be skeptical about all "obvious" solutions, especially in economics.
Be rigorously skeptical about political solutions to any problem or perceived problem.
Until all genuine atheists reject superstition in politics, too, we won't have religious liberty ... or any liberty.
Michael Morrison
From: "Positive Atheism" <editor@positiveatheism.org>
To: "Michael Morrison"
Subject: Re: Right-wing atheist
Date: Thursday, June 14, 2001 6:06 AM
The subtle point I was trying to make, about which Jim Versluys and I were very clear and open when discussing permission to reprint his piece, was that most organized atheist and Humanist groups tend to be predominantly neo-Liberal. Many non-neo-Liberals (and non-Liberals period) are turned off by organized atheism for precisely this reason, and I agree with Jim in speculating that probably more atheists in America lean to the Right than to the Left.
I am a classic old-school Liberal and also a traditional Republican, the likes of which can most easily be found in the Log Cabin Republicans. Jesse Ventura is clearly my favorite person currently in American politics, with I-
Though I have registered either Republican or unaffiliated since I turned 18 (right after Nixon lowered the voting age), I have never voted for a Republican candidate for President (though I would definitely have voted for Goldwater had I been old enough -- he was the last of the old-school Republicans). The only Democrats to earn my vote were Carter (first time) and Clinton (second time). Usually I default to Libertarian, with an occasional Green or Independent vote.
But to try to classify me would be strange. I suspect that a sizable chunk of the American population is the same in this respect. I know a lot of people who are with the Democrats on issues pertaining to personal Liberty and with the Republicans on fiscal issues. As tempting as it is to join the Libertarian party just to make it easier to identify myself and to give myself a handy base from which to do social and political advocacy, I will not do that for the same reason I will not join one of the organized Humanist groups (and that reason remains private, for now).
Cliff Walker
"Positive Atheism" Magazine
Five years of service to
people with no reason to believe
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