No, atheists don't "worship their gods".
For most of my life, I didn't have a TV. I wasn't watching a special channel called "Off" - I just didn't have one.
I have no kids. Saying I have a child called "Nobody" is not correct. I am simply not a father.
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If religious people had treated non-believers with respect and dignity, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
But in fact, you guys have been burning us at the stake, jailing us, calling us second class citizens, forbidding us from public office and it's been going on for thousands of years.
In fact, you religionists don't even treat each other with respect. Look at all the wars between different religions, or between groups with very very similar religions.
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And finally, many of your leaders are objectively evil.
You note as "interesting" that most atheists are Democrats.
That is because no compassionate or thinking human being could possibly support the ravening monsters that have come out of the Republican Party, particularly Donald Trump, the pathological liar and serial adulterer, a man who has never been known to go to church, who has never been known to quote the Bible, who was unable to identify a single book in the Bible when challenged, a man whose lies killed hundreds of thousands of Americans horribly.
And yet Donald Trump is wildly popular amongst American Christians. And I don’t hear a peep out of you about this travesty — just more entry in the millennia-old tradition of demonizing atheists.
If you want one reason why young Americans have lost respect for religion, look no further than that.
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Do you think we don't notice? Do you think we don't see the dishonesty, the hypocrisy, the obsession with violence and hatred toward others, the proud and open lust for power and money that characterize the most public American Christians today?
When I was young, I believed that religious people were simply misguided, and the hatred, violence, oppression, and mockery that so many of them directed towards others was a mistake.
Now I believe that's the whole attraction of religion for most people — to feel better than others without actually doing the work to be a better person.
Indeed, one of the key tenets of Christianity is that one’s deeds are worthless to get into heaven — all you need is a personal relationship with Jesus.
Person A can spend their lives trying to be as good a person as possible, but it is worthless — if they hear the word of Christ but reject it, into the flames with them!
Person B spends their life committing terrible crimes, and in the last few weeks of their life, gets a personal relationship with Christ, and spends the rest of eternity in paradise.
Christians get eternal life, just because they have a powerful friend. No one would find that fair if the friend were a person — why is such favoritism acceptable in a God?
