Hello, Friendly Neighbor Atheist!

I read with much interest on The New York Times today about atheists and agnostics coming out of the closet and proudly proclaiming their non-religion more publicly more than ever.nnThis is not to say that I have anything against religion. I do, however, feel strongly that there is an unfair bias against atheists and agnostics that is not discussed enough in the public sphere. I am certain that our nation will certainly have a black president, a woman president, and a president of several minority groups before we ever have an atheist president. If we want to find a way to curve violent religious fundamentalism in this world, I believe that we also need to reconcile our strange relationship with the other extreme of the non-believers: to stop collectively seeing the self-proclaimed non-believers as disconnected, spiritually deprived individuals.nnAfter all, to steal an idea from an essay I read a long ago, we are all fervent believers in something that cannot be tangibly grasped. These people may not be devout believers of God or gods, but they may be fervent believers of other invisible ideas that hold the very fabric of our humanity together: like justice, or love, or freedom of speech, or non-violence. Their church may be the homeless shelter they volunteer at or the university that they teach at. How limiting to think that spirituality should only be accessible to the religious.nnWe need to stop seeing the adjective "religious" as a yardstick of morality.nnOne blogger observed something that forever changed my view on the word "religious." To paraphrase him, he said: "It isn't that religious people are good. It is that there are good people who also happen to be religious." nnThere are good people who happen to be Christian. There are good people who happen to be atheist. There are bad people who happen to be Christian. There are also bad people who happen to be atheist.nnSeeing humanity through the latter lenses brings people's actions and deeds to the forefront, ahead of whatever self-proclaimed public label they may identify themselves with.nnNo matter what you believe or don't believe in, that's the way it should truly be in this world. If only more people believed in that.