http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article6925781.ece

BHA Please Dont Label Me poster

First off, this is not a campaign by Richard Dawkins. Prof Dawkins was a prominent supporter of the original “There’s Probably No God, Now Stop Worrying And Enjoy Your Life” advertising campaign. It wasn’t his campaign, he just provided some money and lent his support. I too provided money to that campaign does that mean it’s mine too?

Secondly, the article basically proves the point of the advert, but completely fails to realise it. Those kids are the children of “Evangelical” parents, they aren’t evangelical kids. Not yet anyway. Maybe they will grow up to be evangelical, and that’s fine. Or maybe they’ll grow up to be Buddhist, or Muslim, or maybe even atheist. But foisting a world view on them when they are far too young to make an informed choice is infringing on their rights to self determinism.

I am a Sci-Fi fan, but no one would label my daughter as such as a result. I am a software engineer, but that doesn’t mean that my daughter is too. My daughter is an atheist, but she told me that.

Thirdly, this campaign is not in any way shape or form about infringing on the rights of the parents to raise their children under the umbrella of the parents faith, nor to restrict their ability to teach their children about their particular brand of religious dogma. So all the commenter’s on the article really need to learn to read and comprehend.

But when you start reading some of that massive content, that’s when the brain melt will set in. It’s just a constant barrage of idiotic drivel. The use of so many logical fallacies, over and over. The repeating of straw man arguments that have long since been torn down again and again. It’s a mark of a truly faith-based mind that it can still believe that any of this would still hold any weight. The only people that it could convince in any way are those that don’t need convincing in the first place. For those whose minds actually work properly we can see it for the brain fart that it actually is.

Now, I will grant the author one thing (and pretty much only one thing), it must have been a monumental labour of love to create the site. To be able to concentrate such huge amounts of inane, baseless, stupidity into one place… it’s almost a work of art!

To all those theists who wonder why us atheists care…

We care for many reasons.

We care because we don’t like seeing people waste their time praising a God that doesn’t exist and looking forward to an afterlife that they will never find when they would be better off spending their time enjoying the all too short time that we are given on this world.

We care because we don’t like to see the harm that blindly following doctrine does to people and society, especially when it flies in the face of evidence and reason.

We care because we don’t understand why our taxpayer money should go to subsidise religious organisations (the fact that churches etc don’t pay tax means there is less money in the government coffers, so us tax payers have to pay more to make up for it).

We care because we understand the freedom that non belief gives us. The freedom to marvel at the beauty of a natural universe. The freedom to make our own life choices without having to worry that someone is keeping score (this does NOT mean being able to act without morals).

We care because we don’t believe that one group of people should hold a privileged status over another group purely on the basis of a choice they have made (and religious belief is most definitely a choice).

We care because despite what the theistic may say and believe, religion is forced upon us in so many little ways day in and day out.

We care because forcing beliefs on very young children who do not have the mental faculties to question or evaluate what they are told borders on abuse.

These are just some of the reasons why we care.