Fundamentally, pretty much all people are “good.” However, from time to time some people exhibit inappropriate behavior.

An example of inappropriate behavior are those behaviors that jepordize others. For example, blowing ones self up in order to kill non-believers is inapprpriate behavior.

Do what you want to yourself provided it does not hurt others (go out to the desert and blow yourself up, don’t do it in a crowded market).

Suicide is fine provided you don’t leave a wife and/or kids…

I digress, I’m not angry because you are a theist, I get angry because of the behaviors that your theism drives you to do that affect me.

Does that make sense?

A Rational Being

I appreciate the intention to try to understand us atheists. That is a step in the right direction. I think part of the reason SOME atheists come off as angry is that we are so used to be misunderstood, generalized, and even vilified. We are not people who believe in nothing. We are not people without meaning an purpose in our lives. We are not people without moral and ethical principals. We are not people who unable to feel and enjoy love and a sense of wonder. Most of us came to our beliefs through years of careful soul searching and thought. I don’t want to sound angry here, but the Rabbi’s suggestion that we are atheists because we were damaged by bad events in our lives is both offensive and ignorant.

If Rabbi Gellman is really interested in understanding atheism, he could invite a spokesperson of American Atheists or some other organization to guest-author his column one week. If he were to get to know more real every-day atheists, I think he would find that we are, as a group, much different from what he expects. And the next time he writes about us in a national magazine, he might not have to guess about what’s on our minds.

Hi Rabbi Mark,

Let me preface my letter by saying I do not hate religion, I admit that it has done many good thing for many people. Some people need religion to guide them and who am I to stop them. I am personally not threatened by gods, the tooth fairy, boogie man, or any other mythology.

What I am mad about is the current state of religion in the US. The right is using religion to stifle science. Christianity, specifically, does not promote being good stewards of our planet it breeds a view that when I go to heaven the earth does not matter. Well I got something to tell you, other people live here and hope to live here a long time. Global warming is a real issue and Christianity could careless. Then they bring there ?moral? on things like embryonic stem cells research. They call not researching them a ?culture of life?. Stem cells are the #1 thing right now that could expand our healthy lifespan. Stem cells have the possibility of saving 1000s of lives a day. And they call not researching them a ?culture of life?, that is a joke. Religion breeds deathism. Christians who live there whole lives looking forward to dying, and when atheists see an opportunity to live the only life they get longer and Christians try to stop them they get mad. I feel that I may die sooner then I have to because of the Christian luddites that are in charge. Just look at the old head of Bush?s ?Bioethics council? Leon Cass. He has been quoted as saying (paraphrasing now) that the government has the right to ask it citizen to die at 120 years old because that is what the bible says. Instead the top figures on the right tell their followers that adults have stem cells, even in their fat. They don?t bother saying that these cells are harder to grow, differentiate, keep alive, they divide slower, and can only form a few cell types. They dumb down the science to a point to where their followers can?t be swayed by the real science.

The media does not help either. Instead of reporting on the science of what is being discovered they focus of the issues that the right has against it and never/rarely mention the science. The media should be reporting on the differences between types of stem cells, what they can do, possibly cure, and make our lives longer and better. Instead they talk about killing clusters of a dozen cells as the main issue. If the media wants to talk about the ethics that is fine, just present the science first so people can see the context.

I am not mad I am SCARED FOR MY LIFE. I would also like to pigeon hole myself into a humanist movement ?transhumanism?. We believe that technology is close to the point where humanity needs to start transitioning to a new way of life. The current world is not sustainable. One of the main changes that we forecast is the defeating of the aging process. Aubrey de Grey is one of the most public proponents to defeating aging. His proposal is called SENS, Strategies for Engineering Negligible Senescence (www.sens.org). We do not need to cure aging now, we just need to expand the average lifespan by more then 1 year ever year. A challenge you to research the current science on aging research and do a column about it and what it might entail to life and religion. I think it could really help you and your readers understand the atheist position.

Thanks for your time.

Yes, atheists can get angry when they hear people like Rabbi Gellman purport tired sterotypes of atheists being “angry at God” or as all existentialists who value nothing and hope for nothing.