Article on The Guardian (rapidly emerging to be a class apart other mainstream news organizations)
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/24/atheism-does-not-make-me-superior-to-believers-its-a-leap-of-faith-too
My atheism does not make me superior to believers. It's a leap of faith too - by Ijeoma Oluo
Quoting excerpts, emphasis added by me:http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/24/atheism-does-not-make-me-superior-to-believers-its-a-leap-of-faith-too
My atheism does not make me superior to believers. It's a leap of faith too - by Ijeoma Oluo
It's easy to view religion as the root of society's ills.
But atheism as a faith is quickly catching up in its embrace of divisive and oppressive attitudes. We have websites dedicated to insulting Islam and Christianity. We have famous atheist thought-leaders spouting misogyny and calling for the profiling of Muslims. As a black atheist, I encounter just as much racism amongst other atheists as anywhere else. We have hundreds of thousands of atheists blindly following atheist leaders like Richard Dawkins, hurling insults and even threats at those who dare question them.
Look through new atheist websites and twitter feeds. You'll see the same hatred and bigotry that theists have been spouting against other theists for millennia. But when confronted about this bigotry, we say "But I feel this way about all religion," as if that somehow makes it better. But our belief that we are right while everyone else is wrong; our belief that our atheism is more moral; our belief that others are lost: none of it is original.
...
If we truly want to free ourselves from the racist, sexist, classist, homophobic tendencies of society, we need to go beyond religion. Yes, religion does need to be examined and debated regularly and fervently. But we also need to examine our school systems, our medical systems, our economic systems, our environmental policies.
Faith is not the enemy, and words in a book are not responsible for the atrocities we commit as human beings. We need to constantly examine and expose our nature as pack animals who are constantly trying to define the other in order to feel safe through all of the systems we build in society. Only then will we be as free from dogma as we atheists claim to be.
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(emphasis added)
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