Atheism Catches Hold in American Culture
By Lee Webb
CBN News
November 16, 2007
CWN.com - Call it "atheism on the offensive."
The past few years have seen a surge of interest in unbelief.
Books on atheism have topped bestsellers lists.
They include: The End of Faith by Sam Harris, The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins and God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens.
"A lot of respectable people are coming out and saying they are happy to dispel the myths of the Bible," says Margaret Downey of Atheist Alliance International.
An atheist convention in Washington this summer was sold out and had a waiting list of 600 people.
Congress now has a self-proclaimed atheist, and there are atheist summer camps for kids.
"Over the last 20 years, the number of people willing to tell people in surveys that they don't believe in God have pretty much doubled," said Professor Alan Wolfe of Boston College.
Some believe atheism has grown because of 9/11 and Islamic terrorists killing innocent people in the name of religion.
Others say it's because a generation has come of age that was indoctrinated into secular thought in public schools and universities.
But the new atheism isn't content to simply defend unbelief; it attacks religion as a major source of evil in the world.
Atheists are still a tiny minority in the United States, and a University of Minnesota poll last year found that atheists were among the most distrusted group in America.
But book sales alone would suggest that interest in atheism has grown dramatically.
"We're good people," said one atheist. "We're just not God people."
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