Ask anyone who knows me and they will tell you that I don't get insult/stress/windup easily. Mainly because I believe in that the insult only works if one believes in it. For example, if you were to call me stupid, why should I get angry at you? Is it because I am not stupid? To me, it is preciously because I know it is not true that I have no cause to get angry.

So whenever 'faithful'
people tell me that not believing in God will mean I will burn in hell,
my reply always is, "I don't believe in Hell, so why would it bother
me?"

Anyway, I don't wear my religious belief (or there lack of) on my sleeve.
As a science graduate, I obviously have no religion yearning but I have
no issue with other people's religions/believes. They can practice whatever belief system they want. But like a portion of the American population, I have been alarmed with the increasing swing to religion for answer in almost everything. The moderates sugarcoats it as 'faith' while the hardcore fundamentalists (i.e. evangelicals) just plain called it 'religion'.

But being an Atheist is not easy, even with thick skin like me. Newsweek has an article about being an Atheist in America isn't easy. Good read and it raises good point about both camps.

I found this to be particularly alarming:

In a recent NEWSWEEK Poll, Americans said they believed in God by a
margin of 92 to 6—only 2 percent answered "don't know"—and only 37
percent said they'd be willing to vote for an atheist for president.
(That's down from 49 percent in a 1999 Gallup poll—which also found
that more Americans would vote for a homosexual than an atheist.)

Best quote from the article:

"Tell a devout Christian … that frozen yogurt can make a man
invisible," Harris writes, "and he is likely to require as much
evidence as anyone else, and to be persuaded only to the extent that
you give it. Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed was written by
an invisible deity who will punish him with fire for eternity if he
fails to accept its every incredible claim about the universe, and he
seems to require no evidence whatsoever."

Anyhow, if someone with 'faith' can answer these following questions (not the full list of course, just some that pop into my mind right now) without invoking the Almighty God, aliens from Andromeda, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, then I'll even spend some of my brain time chunk it over.

• Why do people need religion to explain (justify in my opinion) their action?
• Why is moral teaching the sole domain of religion in this country (or any other predominantly Christian countries)?
• Why does someone must believe in something/someone because otherwise that person would not ever be happy?
• Why only people with 'faith' can do good?

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