I’ve been hiding a secret for more than 40 years, a secret that many people go to their graves without ever revealing.
Today, for the first time, I am revealing that secret. Today, I am outing myself.
Because I have been single for my entire life, many people who know me might not be surprised that I am outing myself – until they learn that I am 100 percent straight. Not that there’s anything wrong with being gay, but I’m not.
I am, in fact, part of a more despised minority. Since the day I learned that 6 million Jewish people were murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust, I have not believed that there’s a powerful and benevolent man in the sky who controls people’s lives, rewarding the good and punishing the bad. I was 11 years old when I concluded that G-d didn’t exist or wasn’t worth praying to. I stopped attending Saturday services at my temple immediately and dropped out of Hebrew school and Jewish life as soon as I was bar mitzvahed.
In retrospect, I regret kicking Judaism out of my life. Judaism is, in fact, a wonderful religion because of the religion’s respect for education and communities, its history, and most of its principles, guidelines and teachings.
I still call myself Jewish because I am as I will explain in Part III of my 3-part series on Religion, but I am also by definition an atheist. Here is Part I of my series. In this blog, Part II of my series on Religion, I will detail the extent to which atheists are despised and why I feel that there are way…………………………..way more atheists than most people will acknowledge.
Officially, only 2.4 percent of American adults are atheists, according to a 2012 survey by the Pew Research Center. I will bet that the figure is substantially higher because atheists are so despised that many people will give a different answer when asked about their religious identity. About 14 percent of the survey respondents told Pew that their religion was “nothing in particular,” another 3.3 percent said they were agnostic and 2 percent said “don’t know.”
I would have said “Jewish” if I was asked because I am. (Just now, I yelled “G-d” when the computer I am using froze for the umpteenth time in the last hour.)
My own response to the Religion question is one of many reasons why I KNOW, not believe, that the statistics dramatically understate the percentage of American atheists. For starters, ex-Rep Pete Stark is the only openly atheist member of the U.S. Congress in American history. Virtually no politician is openly atheist, but I would bet my life that Bill Bradley and Howard Dean are also atheists. How do I know? I listened to the way they answered, or refused to answer, questions about their religion when they ran for president. Their answers were exactly the same as the answer I formulated in my head long ago.
Bradley and Dean had good reason to avoid the question. As this story reports, “Americans Would Rather Vote For A Philandering, Pot-Smoking President Than An Atheist One.” The headline was based on a 2014 Pew Research Center poll. The poll concluded that Americans believe that being an atheist is THE worst of 16 traits that prospective presidential candidates could have.
About 53 percent of the people who were polled said they were less likely to vote for presidential candidates who were atheist, while only 5 percent said they were more likely. The second-to-worst trait was never holding office, followed by having an extramarital affair, being at least 70 years old, being gay or lesbian, and using marijuana. Thus, people who admit they’re an atheist are taking a greater risk than people who admit they’re gay.
How despised are atheists? A 2006 University of Minnesota study concluded that atheists are the most despised and distrusted minority in the United States. The conclusion was based on the answers to questions about which group doesn’t share Americans’ vision of U.S. society and which group Americans disapprove of the most as prospective spouses of their children. Atheists are far more unpopular than Muslims, the second most unpopular group, according to the study.
In short, millions of Americans consider atheists bad people. I heard they were too when I was young so I spent a lot of time trying to convince myself that I wasn’t one. I read “When Bad Things Happen to Good People,” Rabbi Harold Kushner’s book that sought to convince non-believers that G-d really does exist although he/she can’t prevent children like his from dying painful deaths at a young age. Rabbi Kushner is probably a great person, but his arguments were nonsensical. I don’t think he believed them – because he probably would label himself a bad person if he came to the opposite conclusion.
As far as I recall, Kushner never thought about the possibility that you can be a Jewish and an atheist. But you can and I will detail why in Part III of my 3-part series on Religion. It’s entitled “I Am – And Always Will Be – A Proud Jew."
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