Letter: World owes atheists debt of gratitude

Saturday, March 3, 2007 | 7:08 a.m.

Paul Campos is wrong in almost every particular in his Feb. 28 column, "Why faith, or lack of it, is relevant to political life":

Atheism is not rare; high intelligence is. That people prefer to be led and followed by those who think as they do is no great revelation. But the world is not better because Muslims will follow only Muslims, Hindus only Hindus, Christians only Christians. This parochialism is what underpins most of the war and strife on this planet.

Subtract the great skeptics, including atheists from this world, and we'd still be depending on the precariousness of the hunt for our food. The modern world, with its roots deeply in the Renaissance and The Enlightenment, was brought about by skeptics and various shades of nonbelievers: Paine, Jefferson, Ben Franklin, George Washington - deists all.

The civilized world owes a huge debt to the skeptics who lifted humankind from centuries of darkness and ignorance. Immerse yourself in the company of geneticists, biologists, physicists, philosophers and great authors, and you'll find yourself in the company of mostly nonbelievers.

Few know more about religion than atheists; few are more tolerant of diversity than atheists; and few live by higher standards and ethics than atheists. Study Darwin, Bertrand Russell, Will Durant, Isaac Asimov, Robert Ingesoll and thousands more to see what I mean. Terrorists, including Hitler, always claim to have God on their side; atheists have reason on their side. Atheists always vote for good men of faith; the religious vote only for their own.

David Fredericks, Las Vegas

The writer is a member of the Las Vegas Freethought Society, a nonprofit group that includes atheists, agnostics and humanists.