Michael Nugent asks what if Ireland discriminated for atheism instead of for religion?
Imagine if 96% of our primary schools were run with an explicitly atheist ethos – not a neutral, secular ethos, but an explictly atheist ethos – where children were taught that there is no god, and that ethos was permeated throughout the entire curriculum.
The idea seems bizarre, doesn’t it. Surplus to requirements, just as god is. It would be odd to have schools run with an explicitly atoothfairy ethos, too. Secular is all that’s needed. Don’t teach math with extra added gremlins, don’t teach biology with added ghosts, don’t teach geography with added atheism. Just skip it. Don’t pack more than you’ll need. That bag will get heavy, so don’t pack a big coat if it’s not going to be cold.
Imagine if our hospitals were run with an explicitly atheist ethos, with signs on the walls saying that there is no god, and with atheist ethics committees, and with the danger of a dying patient being told ‘this is an atheist country’.
And yet without the danger of a dying patient being told ‘this is an atheist country’ as justification for refusing to prevent the patient from dying by completing a miscarriage, because it’s so very difficult to get from atheism to stupid arbitrary cruel anti-human “rules.” For that you need a Holy Superior Being, and atheism is Un that.
I walked up a trail through a park this afternoon and saw on the wide board at the top of the railing a small written message: “All praises for Allah.” What a nasty message, if you think about it. All praises for the imagined entity, so no praises for any real ones. The hell with that, I thought. Save your praises for real achievement.
That’s another one where atheism has no counterpoint. “All praises for no god”? Yeh, nobody would come up with that. Which is Michael Nugent’s point, of course: swapping atheism makes the absurdity of all the deference and knee-bending obvious.
Imagine if an atheist group that runs most of our schools had been found by various tribunals to have been abusing children, and covering up the abuse of children, for decades.
Imagine if an international atheist group, to which that atheist group was affiliated, that acted as if it was also a state, had been involved in moving atheists who abused children from country to country to avoid facing up to the legal responsibilities of their actions.
Imagine if our state continued to have diplomatic relations with that association, and exchanged ambassadors with it as if it were a legitimate State.
Imagine, further, if an atheist group had special magical men – men only – at the top of the group, special magical men who had a special magical connection to…to no-god. And those special magical men were the ones abusing children, and being protected by other special magical men with a special magical connection to no-god. And they all got away with it because the surrounding society is so deferential to atheism and to no-god that it lets these groups act like a law unto themselves. Imagine all that.
It’s hard to do, isn’t it.
Imagine if there was even one explicitly atheist school in Ireland – not a secular school, but an atheist school, that explicitly taught that there was no god.
Imagine that even one set of religious parents was forced by circumstances to send their child to that school.
We would never hear the end of it until it was resolved.
But in Ireland we have multiple times that discrimination continuing without anyone even thinking that it is a problem.
Why do you believe that your religion is more important than our atheism?
The State certainly should not believe that.
Because a special magical god trumps a special magical no-god.
Yes but why does it?
Ah, that’s a tough one.