The Church of Atheism

So I had this idea in a variety of shapes & forms since the beginning of the year, but today I added a nice little twist to it.

Suppose we (“we” being my fellow militant atheists and I) were to create a “Church of Atheism” where everyone who joins it becomes part of the organization. Providing it gets big enough, it would give the Church organization—and hey, everyone who is a member—a complete tax break. You’d be employed by this church as well and suddenly have a loophole through which you can create a way for you to no longer pay taxes.

Imagine that such an effort would not be blocked and closed down by the government — you’d have a TON of people suddenly “joining Atheism” as a religion, because you can bet your ass-wallet on it that a lot of people care more about money than their faith. I mean, all those TV evangelists? They themselves care more about money than their faith, for fuck’s sake.

Now obviously such a movement would cause an outrage among the religious right and the Government will be forced (by religious groups with influence) to pass a law closing the loophole, but wouldn’t it be interesting if it managed to bring to table the discussion of ceasing tax exemption for religious organizations? Either that, or stop providing them with any of the public services, as I joked about earlier.

If there were true separation of Church and State, which is one of the fundamental premises I’m fighting for and hope to see actually instated here within my lifetime, then churches/religious organizations would not have any government benefits that your junior league football team doesn’t have as well.

It would be true equality, and from then on the only thing that would separate us from one another is our willingness and ability to be good, respectful, tolerant human beings. Or, for those that can’t muster up such simple things, to not be able to suppress the rights of others—including their right to be good, respectful and tolerant people.

After all, the only thing that truly brings all of us together is the fact that we’re human. Not our gender, not our skin color, not our faith or lack thereof. We are human, and that’s all that should matter.

UPDATE:

Small addition: and in the masterful words of Richard Dawkins when encouraging people to become militant atheists, “and let’s just stop being so damn respectful.”

(context: because the religious aren’t respectful to us and we’re letting them continue to exercise their control over others through our respect for them)