Being an atheist is bliss. God bless the atheists.

I just post this reply at Digg. Thought it was worth posting it stand alone here as well:

I am an skeptic inquirer as any good citizen and I don't swallow stuff out of nothing. Fortunately I had a japanese-like education - where I got the good habit of being rational, use logic, being skeptical - although I was born and raised in a strong evangelical country as Brazil, here in Latin America.

I am right now frightened on how fast religion is growing at my country. We already are a 3rd world territory, where education is very contrived, the economics are unstable at best and politicians are totally, completelly corrupted, no exceptions. Worse: they hide behind God's back all the time - the biggest heretics of all time if you ask me. We have stepped down, so low, to the point where an State Governor really defined that creationism should be taught at school Instead of evolution. That's utter nonsense and only aggravates our reality.

People are raised ignorant, without skepticism, they don't criticize politics because they think politicians know better. I am no PhD but fortunately I was raised with encyclopedias, science magazines, science fiction books, educational TV programs (without any Gods). That's the kind of education that leads mankind forward into the future. Inserting folklore into the mainstream education by force is going centuries back again into the Middle Ages, the Dark Ages.

I urge you people to be rational! Not knowing somethings is not embarrassing! Trying to learn what you don't know is bold! But declare that ignorance is the right thing is absurd! Trying to force a folklore-ideology into people that is trying to learn is violence. It is the same thing as rape. Declare yourself ignorant and stop any effort to learn something new, and even avoid it is suicide at best!

Remember some other things: Japanese (and Asians in general) don't rely on Gods, or Bibles that were faxed from Heaven! Of course, we have a few rituals, traditions that goes back more than 2000 years. We simply realize that life is too short, that there is no after life and that the best thing to do is enjoy our short time on Earth by learning everything possible until the last day of our lifes. If I die while reading my last page of knowledge, I will die fulfilled.

Cheers!

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Please, in the name of our children: don't pretend you "own" your child as you own a "thing". Children are still too young to make rational decisions and they have to rely on their most basic instincts. And the urge for survival tells them to blindly trust their parents. So, it relies on the fact that the parents are willing to take care of them.

Children don't born christians, muslins or jews, they are made that way by their parents and the surrounding society. If you really are a willingly father or mother, teach them to not blindly believe in anything. Raise them as skeptics. Skepticism doesn't mean total denial of everything. It means: be evolved.

Most recommended: make them watch Carl Sagan's Cosmos series over and over. Make them awe by the sheer complexity and beauty of the nature and the cosmos. Make them understand and respect their environment. That's evolution.