Kusaimamekirai’s Reviews > Godless Citizens in a Godly Republic: Atheists in American Public Life > Status Update

I think the author makes an important point that while religion tends to form communities of belief, atheists and agnostics tend to be people who are more private and solitary and therefore have more difficulty communicating their beliefs to a wider audience

Utah the only U.S. state that specifically references the right of nonbelievers to hold public office. Wouldn’t have guessed that at first but considering the historical persecution of Mormons, makes some sense

8 states (most unsurprisingly in the Deep South) have it written into their constitutions, despite the federal constitution explicitly banning religious tests, that one must believe in God to hold public office.
Here is Maryland: “No religious test ought ever be required as a qualification for any office of profit or trust in this state, other than a declaration of belief in the existence of God”

Comedian Robin Williams once offered an alternative to the words “under god” found in the pledge of allegiance: “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation, under Canada and above Mexico, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all”

“The question is not why religion looms so large but why textbooks say nothing about the importance of atheism to many other Americans. Schoolchildren need to learn the full range of motives that propel people to action. And they don’t”
This is a really important point. If faith is what defines so many historic figures, shouldn’t being agnostic do the same for people like Einstein and Edison?

Love that Elizabeth Cady Stanton spent her honeymoon in London at an anti-slavery convention. Even though she was rightly outraged that the men in attendance didn’t allow the women to speak.

“In an 1872 polemic entitled ‘The Gods’ Robert Ingersoll wrote that ‘the notion that faith in Christ is to be rewarded by an eternity of bliss, while a dependence upon reason, observation, and experience merits everlasting pain is too absurd for refutation, and can be relieved only by that unhappy mixture of insanity and ignorance called faith’ “

Crazy that well into the 20th century, many states had laws on their books forbidding the testimony of admitted atheists in court

“Never can Christianity bring us relief from the weight of poverty, the horrors of our ubiquitous system. Christianity is the conspiracy of ignorance against reason, of darkness against light, of submission and slavery against independence and freedom, of the denial of strength and beauty, against the affirmation of the joy and glory of life”-Emma Goldman
Damn. That would be shocking even today

"Hearing a president end a speech with the phrase 'God bless the United States of America' may seem small potatoes compared to what religious dissenters once faced...Nonetheless, it violates the idea of a secular state and contributes to the notion that nonbelievers are outsiders and don’t quite belong in the American family. Male atheists may learn that lesson early in life. They can’t join the Boy Scouts."