Why Advocating For Atheism Is Important

Earlier this month, the National Atheist Party held their annual convention and Dusty Smith of the Cult of Dusty YouTube channel gave a great speech. Today, I would like to highlight some of my favorite parts of the speech because I think they are extremely important and every atheist should think about it.

I really wish I could have gone to the National Atheism Party Convention (NAPCON), but it was in California and I am in Pennsylvania. Fortunately, Dusty Smith put his speech up on YouTube yesterday. It is well worth watching:

One point that I would like to focus on is when Dusty talks about the Biblical city of Tyre. I remember watching his original video on this. It shows just how much the internet is a game-changer for atheism. In case you missed it, here it is:
http://youtu.be/F6LAKleHUr8
Another highlight from his speech was when Dusty talked about his love for the future. This is a love that I deeply share. I really do want to create the future right now. All that awesome technology from Star Trek is almost here. In fact, some of it is already here. It isn’t religion that has given us cell phones, iPads, or the internet. No, science gave us those things. It is religion that gets in the way. The decade old saying is true. Science flies us to the moon and religion flies us into buildings.

The part that I probably enjoyed the most about Dusty’s speech is the realization about how much of our resources are being wasted on religion. Imagine if all the time and money that is poured into religion was used toward science and the betterment of humanity.

I know what some Christians might say; what about all the time and money you are pouring into atheism? Okay, I’ll bite on that one. We actually aren’t spending that much time or money on atheism. CNN just did a story about “The Money Man” behind most of the atheist/humanist organizations and he spent a total of like $3.5 million over the course of three years. Sure that’s a lot of money, but any national religious organization spends way more.

Just in 2011 alone, the American Family Association spent $16 million. That’s just one organization in one year. Todd Stiefel funds multiple atheist organizations for three years for his $3.5 million. How much did the National Organization for Marriage spend? What about Focus on the Family? How much did Ray Comfort’s Living Waters Ministry “pump” into Christianity? I haven’t even gotten into the mega-churches or the single stream religious machines like the Mormons and Catholics. Did you know that the Vatican is worth at the very least $600 trillion?

We spend much less and have made such great progress. But it isn’t because we spend our money better necessarily (although I think we do); it is because our ideas are better. It takes more money to sell ice to Eskimos than it does to sell them a space heater.

The point is that money advocating atheism isn’t wasted. It is badly needed to reverse the continuing attacks of religion on our future. Religion worships a mythological past at the expense of creating a bright new future for all humanity. How long are we going to remain silent while religious faith robs us of our future?