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How strange,
with all the progress made in education and scientific research,
that so many people's lives are still being goverened by superstition and irrational beliefs.
Not only is astrology as well-known now as it was in the Middle Ages,
we even allow the leader of the wealthiest institution the world has ever know to influence our democratically elected heads of state. Should the pope of Rome really be received with such honours today?
Throughout the last 2000 years, more people have been killed in the name of religion than for any other reason, and the massacre continues today. This alone is enough reason to refuse all allegiance to the religious organizations that consistently preached love and made war.
Spinoza was one of the first great writers to brave the stranglehold of imposed beliefs, and many others thinkers since have tried to help us out of the fog of credulity, and yet the masses look no further than the bible, the coran, or the television set.
Unlike the religious and superstitious, rationalists are quiet people;
they do not shout their beliefs or wear special symbols or clothing.
They do not try to convert others and frequently go unnoticed.
Our invisibility gives the impression that we are a rarety,
but I am sure that if more people were encouraged to ask themselves
"Do I really believe there is a little old man up in the sky?
Do I really believe I will go on living somewhere when my brain has died?" -- we should probably find that the majority of Europeans would declare themselves atheist or at least agnostic.
More thoughts from around the world:
http://www.anti-religion.net/
(articles in English, German & French)
http://atheisme.free.fr/index.html
(en français),
http://atheisme.free.fr/Atheism.htm
(in English).
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