That article is downright painfully wrong - primarily in that throughout the entire thing, it makes unfair comparisons that expect atheism to be an organization or a faith. Atheism is simply a
lack of having faith - you cannot really expect atheism itself to
do much of anything for a person. Doing something for the person is not what atheism is for.
Atheism doesn't "inspire" people? Well, thank you, Captain Obvious! Atheism doesn't in itself inspire anything and it's not meant to. That does not mean that
atheists, the
people who happen to lack religious faith, cannot
be inspired by various things. I am an atheist and aspiring fiction writer; I have been variously inspired by mythology (including Christian and Hindu; you do not need to personally believe in it for it to inspire you), other fiction, philosophy, current events and scientific discoveries. Thinking about the magnificence of the complexity in living creatures, brought about perfectly automatically by evolution, gives me that grandiose feeling of being small in the context of something greater which many people associate with religion. I am fascinated by the potential for new discoveries about the universe that modern science is already flying towards. There is plenty of inspiration, both of the kind that gets you to create and the kind that simply makes you feel awe and wonder, to be found outside of personal religious beliefs. In fact, I would have a difficult time feeling the amount of awe and reverence that I feel at the universe if I actually thought that there was some boring supernatural entity pulling strings behind the scenes.
Atheist organizations don't do good for the world by hosting charities or building hospitals? Well, that would be thanks to the
lack of atheist organizations! Religion as we know it is organized by its very nature; there are already religious institutions that are perfectly equipped to pull together and do something for society. Atheism is not organized in its nature, being merely a lack of something, and therefore there is no institution that can pull together to get atheists as a whole to donate to charity.
Does this mean that people need to be religious to do good for the world? Absolutely not! I am an atheist and I have both been a volunteer collecting donations for the Red Cross and donated to various charities myself (including Christian-run charities). And the Red Cross itself is humanitarian, not religious, in nature; the idea is to help people because they are
people, not because of religion. Since atheism is a lack of religious faith, any organization that does not specifically identify itself with any religion should rightfully be considered "atheistic".
Atheism doesn't give people comfort? Surprise, surprise. Anybody expecting to find comfort specifically in their lack of religious faith is an idiot. But there are all sorts of things to find comfort in - the love and support of your friends and family, your own inner strength, meditation; you can easily seek comfort outside of religion.
Now you might say, "Well, isn't it even better to be able to find inspiration, comfort and so on in religion
as well as all these other things?" And well, there we come to the greatest fallacy of all. Atheists aren't atheists because they think being an atheist is more convenient. If it were simply a choice of convenience, everybody would be religious! But religion is a bit more than just inspiration and charity and comfort. Primarily, religion is about upholding certain beliefs as the truth. An atheist is somebody who is not ready to uphold these beliefs as the truth. It is not a matter of deciding that you'd rather be a Christian because then you can get comfort and inspiration; if you do not actually believe the teachings of Christianity, you cannot derive comfort from simply pretending you believe them because it's more convenient.
Good things aren't done in the name of atheism? Well, atheism is a pretty poor thing to do anything in the name of, being, as I keep repeating,
lack of something. But there have been absolutely marvelously good things done not in the name of any religion - in the name of human rights, or in the name of love, or in the name of science, for instance - that should be considered atheistic, simply because of their
lack of religious affiliation.
Does the world need more atheists, then? Well. What the atheist this pastor heard meant was probably to point out a few other things in which atheism and religion differ, which he probably considered more important than people having an extra source of comfort or inspiration:
- Religion
promotes ignorance. Religion frequently teaches ideas that were just as reasonable as whatever else at the time that their scriptures were written, but are today severely outdated as science has discovered more. Religion frequently holds back scientific progress simply because people refuse to let go of whatever is written in their old books. Meanwhile, there is no reason for an atheist to refuse to accept scientific discoveries, as they have no sacred beliefs that science is contradicting.
- Religion
represses critical thinking. Generally, religion is based around the concept of faith: people are meant to uncritically assume the existence of a higher being because this old book says so. For an atheist, there is no reason not to want to take things with a grain of salt until there is sufficient evidence to believe them.
- Religion
promotes intolerance. Many or most religions condemn unbelievers in this particular religion as heretics and expect their followers to either attempt to convert them, which is merely annoying, or even resort to violence against them, which is a rather more serious matter. There are no atheist "teachings" expecting atheists to go around converting or attacking those of religious faith. While atheists often do try to convert the religious, they generally at least try to do so on a reasonable basis rather than with scare tactics (there is no "become an atheist or you will go to hell!"), and I at least have
never heard of atheists physically attacking people for being religious - no wonder, because as I said, there are no "atheist teachings" telling people to do any such thing. In fact I think
all atheists I know are secular humanists who routinely oppose all violence and discrimination on the basis of religion, race, gender, etc.
Naturally, this is not to say that there aren't plenty of religious people who are not ignorant or intolerant and are perfectly capable of thinking critically. A random religious person is simply dramatically more likely to be all of those things than a random atheist, and that is what the atheist meant by saying the world needs more atheists. If all religious people in the world were this not ignorant, not intolerant, critically-thinking kind, there wouldn't be much of a reason to think the world needs more atheists, but as it stands, it can be argued to be a reasonable wish. Personally, I'd be more inclined to just say the world needs less ignorance, more tolerance and more critical thinking.
Some more specific parts of that article I would like to comment on:
When I think of atheism I automatically think of some atheist professor in a public university who has a personal agenda to destroy the faith of any Christian who might have the unfortunate experience of being in his class. That seems to be their strong suit, spreading their atheism to young impressionable minds. Surely then atheism must have made a huge contribution in the area of establishing institutions of higher learning.
Eight of the nine colleges founded in America before the War of Independence in 1776 were begun for the furtherance of Christian education.
Harvard, the oldest university in America, was founded in 1636 by Puritans.
The College of William and Mary was founded in 1693 by Anglicans.
Yale was founded in 1701 by Congregationalists.
Princeton University (the College of New Jersey) was founded in 1747 by Presbyterians.
Columbia University (King's College) was founded in 1754 by Anglicans.
Brown University (Rhode Island College) was founded in 1764 by Baptists.
Rutgers (Queen's College) was established in 1766 by Dutch Reformed.
Dartmouth College was founded in 1769 by Congregationalists.
This argument is extremely silly: in the time that most of the oldest universities were founded, there practically
were no atheists! This is both because this was for instance a time before Darwin, when a critical thinker could easily conclude that the complexity of life simply
had to be brought about by an almighty creator, and because the culture was a lot less tolerant in that time, making it considerably more dangerous to publically profess atheism than it is today. If there are few atheist organizations today, there were absolutely none at that time, least of all ones capable of founding something like a university. And it is only natural that the oldest universities have garnered the most respect over the centuries.
I searched the internet and found at least 220 Christian colleges and universities in the United States. Ever hear of an atheist university? I doubt it, because atheists usually do their teaching in state universities. Public colleges and universities are supported by the taxes paid by the general public, yet atheists have free reign to teach whatever they like while Christians are often castigated and sometimes fired for teaching their convictions.
That would be because their convictions are frequently simply wrong in the light of the science they're supposed to be teaching. They're welcome to hold them personally, of course, but you cannot teach them as science. Atheists do not pass pseudoscience off as science, simply because atheism doesn't need any pseudoscience to support their personal convictions. If they are actually trying to convince students there is no god (as opposed to, say, teaching them evolution, which is not at all the same thing) in a science class, they should be fired for not teaching their subject, but I really have never heard of that happening. Except in that one Chick tract.
How about great classical music?
Also mostly composed in a time when there pretty much
were no atheists; you honestly cannot expect to find classical composers who were atheists, irrelevant of how inspired the religious are compared to atheists. The same applies to all the visual art he speaks of (and don't forget all the art that has no connections with religion at all, which should rightfully be considered atheistic!).
The United States was founded on a belief in God.
No, no, no, no, no! How in the world can Americans continually uphold this idea that their country was founded on Christianity when some of its primary principles are freedom of religion and separation of church and state? Arguments have been made that the founding fathers were largely deistic, agnostic or atheists, but their personal beliefs don't even matter; what matters is that the United States was plainly formed on a secular ground, as a place where no religion would be imposed on anyone.
Also:
Anyway, isn't it the agnostic type to doubt God's existence due to lack of evidence? While atheist reject Him completely, accepting evidence that He doesn't exist?
Agnosticism is believing that whether or not God exists is something unknowable or otherwise taking a completely neutral stance on the issue. Atheists who actively believe in the nonexistence of God are very rare and honestly rather paradoxical. Most atheists merely treat the existence of God the same way they treat the proposed existence of any other absurd but undisprovable concept, like invisible unicorns: assume nonexistence until there is reason to suppose otherwise.
But if you are welcome to think that I should rather be calling myself agnostic than atheist. The words used really don't matter as long as I have made it clear precisely what I believe.