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Vote Atheist!

Posted on June 14th, 2011 by Staks

While being an atheist is still a minority in America, it is surprisingly a larger group of people then Jews and Mormons. There is of course a big difference however. Jews and Mormons have a belief system in common and a common culture. So they have little to no problem voting for and donating money to candidates based on those commonalities.

Atheists also outnumber gays in America (although there is certainly a great deal of crossover between the two groups). The only thing gays have in common with each other is their attraction for people of the same gender and yet the gay community has formed a pretty strong voting block. Sure there are some Log Cabin Republicans, but let’s face facts, most people in the gay community share some common values.

Most atheists actually do have something in common aside from our lack of belief in deities. Within the greater community of reason, it is pretty apparent that most of us share a set of values despite the fact that by strict definition the only thing we technically share is a lack of belief in deities. Most atheists tend to associate with humanistic ideals, a love of science, education, and critical thinking. We tend to support the Separation of Church and State and while there are some atheists who identify themselves as Republicans or Libertarians, like the gay community most atheist tend to be pretty liberal and even quite progressive.

So when I encourage those within the greater community of reason to vote for and support atheist candidates, why is it that I get people who feel the need to tell me that they wouldn’t vote for a candidate because of their atheism, but want to be given a detailed list of issues to examine, study, and debate but are too lazy to look into the candidate themselves?

Obviously if Ayn Rand was running for office, I would not recommend voting or supporting her based on her atheism. But in today’s political climate, an atheist candidate would likely not be a Republican for reasons which I think are quite obvious.

Given a choice of two candidates, an atheist vs. a fundamentalist Christian, it is probable that the atheist candidate would be better 999 times out of 1000 (and that is being generous). So when I say that there is an atheist candidate running for office and that we should form a voting and support block for that candidate, I would expect that any reasonable atheist within the greater community of reason should be excited to lend their support to that candidate. If they feel so worried about that the atheist candidate might be closer to Stalin than Stark they can do a quick google search and see some of the candidate’s main issues themselves.

The fact is that we can form a strong voting and support block just like the gay community has. We can start to change the public perception of atheism by actually getting atheist candidates elected to public office. We can turn the tide so that politicians will start to think twice about talking about their faith out of fear of losing votes. But in order to do this, we have to form that strong voting and support block.

If an atheist (qualified goes without saying here), runs for school board in some bumble fuck town in Alabama, our community should be able to raise massive amounts of money for him or her. If an atheist is running for Congress in North Carolina (and one is) we should be able to raise massive amounts of money for him so that he can defeat his religious right opponent in the Democratic Primary and then go on to win the seat in the general election.

In the words of Babylon 5’s Captain John Sheridan, “We can fight and we can win, but we have to do it together!”

Right now Cecil Bothwell needs your support. Please donate to his campaign even if it is just a little bit. He stands a good chance of winning that seat if we all work together.

Here is another great article on this topic: There Are 10 Times As Many Atheists as Mormons: When Will Non-Believers Become a Political Force?