Why I Dislike Religion

If you've read some of my other content, you'll know that I'm an atheist, and one who takes objection to organized religion. I'm often asked why. The question goes: "Ok, you're an atheist. Fine. Why do you dislike religion, though? Why can't you be an atheist and let everyone else believe what they want?"

If the world of religion were actually so "live and let live," I would take no objection. But the Christian right in America has for years attempted to turn their beliefs into my laws. Christian fundamentalists have attempted to push their anti-scientific creationist nonsense into public schools. They have attempted to ban abortion, not because it is an accepted legal concept that a woman should not have a right to her body, but because of their religion. They attempt to ban stem cell research, which may some day save the life of myself or my loved ones. They have put "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. Schoolchildren, who are highly impressionable, hear this and think it's a bad thing to question the existence of this "God" figure or be an atheist. (By the way, the words "under God" were not originally in the pledge, but were added decades later after a campaign by the Knights of Columbus.) "God" is on the money as well, and every time I see it, my government is telling me that they endorse a religious belief in spite of the Constitution, and that I, as an atheist, a not part of America. George Bush, Sr., once said: "I don't know that atheists should be regarded as citizens, nor should they be regarded as patriotic."