Stop distorting what atheism is truly about

Carl Kaun, Henderson

Thursday, Feb. 28, 2008 | 2:04 a.m.

In his commentary in Monday’s Las Vegas Sun (“Atheism is based on faith every bit as much as Christianity”), syndicated columnist Paul Campos once again tortures logic trying to make a point about atheism.

An atheist is simply a person without belief in a deity. We are all born atheists — we become otherwise because most of us are indoctrinated into religious beliefs starting almost from the time we are born.

People “lose their faith” for a variety of reasons, often because they see the inconsistencies of their brand of theism with the rest of the world. And because they do indeed lose their faith and find they need nothing to replace it, to say that atheism requires faith is about like calling bald a hair color.

Atheists are not different people as a result. Our morality remains the morality of our culture and upbringing, and we still act and feel about things pretty much as we always did. And we are everywhere, all around you.

Depending on the poll, atheists are between 4 percent and 14 percent of our population. That is more than the number of Jews, Muslims and Buddhists taken together, and possibly more than the number of left-handers or blacks.

I am saddened that people such as Campos continually distort what atheism is about. I urge Sun readers to understand that atheists are really just people, pretty much the same as everyone else, and that claims to the contrary are usually no more than an inappropriate religious bigotry.

The writer is president of the Humanist Association of Las Vegas, an organization that supports the rights of nontheists.