[From www.kansascity.com]
Those who don’t believe in God are finding strength in numbers in public and political arenas
By JACQUELINE L. SALMON and MARY JORDAN
The Washington Post
In England and its offspring, the United States, a legion of the godless is rising up against the forces of religiosity.
“People who were ashamed to say there is no God now say, ‘Wow, there are others out there who think like me, and it feels damned good,’ ” said Margaret Downey, president of the Atheist Alliance International, whose membership has almost doubled in the last year to 5,200. It had a 500-person waiting list for its convention in Arlington, Va., last month.
Books like The God Delusion, by Oxford University professor Richard Dawkins, attempting to debunk religion have been surprise best-sellers the last two years, outselling such religious works as Pope Benedict XVI’s book on Jesus and popular Christian novelist Tim LaHaye’s latest book, Kingdom Come, according to Nielsen BookScan.
And atheists themselves are becoming much more vocal. Take columnist and author Christopher Hitchens. Recently he said a new book laying out Mother Teresa’s secret struggles with her doubts about God showed her spiritual wavering was actually atheism.
“She couldn’t bring herself to believe in God, but she wished she could,” said Hitchens, whose God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything is among atheist best-sellers.
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