Satanists and Catholics Unite

I was intrigued by a passing comment on The Colbert Report that the only demographic which is on the rise in all 50 states is atheists. I actually looked into this statistic and discovered that additionally, the only demographic which is decreasing in every state is Monotheists (the group which includes Jews, Christians, and Muslims), though there is variation for each particular faith.

Religious leaders defend this by saying (and I completely agree with them) that the number of people of true faith have not decreased; they have actually increased for the most part. I personally would suggest that “atheists” also qualify as people of true faith (i.e. they sincerely believe in their metaphysical beliefs).

What appears to be happening is that people who are ambivalent towards religion have long considered themselves Christians because, well, that’s what normal people are. Atheists, however, have done a very good PR job of telling people that, by definition, if they don’t actively believe in God, then they are atheists. Therefore, when people are asked what religion they consider themselves to be, people who used to call themselves Christians are now calling themselves atheists, even though nothing in their belief or lifestyle has changed at all.

Now, I would like to suggest that anyone who casually refers to themselves as Catholic, Muslim, Mormon or Protestant, but don’t go to church/mosque or follow the rituals of their dogma are not actually of that religion, and people who refer to themselves as atheists but don’t really think about whether or not there is a God are not atheists. They’re simply non-religious.

My theory is that if the only people who considered themselves members of a belief system were people who actually believed it, the world would be incomparably better than it is today. If you ever look at debates between devout muslims, devout Christians, and devout atheists, they are almost always completely cordial with each other. Many of the most religious actually believe that they are in the same circle as those from other religions, they simply disagree on the details.

Even some of the higher-ups in the Church of Satan point out that Satanism is merely a rebranding by Christians of the worship of mother Earth, that Satan wasn’t even considered evil until the Catholic church announced that he was the ruler of Hell in the 400s. They don’t condone sinning, deception, or evil of any kind—the church is essentially a nephew of paganism, and are simply victims of a slander campaign 1600 years ago. And much like the other ‘non-believers’ I mentioned before, anyone who calls themselves a Satanist because they drink goat’s blood and evoke the Dark Lord are not really Satanists; they’re just idiots. And really, they’re no worse than the extreme fringe of most other religions, whether it’s radical Muslims, Opus Dei (i.e. radical Catholics), or radical Fundementalist Christians, who condone oppression, mortal punishment of nonbelievers, and provoke violence against innocents, like abortion doctors, gay rights activists, and blacks (lest ye forget the affiliation of the Ku Klux Klan). Even radical Hindus have some issues to deal with. Suicide by fire on a public street is not rational behavior.

Basically what I’m saying is that we need to do a reorg of the country’s religions into the five actual belief structures on our planet:

• Fundementalists
• The Devout
• Casual Believers (i.e. those who merely attend service because all their friends go to church too)
• Humanists (atheists, agnostics, Unitarians, certain liberal factions)
• Non-believers

We’ve outgrown these geographic clubs. Let the Fundementalists go to war with the Devout, and leave the rest of us out of it.