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                 More About American Atheists

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     American Atheists asserts that you have another freedom:
Freedom *from* religion and from paying heavy taxes so that the
relatively few churchgoers in American can benefit from your tax
payment.

     American Atheists is an organization dedicated to the maintenance
of that freedom for you.

     American Atheists seeks to provide the alternative of freedom
*from* religion in America.  For generations, Americans have been taught
that in the United States we have freedom *of* religion only.  That is,
we are free to choose which religion we care to profess as long as we
choose.  We are presented with a plethora of belief systems and told to
"pick a card, any card," but we may not decline to play the game.
American Atheists believes that you have the right to say "none of the
above" when faced with an ever-growing list of sects in our denomination-
prone religious system.  We also feel that it is your right to be free
from the burden of financial support of religion in general or any sect
in particular.

     American Atheists believes that separation of state and church is
the essential prerequisite to your survival as an Atheist.  Without
separation, the arm of the state can be used to force you as an Atheist
to profess a religious belief or restrict your freedoms if you do not.
Only when state and church are separated and the church is made to stand
alone, on its dogma, does the Atheist have a chance.  When the church
stands alone, it can be confronted on equal ground, intellectually, with
the invalidity of its dogmas; with the power of the state at its back,
it cannot.

     American Atheists was created to defeind the civil rights of Atheists
where they are violated on the basis of an individual's espousal of Atheism
as a life-style.  For example, currently the constitutions of three states
prohibit anyone who does not believe in "a supreme being" from holding
public office or trust, i.e., being employed by the state.

     We feel that these struggles are essential to the maintenance of the
ultimate freedom that any society should provide to each individual:
FREEDOM OF THE MIND.

     This is the goal of Atheism-- promotion of that ultimate freedom.

     As Atheists, we are *not* Humanists, Agnostics, Rationalists,
Freethinkers, Ethical Culturists, or Unitarians, nor do we hide behind
any of a number of pseudo-Atheist labels used chiefly as socially
acceptable camouflage.

     Neither are we any more negative in our position than those who labor
for independence-- freedom from dependency.  An Atheist labors for freedom
from *theism*, or freedom from dependency on god theories.  We are also
not a religion.  The concept of an agency outside of nature with the
ability to reach into natural law and to control events is supernaturalism,
the foundation of any religion.  The existence of that agency is based on
subjective faith and belief systems.  An Atheist has no belief system.
We accept only that which is scientifically verifiable.  Since god concepts
are unverifiable, we do not accept them.

     American Atheists requires no system of depending on rigid dogma to
govern the events of daily lives.  The theist relies upon a set of specific
rules of conduct on a daily basis and depends on those rules to function
normally.  An Atheist can function normally in society without reference
to any arbitrary set of rules of conduct.  Enlightened self-interest and
common sense suffice.

     Atheists are happy and content with their lifestyle.  They are *not*
unhappy that they have rejected a closed theistic system inside of which
they must operate.  Atheists are comfortable and content with a life-style
free from theism.


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