I am usually a silent curmudgeon. However, I believe that the treatment accorded the billboard sponsored by the Center for Inquiry—whom I have no affiliation with— has been unjust. That billboard advertised an atheistic response to the question of the human condition. It celebrated an emphasis in the bona fide morality of atheists. The prurient possibility that atheists might be moral seems incongruent to many faiths.

Lord help us.

This is because atheism suffers deeply from the vilification it receives from religious conservatives. This vilification especially includes the notion of an inferior morality. However, atheism is only a response formed from religion. Just as Protestantism is a response to Catholicism. And just as Catholicism is a response to Judaism. And so on.

The enemy to religion has never been atheism or science, but religion itself.

The more you know about your bible, it seems, the less you know about yourself. Morality is prejudice. It can be ethnocentric and bigoted. Can we claim to know the answer?

Every faith and philosophy shares the same question. That is where the meaning lies. The answer matters less. And that’s good, because no one will ever have it

-Jason Escareno

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