Atheists and America

Hi from England. Personally I very strongly support the right of anyone to be an atheist. They should not have any restrictions whatsoever on holding any government position, public office etc. However, in the USA it would seem that being an atheist would make it near-impossible to get elected to any public office, if this fact was known by the electorate.
Here in England, quite a few years ago, we had a General Election, and the Labour Party was at the time led by an atheist, Mr Michael Foot. He lost the election, but I don't think his atheism was a factor.
Here in England I am not aware of any restrictions in public office. However, we don't talk as much about religion here. It does not come up very often in conversation. We don't have any such thing as "in God we trust" on our banknotes.
I think it is very important that the great nation USA supports atheists and gives them full civil rights, not least because atheism is seen as very bad in the Islamic world, and someone in e.g. Iran or Saudi Arabia who spoke that he/she was an atheist, would probably be thrown into prison (or worse). The book The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins was banned in many countries. All the more reason for USA to support atheists' rights.
I stress strongly that I am not an atheist, but my Mum is. I think my sister is, but we don't talk about it.

I entirely agree with you, Predator - it is wrong in principle to discriminate against people on the grounds of their beliefs or non-beliefs. But a law restricting public office to those who believe in God could be a problem for other groups besides atheists and agnostics. For example, I am a Buddhist, which is a non-theistic religion. That is, we don't recognise the existence of God in the sense of an all-powerful, conscious, supreme being who is inherently separate from the rest of the universe. I don't know how tightly these public office laws define belief in God or what sort of test they impose.

How sad it is to be one!

I'm a lot happier as an atheist than I was as an evangelist. Deep inside I knew religion was wrong. As a free thinker I'm not shackled to the fakery and lies of religion. I can see it for the sham that it is.

Faith = blindness

Blind faith = slavery

Aren't there some branches of Buddhism that are somewhat theistic?