Do you believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster? How about fairies and unicorns? Hmmm, didn't think so. Well, then, why do you believe in God?

That is what Richard Dawkins asks in the latest issue of WIRED Magazine in an article titled The New Atheists. Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist made famous by his seminal study of genes called The Selfish Gene, believes that atheists should stop being so goddamn politically correct, and say it like it is: God is a figment of your kinky imagination!

In fact, people like Dawkins believe that it is the ethical duty of atheists to evangelize atheism and to save the rest of the world from this farce steeped in stupidity and delusion (aka religion). The atheists who follow and practice this line of thinking are, ladies and gentlemen, the New Atheists!

"The number of nonreligious people in the US is something nearer to 30 million than 20 million," he says. "That's more than all the Jews in the world put together. I think we're in the same position the gay movement was in a few decades ago. There was a need for people to come out. The more people who came out, the more people had the courage to come out. I think that's the case with atheists. They are more numerous than anybody realizes."

I must confess I have very mixed feelings about this. I used to be a rabid atheist, but after seeing how militant Islamism is a highly distasteful enterprise, I have now become a moderate atheist. What does that mean? Essentially that I respect the beliefs, however ridiculous, of other people; and that I pretend to respect the intelligence, however dim, of people who hold ridiculous beliefs (such as the belief in fairies, unicorns and god).

But coming back to Dawkins, the question is: is it our moral right to enlighten people about the value of atheism? I leave that to Philosophy graduate students to waste seven years of their lives trying to figure it out in a PhD program, but as far as how madzen the Dawkins dude is, we give him a thumbs-up for having the balls to express himself!

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