Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Silencing Atheists

I am interested in seeing a writeup of the full story concerning My Space and their alleged disposition to silence atheist points of view (see My Space: No Place for Atheists).

The standard response from religous leaders to atheism has been to silence it. We have seen this in its censorship of "The Golden Compass" and the books on which it represents. We have seen it in their efforts to resist any depiction of atheists or atheism in a positive light. We see it now in pressure to prevent any representation of atheism in My Space, controlled by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, the same company that runs Fox News.

I am not an investigative reporter and I do not have the resources to investigate this issue in detail. Hopefully, somebody with more resources than I will give it a go.

Would, perhaps, some news organization be willing to investigate the issue and report on their findings?

I suspect we would have a long wait ahead of us if we expect to hear an unbiased account on Fox News.

And, of course, the other media conglomerates whose job it is to put eyeballs on advertisements are simply going to look at the fact that most eyeballs belong to people who have grown up in a culture that denigrates and demeans atheists as a matter of national policy (e.g., the Pledge of Allegiance and the national motto), and are unlikely to want to offend anybody.

So, what's the way out of this vicious circle, where denigrating and discriminating against atheists becomes profitable, and those profits are put to work promoting the denigration and discrimination of atheists?

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