When you see the word “atheist” written anywhere, what comes immediately to mind? Perhaps “non-religious” or “heathen” or “secular” or “humanist” or “Devil worshiper” or “militant” or “non-believer” or “Commie.” Although times are quickly changing and atheists are seeing more toleration across the United States and the world, for many Americans atheists are still associated with the negative terms listed in the previous sentence. Indeed, atheism still holds a very strong association with former and still-existing communist states like the Soviet Union, People’s Republic of China, and Cuba. Such was the association that during the mid- to late 1950s, during the Eisenhower administration, many efforts were taken to present religion, and Christianity in particular, as the antithesis of the “Godless Communists.”
Even in non-communist countries such as the United States, atheism has long been seen as the domain of those with progressive liberal views. In some respects, this makes sense. Many are former Christians who rejected the religious beliefs of their parents, and I suspect they thought that if gods weren’t real, what else might be incorrect? However, they’ve frequently take to connecting their political views with their (lack of) religious views, sometimes suggesting that one surely cannot be a “real atheist” for holding anything other than liberal views or working with those who do.
The primary goal of Free Market Atheist is to show that atheists can indeed hold positions from other areas of the political spectrum, because they do. Atheism is one thing only: a lack of belief in the existence of deities. That is it. Any other position, whether it be scientific or political, is something else entirely. Atheism is not liberal or conservative because it’s not a political position. There are atheists from all over the spectrum, whether they call themselves socialists, liberals, conservatives, libertarians or something else.
Apart from exploring the conservatarian wing of the atheist community, FMA aims to show atheists for who they really are: regular folks. They’re fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, teachers, coaches, business owners, CEOs, artists, travelers, technologists, and more. They can be found among the super rich and the super poor, the very young and the very old. They like to read, watch movies, take a hike, ride a bicycle, take a joy ride, visit museums, spend time with their friends and family, and travel to lands near and distant. Some used to be Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddists, Hindus, and pagans. Others were never religious at all. They come in all sizes, shapes, variations and combinations.
The third major theme of this site is discussion of religion itself, for one can make the best arguments against the existence of deities only if they know the beliefs of the various religions. So this site will be used to explore religions and their creeds. A note on this: though Free Market Atheist holds no ill-will toward believers – we know that there are many reasons for adopting a religion – we do reserve the right to criticize the religions themselves, and the tenets of those religions.
Finally, we will cover topics relevant to atheists, such as church/state issues and cases, other news, stories from atheists, conventions and meetings, and research, among other subjects.
Contribute
It’s easy enough to post a comment to any article but if you’d like to contribute in a more substantial way, such as a article, or if you have written a piece that’s relevant to what we cover, send an email to mike@freemarketatheist.com.
Many Thanks To…
I’d like to thank the people who have made this site possible. Without their efforts, this site might not exist. Without further ado…
Name.com: The registrar of my domains. Name.com is an awesome registrar, and I’ve never had any problems with them. Highly recommended.
WordPress: Provides the software I use for the blog and other areas of my website. WordPress is easy to use, skin, and has a bunch of useful plugins. It is also relatively simple to use it as a content management system for your whole site.
Creative Commons: For their progressive efforts in the area of copyleft. I could create my own terms of service for Dymersion, but why, when they have good stuff already?
LiquidX: This dude single-handedly created the site’s original design. He added his own twist to what was once a pretty crappy piece of work done by me. I have since updated it into a newer, more modern version, but its remains inspired by his original work.
Will Spencer – A single Facebook comment from him inspired me to create Free Market Atheist, regarding 2016 Presidential candidate Ted Cruz’s defense of a pastor who made anti-semitic remarks and the limited, mostly leftist publication options for speaking out against those comments:
Those “limited options” are exactly what you predicted. So far, this story is only in the Jewish press and the leftist press. If it doesn’t escape those walls, it says very bad things about the GOP — the exact bad things about which you posted.
My parents: Thanks for inspiring my throughout life, and especially my dad for getting me into computers, albeit in a slightly different area of expertise than his own.