Article found via the News Feeds page:

Atheism is not about removing the right to religion

I picked out the following comment, attached to the article, which probably reflects the view of most atheists: pray all you like, just don't try and discriminate against those who do not share the same beliefs.

Lori Lipman Brown is the sole lobbyist to Congress for secular Americans in her work for the Secular Coalition for America, and the alliances she has forged are equally surprising and profound. She has worked together with many religious organizations to drive a separation of church and state. These religious organizations work with her in order to stave off any hint of a state religion (including fighting the falsehood that the United States was founded on "Judeo-Christian principles") in order to protect their own religious rights.

From "About the Secular Coalition for America":

"The Secular Coalition for America holds that freedom of conscience, including religious freedom, is a fundamental American value as evidenced by the fact that this is the first freedom protected in the Bill of Rights. Freedom of conscience is best guaranteed by protecting and strengthening the secular character of our government. Religious tolerance, a necessary product of this freedom, must be extended to people of all religions and to those without religious beliefs."

There is no movement by mainstream secular organizations to suppress religious expression; some even believe that the pushback against religion has gone too far in making personal prayer taboo in some circumstances. Few atheists would be sorry to see a church demolished because nobody attends it anymore, but this is only because we generally feel there is a better use of time and resources than worship. But that's a personal opinion, and everybody sees groups of people doing something that they think is a waste of time and money, particularly where our government is concerned.

Atheists, secularists, humanists, naturalists, skeptics and all the other labels for those of us who are generally non-believers ARE angry, upset and frightened right now. The encroachment of religion upon our governments is something we are not going to tolerate, because it infringes our rights to NOT believe. That one must say, "So help me God," at the end of the oath to take to become a nationalized citizen of the United States is profoundly discriminatory and ignores that up to 63 million Americans are atheist or agnostic. Bush's endorsement of "faith-based initiatives" strikes us as a blatantly unconstitutional funding of religious groups by the government; Mr. Bailey made the reasoning behind this very clear.

I think that while atheists are becoming very vocal about the omnipresence of religion in our public systems, very few would ever deny the right of any person or group of people to worship whatever they wished, so long as that worship does not unduly infringe upon the rights of others. Generally, we have all been accused of thought crimes, being threatened with eternal damnation by someone; this leads many of us to the position that thought crimes are oxymorons. There can be no punishment, no penalty for thoughts or ideas that exist only in your head. It is only when these thoughts turn into actions that we feel society should step in; especially when part of our government attempts to lend support to these actions when the government must remain explicitly neutral.

Go ahead and pray. Believe. Build churches and go to them. I don't care, and I will argue for your right to do so. But when you attempt to force your beliefs and behaviors upon me through either laws or actions by our government, I will speak out. I, and other secular Americans will not allow our right to NOT believe to be infringed without a struggle.

I am not the author of any of the above, so it's a 'this message is approved by Nick Gisburne' type of thing!