Religion is a lot like tobacco, isn't it? Some people can use it for most of their lives with no apparent ill effects. Others become seriously sick while refusing to acknowledge, or even staunchly defending, the cause of their disability. Some folks become so seriously addicted that they cannot imagine life without it. Some are able to keep it, and the effects of it, to themselves while others insist they have not only a God-given right to use it, but that their right supersedes the rights of others around them.

Perhaps it would be more correct to say that religion is in much the same position as smoking was about 40 or 50 years ago. Back then, it was considered polite to offer someone a cigarette, and blowing smoke in someone's face wasn't seen as anything very serious. Some people knew, or at least suspected that smoking was bad for humans, but most insisted that there was no compelling evidence. Of course, those who were the most addicted and those who stood to lose the most money were the most fanatical in both denying the harm of smoking and defending the "right" of smokers to light up wherever and whenever they wanted to.

The "Imagine No Religion" billboards that have gone up recently in Chambersburg and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania are a bit like the first anti-smoking messages that appeared in the 1960's. While non-smokers welcomed a positive message, the addicts and pushers were outraged that someone would have the unmitigated gall to suggest that the world might be a better place without cigarette smoke.

We need more messages advocating the positive benefits of kicking the habit of delusional thinking while embracing reality and rational thinking.

--Steve Neubauer
President, PA Nonbelievers
Pique, Newsletter of Secular Humanists of New York, Nov. '08