Brief commentary on Israel: Why it is a good reasno for atheists to support peace in Israel.

[B.H.]

Hi everyone,

I tend to politically support Israelis and people in the Palestinian territories, and the idea that these people should be at peace, based on ideological reasons. I realized a little while ago today though that there are very good strategic reasons for atheists to support peace in Israel, too.

It occurred to me that "anti-atheism" and "anti-Islam" is a good test that Jewish people who feel very tolerant towards other faiths can use to test people for anti-Semitism, i.e., if a Jewish person meets a "conservative Christian" who says that she can't stand Muslims or atheists, that can be a red flag for likely broader yet denied intolerance of other religious groups, too.

The thing is, bad-guy Muslim extremists probably try to strategically promote intolerance against Muslims by Israelis and other victims of terror partly to cause Jewish people to reject tolerance of Muslims, leading to rejection of anti-individual-religion tests, leading to anti-atheist sentiment. When that rejection proliferates, that's bad news for atheists and Western science, particularly given the frequent belief by atheists, I think, in the idea that "science explains it all," leading to an increased respect for and interest in science/math among many atheists, resulting in many very talented atheist STEM thinkers, like me--just think about how many Christian New Testament scholars there are compared to the number of New Testament scholars from other faiths.

Anyway, my point is that psychologically impactful lethal violence in the Israeli region of Earth is bad news for science, due to the impact on tolerance and tolerance tests that it can have all over the world, including in America. If you don't like my "sing-songy la-la-la everyone get along please" tone, I don't really mind...it just seems like the right way to express this conversationally, since I'm not writing for money right now and am just expressing thoughts without a big focus on "great writing."

-Philip White (philip...@yahoo.com)