A national registry for atheists

From Dispatches from the Culture Wars:

Pastor Mike Stahl of the Living Water internet church thinks atheists should be registered.

Brothers and Sisters, I have been seriously considering forming a (Christian) grassroots type of organization to be named “The Christian National Registry of Atheists” or something similar. I mean, think about it. There are already National Registrys for convicted sex offenders, ex-convicts, terrorist cells, hate groups like the KKK, skinheads, radical Islamists, etc..

This type of “National Registry” would merely be for information purposes. To inform the public of KNOWN (i.e., self-admitted) atheists. For example, let’s say you live in Colorado Springs, Colorado, you could simply scroll down (from the I-Net site/Blog) I would have, to the State of Colorado, and then when you see “Colorado Springs”, you will see the names of all the self-admitted atheist(s) who live there...

Now, many (especially the atheists) , may ask “Why do this, what’s the purpose?” Duhhh, Mr. Atheist, for the same purpose many States put the names and photos of convicted sex offenders and other ex-felons on the I-Net – to INFORM the public! I mean, in the City of Miramar, Florida, where I live, the population is approx. 109,000. My family and I would sure like to know how many of those 109,000 are ADMITTED atheists! Perhaps we may actually know some. In which case we could begin to witness to them and warn them of the dangers of atheism. Or perhaps they are radical atheists, whose hearts are as hard as Pharaoh’s, in that case, if they are business owners, we would encourage all our Christian friends, as well as the various churches and their congregations NOT to patronize them as we would only be “feeding” Satan.

Frankly, I don’t see why anyone would oppose this idea – including the atheists themselves (unless of course, they’re actually ashamed of their atheist religion, and would prefer to stay in the ‘closet.’).

[Note that I cleaned up the punctuation a little bit to make that comment easier to read. Since Stahl has now hidden his blog, I can't access the original, and I suspect that the weird punctuation might be an artifact of the copying process.]

Tracie at The Atheist Experience thinks this would be a great idea and sent Pastor Stahl an email saying so:

Will there be an annual yearbook published? Like a directory? I'm an "out" atheist, and don't want to miss out. Is there a fee to be included? Thanks for your efforts! I've been trying to get a comprehensive list of atheists in the global community for years now, and have been doing it the hard way apparently--collecting them slowly over years on social networks. But if you're willing to do the leg work, that would be awesome. You rock, Pastor Mike! Please make the list publicly available, we get a lot of letters from atheists asking where they can meet other atheists in their area. A listing like you suggest would be a big help!

Heh, heh. Of course, she's being sarcastic, but really, finding other atheists in your community can be a problem. I mean, it's not as though we congregate in churches on Sundays. We don't go door to door trying to convert people, and most of us don't even have horns on our foreheads. So how do you tell?

Maybe we need some kind of recognition sign.

But a national registry - particularly one operated by Christian loons like this - probably wouldn't be to our benefit. (Heh, heh. Ya' think?) Atheists would be even more cautious about coming out of the closet than they are already.

And for good reason! Note Stahl's threat: "if they are business owners, we would encourage all our Christian friends, as well as the various churches and their congregations NOT to patronize them as we would only be “feeding” Satan."

Just imagine if he'd said that about Jews, or even Muslims. Just imagine that someone had said that about Christians, someone in China, perhaps. Can you imagine the uproar then? But somehow, that kind of bigotry is par for the course when it comes to atheists. Funny, huh?

Ah, well, this pastor is a pathetic nobody. He's good for a laugh, but nothing more. We atheists certainly can't be intimidated that easily.