About Us

In December of last year, I began work on a book entitled “The Good Atheist”. The reason for wanting to write this book was a reaction to the events that were happening all around us; from the violent sectarian uprisings in the Muslim world, to the growing Christian fundamentalist movement in America. I wanted to try and combat the problem of growing religious intolerance and hatred.

The problem of growing fundamentalism is religious in nature, and as such, cannot be solved by the current religious institutions. They are themselves partly to blame; they have propagated a system of belief that is driven by the dangerous mechanism of faith; a process that requires adherents to blindly accept religious doctrine as true, regardless of any evidence to the contrary. Fundamentalism is an irrational emotional response to the many inconsistencies of doctrinal teachings, as well as a reaction to Bronze Age platitudes. In this sense, the only way to effectively combat this growing threat is through a rational, secular, and humanist approach.

Equally important is the need to try and quantify the role of atheists in society. As the fastest growing minority in North America, atheists are misrepresented and misunderstood by the general public. It is often erroneously assumed that non-religious individuals must be immoral and corrupt, an assumption that is completely false (in fact, studies have shown that on average, atheists tend to be more generous, more law abiding, and have a lower divorce rate than their religious counterparts). Religious critics often cite atheistic movements that have caused terrible suffering, such as the Chinese and Russian Communist regimes. It is noteworthy that although the movements themselves may have claimed to be anti-religious, in truth they were political religions that suffered from the same irrational fundamentalism as their theological counterparts.

As work on the book continues to progress, this website will serve as a way of discussing the issues that comprise it, as well as gather feedback from the atheist community as to what they feel makes an individual a “good atheist”. It will also attempt to expose the growing dangers of fundamentalism in the world, by discussing recent religious and political events.

If you have any comments, or questions, you can email me at jacobfortin@gmail.com