While I was sitting at the bar in Salt Lake’s airport I sneezed. I absolutely hate sneezing in public because it prompts a reflexive “Bless you” from people and obligates the sneezer to thank the blesser. Of course the man around the corner (really just two seats away said those two damned words. I took another bite of my burger then I finally responded with something along the lines of, “I’m not trying to be rude, but I’m an atheist and I’m not a fan of people saying ‘bless you.’ I haven’t quite figured out how best to respond yet, but have tried everything from no thank you to just ignoring it.”

He said that he wasn’t offended. As we chatted for a few minutes I shared the story of the man at the Reason Rally who said “bless you” to someone’s sneeze. His comment was quite interesting, “I’d be afraid to do that there, I hope no one responded violently.”

I was surprised and decided to choose my words carefully as I took another sip of Outer Darkness, then I spoke, “Most atheists are either humanists or utilitarians. Utilitarians want whats best for society and humanists what’s best for people. The likelihood of violence from an atheist would be quite low.”

He thought for a moment, then said the best thing anyone’s ever said to me, “More groups need to hear that message.”

Who would have thought that being enough of a jackass as to not thank someone for a “bless you” and being pretentious enough to explain why would have opened someones eyes and changed someone’s view of atheists so much?

That is why it is so important to be open about who we are. That is why it maters. The likelihood of causing someone to lose their faith is slim to nil. But to turn someone’s view of atheists to the better, to make them think twice about their prejudices, to make them just a little more skeptical of some of the BS out there, that we can do and that we must.

In the culture war we are gaining ground, but there a still a lot of people who are afraid of us and people who despise us. Every time you keep your mouth shut you allow someone to reinforce their own preconceptions and those of the people around them without any challenge. Every time you do that you lose a little ground and so does the rest of the godless hoard.

Based on the current statistics, with more than three out of ten people not being Christians and at least one out of ten an atheist, it’s pretty good odds that just about everybody knows an atheist, but most them them probably don’t know that. If we all simply made ourselves known we could make ourselves mainstream, maybe even boring, but at least we wouldn’t be scary, distrusted, or hated.

That’s why I do what I do here and on the podcast, it’s not to destroy the faith of believers, it’s to encourage the godless and soften the hearts of the saints.

1000 blog posts down and thousands more to come.