According to recent research done by the American Religious Identification Survey, secularism is on the rise. The percentage of Americans who claim no religious identity has nearly doubled from 8.2 percent in 1990 to 15 percent in 2008.

Who is this growing segment of the population? We call ourselves atheists, agnostics, humanists and freethinkers. We don’t subscribe to religious dogma and we don’t believe in the supernatural. We feel religion is inherently divisive and that it causes more harm than it does good. Much too often, we are persecuted for our secular beliefs. It’s basically impossible to run for public office in this country as an open atheist because the term atheist carries such a negative connotation.

Well, I’m here to say that the majority of us are good and kind people with strong sets of morals. You don’t have to have religion to see the difference between right and wrong. My morals are derived from the compassion that I believe is innate in the human spirit. The problem with religion is that it uses fear and coercion to get the good out of people. I don’t need to be threatened with hell to be a good person. I do it because I truly believe it is the right thing to do. In no way am I stating that religion does no good, because it does. Churches have been very important in giving back to the community. And I’m not going to deny that there are some wonderful moral lessons to be learned from the Bible. But the pain and suffering caused by religion throughout history more than overshadows its positive effects. For centuries upon centuries, religion has acted as a catalyst for war and murder – and that is fact, not opinion. It’s a lot easier on your conscience to kill an enemy that you think is going to burn in hell anyway. Keep in mind that when religion ruled the world, they called it the dark ages.

I want to ask my fellow secular students to speak up and fight against the intolerances of religion, but also to ask all the religious doubters out there to take a hard look at their shaky faith. Many of the “faithful” are only faithful when it’s convenient. I think a lot of people that claim religion in a survey aren’t as religious as they might think. Do you really believe that a child born into Islam is destined to burn in hell just because they don’t know Jesus? Do you really believe in a talking snake? That Noah got millions upon millions of species to sexually reproduce on a giant boat? That a virgin got pregnant? That the earth is only 6,000 years old? The list could go on and on. All I am saying is, think! It’s not illegal yet!

I leave you with a quote from Thomas Jefferson, one of our greatest and brightest founding fathers: “Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.”

- Andrew Haynes is a senior from Waycross majoring in telecommunication arts with a certificate in music business.