American atheist, Andy Rooney, dead.
Friday, secular America lost an icon. Andy Rooney, longtime CBS "60 Minutes" commentator, best-selling author and syndicated newspaper columnist, is dead at 92.
Rooney was a rare figure in American popular culture - an unabashed, out of the closet, out in the open, atheist:
“I am an atheist… I don’t understand religion at all. I’m sure I’ll offend a lot of people by saying this, but I think it’s all nonsense.”(From a speech at Tufts University, Nov. 18, 2004.)
Indeed, with the rise of the Internet, Rooney became something of a freethinking hero. In particular, Rooney’s “Why I am an atheist” has become an often referenced Internet meme:
“Why am I an atheist? I ask you: Why is anybody not an atheist? Everyone starts out being an atheist. No one is born with belief in anything. Infants are atheists until they are indoctrinated. I resent anyone pushing their religion on me. I don’t push my atheism on anybody else. Live and let live. Not many people practice that when it comes to religion.”(Marian Christy, “Conversations: We make our own destiny”, Boston Globe, 30 May 1982)
In his 1999 book “Sincerely, Andy Rooney,” he included a final section called "Faith in Reason." In it he reprints a thorough letter about his agnosticism and freethought views. The following are excerpts from that letter:
"I don't differentiate much, except in degree, between people who believe in religion from those who believe in astrology, magic or the supernatural.""We all ought to understand we're on our own. Believing in Santa Claus doesn't do kids any harm for a few years but it isn't smart for them to continue waiting all their lives for him to come down the chimney with something wonderful. Santa Claus and God are cousins.""I just wish this social institution [religion] wasn't based on what appears to me to be a monumental hoax built on an accumulation of customs and myths directed toward proving something that isn't true.""Christians talk as though goodness was their idea but good behavior doesn't have any religious origin. Our prisons are filled with the devout.""I'd be more willing to accept religion, even if I didn't believe it, if I thought it made people nicer to each other but I don't think it does."
In 2001 the Freedom From Religion Foundation gave Andy Rooney the “Emperor Has No Clothes Award,” an award celebrating “plain speaking” on the shortcomings of religion by public figures.
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