As others see you--Illinois:

You know what? I'd keep guns out of schools. I really would prefer it that way. Have them in your house all you want. Protect your property from bad people--it's your second amendment right. But I know it is not safe for children, who are inexperienced about the world, and full of irrationality and strong feelings, to have instruments of violence around them, and possibly use those instruments to put other children in fear of their lives. I feel strongly that guns should not be a part of a child's school experience because they are there to learn and they are not there to be harmed or feel threatened.

I also would not expect them to be told to pray. They can pray in their homes or their churches all they want to, and even in schools--I will not stop a free thinking person from having a conversation with what they believe to be their Deity. But by the same rationale, I would not make any child feel that they had to pray, or make any outward sign of doing so. The reason for that is that religious belief is their own personal business. Whether one is a child of Jehovah's Witnesses, who does not feel comfortable praying in public "as the heathens do", per the Bible, or a child brought up in an atheist, agnostic, or Neo-pagan tradition, which does not have the same ideas about prayer, that child should not be singled out, or made to feel that they, and by extension, their families or their beliefs, are invalidated. But as an atheist, I have no reason to want to destroy culture. I simply don't share in a common cultural belief in a Deity. But my belief that life is valuable, that children are to be protected, and that schools are places of learning, not violence, are all ideas that match my values.

If I had something to say to Representative Davis, it would be this--I don't have anything against God. I can't hate what I really don't believe in. If I were to believe in a God, would I then lay the violence, sin, evil, and all that at his door? Would I hope for a blessing, welcome his love and mercy--and be disappointed again and again? No. I don't hate God. I can't blame him. If I see injustice in this world, I know it comes from the acts of unjust and unkind, unmerciful and unthinking--people. And if there is good or beauty, it comes from a spectacularly complex, varied, and awesome set of circumstances we call our shared reality--and sometimes just the cosmos, and also from good people who mean well, regardless of their beliefs. My nonbelief has no Hell, and little room for hate. It is not a dangerous philosophy for children, Ms. Davis. It is a philosophy that does not offer a devil to torture, a god to judge, but only one responsible person in his or her surroundings, doing the very best he or she can to live a good life. It is a Eupraxsophy, according to Paul Kurtz--and it is benign. My good news is there isn't so much bad news, as eternal hellfire and sin. There is responsibility for oneself, and the nobility of one's fellow man, and the joy of his creations--in art, music, literature, contributions to science.

And there is sorrow when people do wrong, too. An atheist is no automatic lover of wrongdoing. We are practical, rational people. Why should we then want injustice? Why should we root for things to be out of balance, or want harm to any--when it could bring harm on ourselves?

I am an atheist. I would not sell your--or anyone's--child into drugs, violence, or ideology. I just have a different opinion. It's one that satisfies me, and actually makes me appreciate my one life a great deal. I mean you, and society, and the future, no harm.

It is very interesting to see atheism--and myself by extension, as others might see me.