I found a great source for interesting opinions today, which always makes me wonder why I never realised it was there earlier:

ScienceBlogs

The name gives it away really, but there is far more to this than interesting chats about global warming, or developments in cancer research.

The many blogs on this site often cross-reference each other so there seems to be a healthy debate going on here, and the credentials of the contributors are sound - this is not a site for dumbed-down opinions. You can search the entire site, covering everyone's blogs. Obviously, the nature of my blog means I had to search for 'atheist', and found close to 700 posts. That's enough to be going on with!

This post definitely caught my eye:

Is Atheism a Civil Rights Issue?

Make sure you follow all the links to the other articles referenced in this discussion. The following paragraph is one which which most atheists will certainly be able to relate:

Let us begin with the observation that "us vs. them" is, regrettably, an accurate characterization of the facts. The "them" in this case is not all religious people. It is, instead, the distressingly large percentage of religious people who are openly contemptuous of atheism, who have no problem with chipping away at the separation of church and state, who endorse balancing evolution with ID or creationism in public schools, who would have their own blinkered view of morality imposed on scientific research or on people's personal sexual habits, and who generally believe that their religious views have some relevance in setting public policy. You will not win these people over by talking about the beauties of atheism or by being polite in your writing. And they are not some small minority you can work around by appealing to the reason and good will of people on the fence. They are people to whom you must raise your voice, to make it clear to them they will not have things their own way.

Sound familiar? One of the reasons that atheism is such a hot topic in the news at the moment is that some of us, in fact more and more each day, are finally making a noise, telling the world we are fed up listening to religious nonsense, and we want to stop the discrimination against those whose only 'crime' seems to be that they don't believe in an invisible magic man spying on us from a cloud, just outside the universe.

If atheists weren't making a noise, who would be listening to us? Who would have listened to the suffragettes, or the gay rights movement, if they had quietly sat in their homes and said nothing? Often 'keeping quiet' is the only way you could avoid getting attacked for your opinions, but silence never won an argument, doesn't get any media attention, and allows the status quo to keep on rolling over the rights of people who have opposing views.

As someone once wrote, 'the atheists are revolting'. About time too. Hey, wouldn't that make a great title for a book?!