It's been a long time since any of the Abrahamic faiths -- Christianity, Islam and Judaism -- spoke with a singular voice. For atheists the wait has been eternal. Currently, a schism is building between "athiest fundamentalists" -- who seek to eradicate religion, the purveyor of war and ignorance -- and secular humanists who stress the importance of individuals, of equality and of social justice.

This article from the Associated Press digs into the atheist split. The article focuses on Greg Epstein, the humanist chaplain at Harvard University, who takes issue with the "New Atheists" -- people like Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, and Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason and the diatribe Letter to a Christian Nation.

Epstein calls them "atheist fundamentalists." He sees them as rigid in their dogma, and as intolerant as some of the faith leaders with whom atheists share the most obvious differences. ... "Humanism is not about erasing religion," he said. "It's an embracing philosophy."

Harris said that not everyone needed to be as radical in religious opposition as he is. But "an intellectual intolerance of people who strongly believe things on bad evidence is just 'basic human sanity.'"

"We do not jail people for being stupid," he said, "but we do stop listening to them after a while"

If not gaining steam, the American atheist movement has at least been gaining visibility for the past few years, something I wrote about last November. Atheists, who account for 3 percent to 10 percent of Americans, depending on the poll, finally have a lobbyist in Washington (Lori Lipman Brown of the Secular Coalition for America) and a think tank (the Center for Inquiry's public policy office). And last month, Rep. Pete Stark of Fremont came out of the closet as Congress' first atheist in history. Democratic political strategist Dan Newman told the Chronicle that a year ago such a statement "would have been political suicide."

Non-theists -- atheists, agnostics, brights humanists and free thinkers -- are certain there have been, and are, more like Stark. But the others are too politically savvy. A 1999 Gallup poll found 49 percent of Americans would be willing to vote for an atheist president -- up from 17 percent in 1958, but still more than 40 percentage points lower than for a Catholic, Jew or African-American and 10 points lower than for a gay candidate.

As atheists continue to push for acceptance, the question is which godless philosophy -- the fundamentalists or the humanists -- will win the movement's soul.

(For anyone wondering why The God Blog would write about those who don't believe in a Supreme Being, click here.)