When the atheism blogs, forums, and newsgroups are choked with posts and replies focusing solely on Christianity, I find it difficult to believe otherwise.

I am a Christian and a rationalist. (Impossible? Try me.) That being said, I wondered the other day what a real Atheist religion would look like. Not a mock religion, like FSMism (may his noodly appendages never dry up), but a real religion, with lifestyle choices, social gatherings, a moral code, legal recognition, and the like.

An organized Atheism would be technically non-secular, which is a real feat of logic. Atheism would have to claim (like so many other religions) that all other religions are false. Ironically, that would make “Liberal Christianity” more tolerant, since that religion says that there are many paths to God / Everything / The Afterlife.

Atheism gets far more converts by simply being quiet while its wittier prophets (Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, Douglas Adams) speak with their everlasting works of fiction and collections of essays.

I think we have to ditch this idea that we must be a coherent group, thus jettisoning the religious stigma that one Atheist somehow speaks for the entire group, and with it, the notion that there are such things as true - and by default, false - Atheists. The problem is that no matter how many of us recognize the individuality inherent in providing meaning in your own life, there will, at least for a very long time, be theists that try to characterize Atheism according to the words or actions of the one person or group that they find most offensive to their beliefs. Much like some people try to use Fred Phelps, or Rush Limbaugh, or Pat Robertson as though they speak for all of Christianity.

Ah, I’m just thinking out loud. The Exterminator above said it as well as I could.

The evangelists among us, who are working so hard to spread the atheistic good news, often speak as though atheists’ primary role is to disseminate nonbelief. Frankly, I don’t care what my ignorant neighbors believe, as long as their views don’t intrude on mine. When their religious opinions do impinge on my life, as unfortunately happens almost every day in Bush’s U.S., I become assertive and aggressive, maybe some would say nasty. Occasionally, I make common cause with other atheists on specific issues. But I never claim to be speaking for all, nor should any others have the audacity to claim to speak for me. And no one should tell me either to tone down or to pump up my invective based on some imagined shared agenda.

Nonbelievers are not, by nature, a group; we share nothing except our nonbelief. When some atheists start expecting all of us to join them regularly in their “churches,” or to insist that we take part in specific communal activities, I scratch my head in disbelief. We’re FREEthinkers, get it?