Someone at the Economist has a problem with atheists. According to the anonymous author of this piece we pick the wrong fights and keep using that “A-Word” which frightens the poor little Christians.
How do we know when we’ve picked the wrong fight? A wrong fight is anything the liberal Christians don’t agree with us on. Of course, the conservative Christians accuse us of the same thing. And why do they accuse of us picking the “wrong” fight? Because they’re completely happy with whatever we’re fighting them on. Same coin, different side, same story. Imagine that, eh?
Our anonymous author also has a problem with us using the term atheist. The author also has a problem with godless, humanist, bright and secular. I suppose we should just call ourselves space monkeys but I’m willing to wager that that would upset the Christians too once they learn that “space monkeys” means “people who do not think there’s an invisible magic man in the sky”.
What really ticks me off is the author’s inherent message that we should shut up about anything that we consider important because there are things taking place that are effecting the lives of Christians. This is obvious when one considers that the author thinks removing references to the Christian god from both the currency and the federal pledge is “wrong”.
Why is it wrong? Because it doesn’t bother the majority of Christians. And since it doesn’t bother them, it’s not important. On the other hand, the prospect of being hit up for Jesus by their own kind does bother them. Since what bothers Christians is important by default, the rest of us need to shut up about all other issues until the Christians are safe again.
But don’t worry, once they’re safe again they’ll go right back to insisting that anyone who supports arming the wall between their religion and our state is smoking something that isn’t legal in all fifty states.
In conclusion, I honestly swear I’m starting to hate liberal Christians more and more each day. At least with conservative Christians, a bullet is not only expected – but promised.
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Well, obviously, if a small minority of rationalists insist on being rational, that is an attack upon the irrational majority. Likewise, if a minority of the rational minority write books, articles, letters to the newspapers, blogs, comments on blogs (those are the really weird ones) pointing out the irrationality of the irrational majority, that is also an attack upon the irrational majority. Liberal christians are still christians. They have been indoctrinated from a young age to think all christians are good and all non-christians are just not good yet. Part of this indoctrination (even in liberal churches) is the idea of the universality of god. So someone who does not even believe in god, well, it’s like they are from another universe.
Seriously, I think that the one of the reasons atheists like myself (though I do have a strong agnostic streak) are percieved as such a threat by the dominant majority is that the very idea of atheism is such a foriegn concept that many cannot even conceive of living a life that does not blame the individual for bad things and credit ‘god’ for all good things. It is so far out of any possible worldview that it is impossible to understand. Humans tend to view things they do not understand as a threat. Absence of belief in a creator, in god, in jesus, in allah, in zeus, in whatever you want to call it is a very difficult concept for many people, especially those who have been indoctrinated into a christianist or fundamentalist world view.
People fear new ideas, especially if they lack the immagination to understand the idea.
Lest anyone think I am trying to show my superiority, I am not. I have described myself during my almost 42 years as a christian, a unitarian (and I still am a unitarian (lucky for me they don’t do dogma)), a theist, a universal deist, an agnostic and, recently, an atheist. It took me over forty years to understand what non-belief actually is. And it is a hard concept (for me, and I presume for others).
Sorry for the long post. Occupational hazard.
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