Letters to the Editor
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@wilson... nice try, but no cigar
wilson wrote:
Strong atheists have as much culpability there as their counterparts. One letter writer made an impassioned plea to moderate religious believers to address the fundamentalists themselves, rather than blame the atheists, but what luck will someone have trying to convince either side that the other is not out to get them and that we can live and let live when the evidence to the contrary is so obvious on *both* sides? It's like trying to seperate two people who desperately want to fight, but keep insisting it was the other guy that started it.
-- Wilson
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No, no, no. You make a claim with no evidence. How are atheists as culpable as the fundamentalist religious right in polarizing the debate about religion? Give me evidence!
I'm as militant an atheist as they come, and I'm more than happy to live and let live, as long as you don't get in my face, get my drift?
Let's try this again: atheists are the best friends ALL religious people ever had. We're perfectly ok if you practice any kind of weird shit you want. You can believe in any kind of weird shit you want. IN PRIVATE! Where I don't have to participate. Or even be exposed to it, whatever it is, if I don't want to. But I would never persecute you. Never insist you become an atheist. Certainly never threaten you in any way.
Religious people, especially fanatical types, of which there are way too many in this country, religious people, in their secret hearts, do NOT feel this way. They want to convert everyone, root and branch, so they can feel ok about their weirdass beliefs. They do NOT want to live-and-let-live. Surely you can see that.
Atheists kept their atheism to themselves for a long time, for a lot of reasons, some obvious, but some a simple matter of discretion.
The moment the religious, of any stripe, bring their weird shit--whatever it is--into the public square and insist that everyone else do/believe the same, or that everyone else is someone suspect if they *don't* do/believe the same, that's when any self-respecting atheist gets a little exercised.
In short, you do whatever you like. Believe whatever you like. But if you're going to bring religion into the public square, as part of the market of ideas, then I'm gonna get out my biggest hammer and start swinging. That's not polarizing, that's just self-defense.
As for your somewhat incoherent insistence that atheism is somehow a belief, or faith, just like any other religion... lemme try *this* again too: as another poster aptly pointed out, 2+2=4. That is a fact in the Newtonian universe, the one most of us live in. Atheism is exactly the same. It's not faith, it's not belief, it's a simple acknowledgement of reality: there is no god. No supreme being of any sort, not now, not ever. It's a FACT. It is, by the way, a fact that cannot be un-seen, once seen clearly. In any event, atheism is not a belief. It's a fact proven by scientific enquiry. As Dawkins puts it, atheism is supported by scientific theory. The chances that this theory is wrong are so vanishingly small as to be non-existent. Thus, it can be treated as fact.
By all but the faithful of course. For them, the Tooth Fairy suffices. And I'm cool with that. Just don't bring it into the public square and expect me smile and say "how cute." Keep that thing indoors, or I get out my hammer. Fair enough?
(when I go out in the world now, you know what I see? I see savage plains apes. Not the creation of some supreme being. Just savage plains apes with big, dangerous forebrains. Developed by evolution to dominate their environment, to the point of population overshoot and dieoff, like any simple yeast. That's what I see. Savage plains apes. Try it sometime. Once you see it, you can never again un-see it. And the notion of god becomes not just quaint, but entirely irrelevent)