Like I said, I’d endorse an anti-racism sentiment.
You can’t turn down the dumb with more dumb.
I realize that. But what he says is factually wrong. There are racists who identify as religious, and that phenomenon has been around for centuries. It was a key feature in the spread of slavery and the colonizing of the world. You can’t make that disappear by abusing the dictionary. And rather than addressing the idea of a conflict between racist hatred and religious love of community or addressing any prejudiced ideas, he dumps all the racism on atheists and denigrates them in the process.
If one identifies with being Atheist/Agnostic/Non-Religious, it might kind of sting to be told “All racists are Atheists” when he’s really talking about religious people who are just lousy people. As though Atheist is a synonym for bad person.
Let’s be honest, under these rules all Thieves, Murderers and Adulterers are Atheists too.
The basic argument is bunk. Do Christians believe God created cockroaches? Sure we do. But pretty much all of us still try to kill the ones we see on sight, and set out boric acid for the ones we don’t see.
I guess this means that pretty much everyone who claims to be a Christian believes God created junk.
You don’t need to be bothered by it. It simply pushes my buttons, with that smug idea that the pious are better people than those who are not religious. Not only are racists not proper Christians, they should not even be described as religious, because nobody who believes in God could be a bad person.
But that’s the great thing about being an atheist. You can lump all the corrupt popes in with Catholics, of course (as well as Gilles de Rais, Tomas Torquemada, Elizabeth Barthory, etc. etc.); but if somebody says “well, Hitler and Stalin were atheist!” True, but so was Skippy the Kangaroo, the paramecium in my eaves trough after the last rain, etc. etc.
From my perspective as an agnostic atheist, I really don’t care. I obviously don’t believe that belief in God vs non-belief in God dictates whether someone is good or bad as a person. However, if there is someone who believes in God, and pointing out that a behavior I find deplorable is incongruous with their religious beliefs, I’m fine with that, even if I’m assigning to myself the identity that atheist = bad. If the idea of being an atheist scares them so much that they change their behavior, why should I care? As long as it’s to a behavior I support, I don’t really much care how they get there.
