Good stuff for a chuckle. As with all extremists, I’m made uncomfortable by the certainty with which they proclaim the correctness of their belief system (I’m not sure absolute atheism can go by any other description); but if he serves no other purpose than to give blind theists severe indigestion, he’s providing something of a service.
Interesting! I trust Pol Pot didn’t have an altar in his closet, right? Let’s just substitute his name, then.
I do think that it’s impossible for an atheist to be a Jerry Falwell-style character in the United States, for the same reason it’s impossible for a Communist or a pacifist to be a Jerry Falwell-style character. The belief system is just too unpopular, and people who’d want the role won’t get the social support necessary to do it. An atheist Falwell might be able to exist in a strongly Marxist society, or in another kind of society in which a professed lack of belief in God was a great way to get ahead in public.
Daniel
while I have my differences with Rev. Falwell (basically on eternal damnation & stuff like his 9-11 statement & his hawking of Clinton-murder-conspiracy videos), I hardly find him to be the gold standard of C’tian extremism (unless you mean- an extremist who still has some measure of societal respect). Chick & Phelps are far worse than him (Phelps moreso than Chick).
To negatively answer the OP- I listened to Michael Schermer (Why People Believe Weird Things) on Art Bell yep, Art Bell! last night and Michael is too nice to qualify.
Maybe Michael Newdow?
But… 9/11 was caused by theists…
Well, it was committed by theists. But my comment was really in jest.
After all, the atheistic equivalent of Falwell’s claim (that America had pissed God off with our sinning ways, causing him to let the bad guys get us) seems pretty much a contradiction: if you don’t believe that God exists, you can’t very well believe he let the bad guys get us.
Right now, there’s no widely-recognized “Falwell of atheism” in American Public Opinion. I don’t think anyone plays the role – and it is a role to be played – any more.
There’s more to a “Falwell figure” than just being hardcore on the religious side, and having a jerkish personality, there’s also the ideological commitment and concerted effort to making the system take notice of and respond to your followers. In the previously linked thread I cast Murray O’Hair as a former holder of that public persona. Though aware that the parallel to Falwell had to exclude the courted-for-political-influence component, she did jibe with the characterization as being who the general public perceives as the recognizable “voice” of the hardline wing of the ideology, to the annoyance of the moderates (of course the characterization, for a lot of that public, spills into caricature in the case of BOTH figures). Say “leader of an evangelical fundamentalist organization trying to influence policy, whom moderate Christians find annoying” to a man-in-the-street interviewee and you’ll get “Falwell” more than anyone else; were you to have said (back in the day), “leader of a hardcore atheist organization trying to influence policy, whom moderate atheists find annoying” you would have got “O’Hair” only second to “Huh? What?” 
. Though in her final years she had faded from public prominence quite a bit.
Wingrove may indeed aspire to it, but I don’t think he’s there yet. May still, he shows “promise”, certainly.
James Randi or Penn Jillette do not quite fill the role IMO due to not causing near as much awkwardness or embarassment among moderate skeptics and live-and-let-live agnostics as Falwell or Robertson cause among moderate or liberal Christians, even if Randi does sometimes come across Olympian and self-righteous and Penn does have the whole deliberate annoying-prick schtick. It’s not as if they’re going on the talk show circuit to denounce loudly that Christians, Jews, Muslims, Baha’is, Wiccans and New Age Earth Mother Huggers are all a part of a “Belief Agenda” seeking to destroy our values, and we need to pass laws against it. They just expose and ridicule what they see as, in Penn’s own word, “Bullshit”.
If we step away from American Public Opinion, we find that on a global perspective, Falwell is only as big as he can get any American policymaker to listen to him. Otherwise he is a leader of a loud minority of World Christianity, which is only the largest single religion (if you don’t split Catholicism, Protestantism, Orthodoxy, etc. as separate entries). After all, if one side of the divide is atheism, the other side is ALL religions or beliefs-in-god. And on the global scale, it’s even less likely to find anyone with that level of relevance in the atheist side.
Do the policies contain the phrase “Act of God” ?
Surely the atheist equivalent would be that American theism (neocon support for Zionist Israel OR Christian neoCrusaders out to tame the heathen) was responsible?
That’s not what this atheist believes, but it is the obvious mirror to the Falwell claim…ie America was attacked because the religious Right is so involved in politics.
And this is the key here – Falwell and the right-wing Christian movement is all about pushing a political agenda. Their stance is that (1) The United States was established as a Christian nation and must be governed by believing Christians according to Christian tenets and beliefs, (2) Christians are a persecuted majority in the United States, and (3) Christians must use the political system to impose their values on the nation.
There is no such equivalent for atheists. First of all, atheism isn’t a movement, much less a political movement. Second, atheists are actually a minority that the Falwell types seek to persecute through their victim act. Most atheists don’t care what the religious beliefs of public officials are, so long as such beliefs do not interfere with the fair administration of government.
Christopher Hitchens, the columnist for Vanity Fair and many other outlets is the most uncompromising public atheist I can think of. He wrote that notorious little book unmasking & discrediting Mother Teresa called The Missionary Position, e.g. And he once said something to the effect of moreso than any political differences, the most fundamental disagreement he can have with someone is when that someone is a believer. Somehow this hasn’t stopped him from endorsing the main thrust of George Bush’s faith-based foreign policy, though.
I am an atheist. As an American raised nominally Christian (Protestant), when I hear the word ‘God’, it’s the Judeo-Christian job I reflexively think of. I have to translate to other religions’ versions of God.
On and around 9/11, I did a lot of translating.
I am reminded of the Quentin Crisp quote:
Nah. Having seen him speak, I think he’d be a good Doper. He’s a smart guy who’s arguing a case that wasn’t that extreme and he had some solid ground to stand on, legally. And he didn’t take himself seriously enough to be a Falwell or a Phelps.
Well, there’s always Harry Binswanger, if you can call someone who worships Ayn Rand an atheist. I know firsthand that he is an arrogant dick. He has long been engaged in a grudge filled pissing contest with Leonard Peikoff and Linda Reardon. He has called Muslims “bearded barbarians squatting in the dirt around their campfires in Afghanistan, invoking the dogma of their prophet from the literal Dark Ages.” Does that sound O’Hairish enough?
Richard Dawkins, whose books and thinking I very much respect, has said some extremely inflammatory atheist things in public, which I think can undermine his message a little.
For the unBritish (bolding mine): Richard Dawkins
Shame really, since he is without doubt one of the best science writers on the planet.
What about Voltaire or Nietszche (sorry about the bad spelling) or Satre (again, pardon the bad spelling; he’s the guy that wrote The Flies and The Jewish Question, among other things)?
Of course, they spoke up in days when it wasn’t as fashionable to be atheist (or pehaps even before the term existed), and they’re quoted by atheists in a largely reverent fashion, but they were still pretty obnoxious.
wow, thanks for the responses first off.
as far as atheists trying to push political agendas, what about that guy who sued to have the phrase “under god” stricken from the pledge of allegiance so that his daughter wouldn’t have to hear it at school? sorry don’t remember his name. he certainly went to great lengths to try and meet his goal. i believe he was a lawyer, and i remember that jerry falwell has recently started his own law school to teach lawyers to embody christian principles in their practice of the law. that’s a similarity, sort of.
That’s Michael Newdow, already mentioned above.
Not even close. Newdow took a case to court because he felt the pledge as recited by teachers violated the separation of church and state. If he’d won - he’s trying again because in reality, the Supreme Court dodged the case - the pledge would have to be amended, that’s all. For that matter, students could still say it, it’s the issue of state sanctioning that’s in dispute. He’s not trying to pass a law barring the word “god” from being used in schools, nor is he trying to train others to influence the court system to perpetuate his point of view.
See, that’s a problem we atheists have—if we try to keep others from shoving religion down our throats (and into our politics, and on our money, and in our Pledges), we’re accused of having an “agenda.”
Right on. If we’re going to have an agenda, I demand that we at least have a big summit to formulate it, and that afterward we implement a “convert someone and win a toaster” plan. You know, like the one the gays have. Seems to be working for them.