I agree: while I’ve encountered the occasional evangelical atheist, they’re nowhere near as prevalent as the evangelical Christians.
For example, I’ve never woken up from a party to find two atheists standing on my doorstep offering me a pamphlet about Carl Sagan. And when I’ve told them that I’m not atheist, they haven’t told all my neighbors to pray for my soul.
Atheists never came to my college campus and screamed and mocked frothily the women on campus who were wearing modest clothing. They didn’t have a whistle they blew whenever they saw someone they thought was thinking irrational thoughts.
Atheists in my legislature have never tried to introduce a “There Is No God” curriculum in public schools, a curriculum that teaches that religious people are stupid and superstitious.
When I was Pagan, atheists who didn’t know me never approached me and rudely challenged my beliefs in multiple deities.
Sure, there are some obnoxious loudmouht atheists. But being obnoxious and loudmouth is central to the evangelical creed, as near as I can tell. Certainly a lot more evangelical Christians take it on themselves to shout and preach and bully than do atheists.
Re-read what I’m saying. If someone wants to be a Scientologist I got no problem with it, so long as they aren’t pushing it on anybody else. Of course the main problem with Scientology is that it’s such a scam job looking to grab new people. That’s not cool. But what people believe in the privacy of their own heads is fine with me. From my viewpoint, Scientology is no more or less pernicious than many other “real” religions, and why it is put into a class of its own, I don’t know.
You can pay millions of dollar to worship cheese, for all I care, so long as you aren’t burning me for eating fondue.
A couple years ago, some Crispies knocked on my door and offered me information about their church. I smiled, declined the offer, and told them that I wasn’t a Christian so I wasn’t interested.
A couple months later, my brother found out that they’d gone around to all our neighbors, told them that we weren’t Christian, and asked the neighbors to pray for us.
What the hell were they praying for?
Were they praying that God would use His mind-control powers to make me believe in Him? That sorta defeats the purpose of free will. Were they praying that God would give me convincing evidence that He exists? If He’s a good god, you’d kinda expect him to provide that evidence anyway.
And assuming that I’m worthy of salvation, why would God be persuaded to do the right thing because my neighbors ask Him to? Would He really let me go to hell, except that Jessie Mae asked Him not to? How petty!
Anyway, I’m baffled by the idea of praying for someone else’s soul. I can’t see any theologically consistent way that that would work.
Yeah, I know. I’m even backed up by an obscure school board policy (though there is that pesky “letter from a religious official” part), but that’s really not stopping anybody with authority from telling me that I must say the pledge. I don’t, mostly because I don’t feel that patriotism can be forced and it’s a meaningless ritual without that. It’s fantastic if you feel that, but I think that precious few teenagers are really all that patriotic at 8 AM.
However, Tennessee is either in the process of passing or recently passed a bill requiring all students to say the pledge unless they have a damned good religious exemption (Jehovah’s Witnesses, isn’t it? You’re good as dead if you admit to that here too). That annoys me. I don’t know of any adults outside the school system that stand every morning to say the pledge right on schedule.
But what really ticked me off today was a charming editorial in the school newspaper. Completely anti-evolution (or big bang…I can’t really tell, as it’s poorly organized) with some ridiculous stuff inferring that Darwin is burning in hell at the moment and that only five year olds would believe in such “nonsense”. I ranted about it to one of the staff and he suggested that I write an editorial. My mother seconded the idea, especially after she read the article. So I suppose I will be writing one.
Because “being an asshole about it” is exactly what Scientology teaches. It’s part of their teachings to always fight for your religion – always attack, never defend (their lawsuit tactics are actual parts of L. Ron Hubbard’s maniac ideals), breakaway groups who try to somehow live along with Scientology without being assholes about it are considered “enemies” of the CoS, and are the church itself actually encourages harassment of both these breakaway groups and anyone else who tries to criticize the church. The CoS has pamphlets for the members with “tactics” on how to convert people – trying to convert children, organized stealing of anti-scientology books from libraries, and all such things.
And the fact that the whole religion is based on scamming its members doesn’t improve things.
since Fenris is unaccountably slow on the obligatory show tune parody…ahem…
“Atheists”
Atheists! I don’t know what’s wrong with atheists today!
Atheists! Who can understand anything they say!
Atheists! They are disestablishment, First Amendment oafs,
Reading, thinking, unbelieving loafers!
And while we’re on the subject
Atheists! You can preach and preach til your face is blue!
Atheists! But they still think just what they want to do!
Why can’t they be like we are?
Perfect in every way!
What’s the matter with atheists today?
I think that there are a number of parallels between the situations of atheists and queer folk–both are relatively small minority groups, neither can be identified by sight, and both are vilified by society and traditional religion. Perhaps both groups could benefit from working with each other.
Has anyone else ever been asked a question something along the lines of: “You know you’re going to hell right”. It’s always fun to try and explain to these idiots that I don’t believe in hell.
