Atheism is Dangerous, Pt. 2
A man named Jim Adkisson is awaiting trial on charges of murder when he raided a Unitarian church in Tennessee. Guess what some people are now blaming?
That’s right. It’s all atheism’s fault. At least, according to Norris Burkes.
Most of us are immune from the infectious strand carried by the likes of Adkisson or David Koresh. But there are subtle forms of infection just as there are more seemingly innocuous carriers.
In the world of religion, I’ve yet to see more infectious carriers than I’ve seen in the likes of Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins. These evangelical atheists would have you believe that all our problems stem from all forms of religious faith.
And then he quotes another fundie, Nicholas Kristof, who retorts with the oft-heard questions: “what about Stalin? What about charities funded by churches?”
This is where I bash my head against the keyboard.
Do these theists even understand that their “rebuttals” don’t even address the point? The fact that something bad happened not caused by an organized religion or that some churches do charity work hardly addresses the main point of Dawkins, Harris, or Hitchens. Nobody’s claiming religion causes ALL problems that exist, or that religion ONLY results in bad things. The claim is that religion, especially organized religion, is primarily harmful and readily and easily causes a bunch of bad things. Is that such a hard distinction to understand? Or is it because these fundies only speak in such absolutes that they have a hard time comprehending anything else?
But the kicker is that these fundies then turn around and say ATHEISM is harmful, which contradicts their entire argument on how religion can’t be considered bad. According to Burkes’s and many fundies’ own logic, atheism can’t be harmful because of the Inquisition and the fact that this atheist I know gave a buck to charity last week. Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense when it’s turned around, does it? I’m not sure whether this cognitive dissonance is entertaining, depressing, or just scary. Probably a mix.
Credit for finding the article: PZ Myers.
I don’t listen to atheists, la la la.
Hi Wezly
Isn’t it funny how when Atheists do evil things without religious provocation it’s because they’re Atheists, but if a Theist does evil things with religious provocation it’s because they’re just plain evil. It seems that, according to these guys, a lack of invisible guidance can only lead to suffering. Barring of course such fruity things as the subjugation of women, murder of homosexuals, repression of scientific advancement and mass-murder of different nations due to divine real-estate brokering. But then again God says that’s OK so rock on sexism, homophobia, ignorance and genocide; Rock on!
An atheist is defined as a person lacking in theistic beliefs. So babies, children, indigenous people with no metaphysical world view, non-human animals, and the invalid are all atheists (along with those who reject theistic beliefs consciously).
Am I to believe that I (one who rejects theistic beliefs consciously) have the same political ideology as an invalid? As a man from Africa who has no concept of the universe and the world beyond his territory?
Okay I’m making one hell of a strawman argument but it’s to illustrate the point that atheism strictly has no ideology. Even us who ‘reject theistic beliefs consciously’ have no common ideology. You can’t categorize us and we have no ‘leader’ to blame. You’ll have to find your solutions to theodicy (hint: free will) elsewhere.