One of the best parts about being an atheist is how low-key it is. I get to go about my day to day business without a single atheist based thought, listening to my jams and working on some Family Guy/Resident evil fan fiction without a care in the world. Then I head to the store to buy some more pulp less OJ, because I am not a filthy animal, when I see something like this...
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| Wait, what? |
...and my brain resets. Atheists have their billboards too, simple things like reminding people that it's okay not to believe, they might even go so far as to call religion out for having been harmful or unnecessary, but they never threaten open revolt. Those of you who have been reading my atheist stuff for a while should remember that I belong to the school of thought that believes that there is plenty of room in our culture for religion, just so long as that religion doesn't try to inappropriately try to influence the government or actively try to ruin people's lives (I'm a big fan of reminding everyone that the Catholic church still hasn't done enough to stop kid fucking in their system). I think that's a balanced and even tone for an atheist, even most of my posts on here are just a lame attempt to explain something about us atheists to people who might not understand. There's no hatred here, I honestly don't care what you believe as long as you're not being a dick about it.
So, where does all this hatred come from? Why do some believers hate us so much? Some atheists seem to believe that the basis of that hatred is fear, just like Yoda says, that the fact that there is a group of productive and happy people who openly defy the will of their god undermines the belief that you need faith to be happy and productive. I don't know about that, but the things said about atheists are sometimes so silly that it's hard to even answer them, never mind taking someone who says this stuff seriously.
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| Atheists, according to Fox News. |
But who honestly believes that atheists are actively trying to murder your children? Turns out, plenty of people. Thomas Aquinas called unbelief the "greatest of sins", and the rhetoric has only gone up from there. Since time immemorial, atheists have been ostracized, tortured, and murdered simply for not believing. It's been done by a lot of religions with a lot of excuses, but it all comes down to the same thing, the believer's complete inability to empathize or understand why somebody would disagree with them. Here's an excellent example of how completely without reason their line of thinking is:
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| Seems legit. |
Stare at that for a second. We have a bald and angry man, chosen for the emotional response one gets while staring into his over-ham exposed face, and an interesting attempt at logic to show why being an atheist is stupid. You see, every atheist obviously hates god because they don't believe in him. Wait, maybe they don't believe in him because they hate him. See, being an atheist is silly.
Atheism is the first world view. You are born completely without understanding or knowledge, reliant upon your parents and your culture to imprint on you a world view. Every child is exposed to the religion of their parents and then grows up believing what they were told as a child, and some people seem to act like if you disagree with their religion, you're calling their parents morons (which, considering the number of morons on this planet, might actually be true).
And don't even get me started on the 'War on Christmas'. Saying there's a war on Christmas when it's already an eight week long economy masturbator and stolen collection of pagan rituals is borderline idiocy.
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| Somebody already got me started |
So, sometimes we get mad. Sometimes we fight back. And yet, when we do that, we play right into the hands of the pundits and they continue to paint us as terrorists and feminist promoters (I cannot underline enough how completely out of touch with reason some of these people are), they like to call us Nazis despite the fact that nobody takes the Nazi insult seriously and that Hitler was an open Catholic with support from the church.
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Sure, sometimes a teenager will sue her school because of a bible verse located in the gymnasium after she asks nicely and they ignore her. I can see why this would piss off people (I can't see why this would piss off people), but the response was pages of death threats and insults to her social media accounts. Once again, she did something completely legal and protected by her constitutional rights, then many god fearing Americans decided to insult, threaten, and vilify a harmless teenager. You know, God's work.
And that's why were here. That's why I give a shit. Because there aren't any atheist groups threatening the lives of teenagers for any reason. So does that make me an atheist soldier? I don't know. But do I have a handful of jokes I tell on stage and a blog where I try to help us all get along? Absolutely. And if that makes me evil, maybe being evil isn't so bad after all.
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