We Weren’t Talking To You!

There’s a stereotypical ignorant kind of atheist hater that really stupefies me.  I will endeavor to shake my self free of stupefaction long enough to share with you its current cause.

Tom Sears is a professor of accounting in Oneonta, NY, which I’m sure is just a lovely place despite his presence.  Somehow this ding-dong got himself a bimonthly column in the town’s daily.  This week he used that column to attack atheists earning him a link from none other than Richard Dawkins’ website.  Even though he’s a big nobody, he does manage to express views that we hear over and over again from the ignorant and teeny-minded:

Atheists are once again trying to bring attention to themselves by attempting to denigrate, insult or demean religions and, in particular, Christianity and therefore Christians.

This time it is a billboard advertising stunt in New Jersey; the billboard was placed there by some atheist activist group that calls itself American Atheists. Once again an attempt to put down Christianity will be doomed to irrelevance.

Polls show atheists to be 3 percent or less of the total population of the United States, a number that has remained about the same over past years. However, in a desperate attempt to make the number appear higher, the president of this organization now claims that there are many more “closet atheists.”

Actually, as I’ve made clear, non-theists actually make up closer to 16% of the population.  Not all are self-described atheists, but they don’t have faith in any god so there’s no real difference in how they see the world.  This is probably close to forty million adults.

Hang on now, there’s more:

Since you believe that there is no being more supreme than yourself (a rather egocentric viewpoint), you can celebrate you by staring at yourself (or small groups staring at each other) in the mirror all day. Isn’t this a better idea than going around and putting other religions down?

First of all, ads like these were not meant to put down Christianity, but to speak to fellow non-theists and let them know they’re not alone.  More to the point, when religious people accuse non-theists of egocentrism, it rings so false.  Aren’t these the same people who believe that the WHOLE universe was created just for us?  Is it not the Christians that run around quoting John 3:16 that God loved US so much that he made his little boy die an agonizing death on a cross?  And WE’RE egocentric?

He also has some questions for us, so I will take a shot at answering them:

Why are atheists so afraid of Christianity that they feel they have to go out and aggressively attack it every year around this time? Why don’t you instead proudly proclaim your “atheistic religion” and explain all the reasons and research that led you to your stance. Maybe you can’t? Maybe your choice was made out of laziness and you didn’t even give religion a chance? Are you going to give your children the right to choose?

First we’re not afraid of Christianity, we’re wary of Christians because you keep shoving it and its ridiculous rules down our throats.  Second, atheism is not a religion.  But just as an aside, why do the religious think it’s an insult to call us religious?  I thought they liked being religious.

Next, we do proclaim our reasons and research.  We write a lot of books.  If he’s interested he can read one.  Moving on, and this is important, a whole lot of us used to be theistic.  Some of us were even ministers.  Hell, I still call myself a rabbi because I worked my ass off for the title and I am quite attached to my Jewish culture, if not its outdated theologies.

Finally, we give our children lots of choices because we teach them to think for themselves.  We don’t indoctrinate them.  Religion is the world champion in indoctrination.

People like Sears are demonstrating the defense mechanism of projection which reduces their own anxieties about themselves.  With projection, you attribute the things you dislike about yourself to others enabling you to blame someone else for traits you actually despise in yourself. It’s extremely common with people who don’t have a lot of self awareness or insight.  A lot of closeted gays do it.  They feel that their latent homosexuality is perverted and deviant so they are quite outspoken about calling gay people perverts and deviants.  It’s classic tested psychology.