How To Avoid Atheists
In response to a letter from Kathy Momic about the need to protect people from learning about atheism, David N. Miles wrote the following:
There are certain precautions she can take to protect herself and her children from these agents of Lucifer.
She could join an organization that does not admit atheists, e.g., the Ku Klux Klan, the Mafia, Christian militia groups. She could join a God-fearing terrorist group that blows up abortion clinics and high-rise buildings (Oklahoma City, World Trade Center); or she could restrict her friends to those spewing venomous hate upon individuals the Bible says should be put to death, e.g., non-believers and homosexuals.
To be on the safe side, there are havens of atheism that she should avoid: Ivy League universities; the Nobel laureate laden National Academy of Sciences; organizations concerned with the environment or civil rights; and Scandinavia, where the percentage of atheists is at least three times that of the United States.
She should stay in the Bible Belt with the highest religiosity (and highest violent crime rate) in the country.
Scource: Times Daily (via God Is For Suckers!)
I think these suggestions would work very well, but I doubt that many believers are willing to go so far, even those who are most adamant about the "threat" posed by atheists and atheism. Maybe they should contemplate the fact that it's devout Christians, Muslims, and other believers they will find in dangerous organizations like the KKK, not atheists.
Stardust has very personal experiences with people who want to shield their children from contact with atheists:
I have fundies in my family who avoid me and my immediate family because we are the “evil atheists” and our influence might rub off on them and their children somehow will be contaminated by our mere presence. ...Fundie family members cannot stand the fact that I have an atheist blog, and that I write my opinions openly about atheism and criticize religion in my posts and essays.
They say it is “hurtful” to them to just know what I think and write about. I pointed out to them that from my perspective, them believing that I am such a terrible person that I will spend eternity suffering in hell is much worse than me just dissing their religion in general. I don’t wish them eternal torture for holding ludicrous beliefs. Their belief that I will be damned forever is much more personal than my general commentary on religion and the religious.
How is it again that atheists are the rude, intolerant, and "fundamentalist" ones for being critical of or mocking religion, while it's perfectly fine for Christianity to teach that atheists — as well as the bulk of human beings who have ever lived — are or are likely destined for an eternity of suffering in hell? Remember that this is an orthodox, traditional doctrine of Christianity which few Christians through history have denied.
We're not comparing atheists to extremist or fundamentalist Christians, but rather atheists to a very standard, normal Christian belief. If it's acceptable to believe and teach such a thing, there's no justification for condemning even the harshest atheist criticisms of religion, never mind the mocking of religion for its excesses and offensive doctrines.
Comments
Bookstores and Libraries are also recommended if you wish to avoid atheists.
Not at all, Mike. I had quite the conversation with an amateur philosopher I bumped into at the bookstore while browsing for Richard Dawkins books. Perhaps they make the science and rational thought section small to foster close conversation?
There’s no shortage of unbelieving library workers.
My take on it is that, while they’re potentially more dangerous to us physically, we’re potentially more dangerous to them intellectually. It is this perceived threat we pose to their beliefs that makes them anxious about having us around. Which, if true, strikes me as a clear indicator of an unstable faith, one attenuated and undermined by a creeping suspicion that their views would not long bear close scrutiny.
Avoiding us isn’t all that hard in most cases, though. They could just walk away. How simple is that? Chances are we wouldn’t go chasing after them. I don’t personally know of any atheists who go on evangelizing campaigns, who preach the Word of Dawkins or Harris on street corners or to captives on public transportation (not terribly uncommon here on the subways in NYC), or who go door to door asking people if they’ve given their lives to Kurtz or Shermer, rather unlike our opposite numbers on the believer side.
Also, to make it even more certain we won’t go looking for disputes with them, all the theists have to do is stop trying to forcefully arrange the entirety of our various societies to accomodate their particular religious beliefs. Were they to but do this, I’m persuaded, most of us, most of the time, would be delighted to leave most of them quite alone.
Many Religionists must be in control in order to be whole. A nonbeliever threatens their universal credo so any way in which they can lessen the threat ie. diminish the nonbeliever they will do or think it.
Funny how many religious people think that even knowing about atheism or gay people will change their children’s lives
are they admitting that their confidence in their faith is so tenuous that even knowing there’s a different way to be and live will end their christian way of life?
it sounds like what they are really saying is that being gay or atheist is more stable, since knowing there’s Christians doesn’t stop us from being gay or atheist or gay atheist
This is just like the old right wing propaganda about Communism. I always thought it was strange that the right wing was so afraid that if a person read one Communist inspired book, sat in a classroom taught by a Communist (at least by their definition), or watches news from a leftward viewpoint, that person will leave the “American Way” and become a Communist.
I recently listened to an audio book (The Great Unraveling) by Paul Krugman, who recently won the Nobel Prize in economics. He quotes Henry Kissinger (of all people), who wrote his doctoral thesis about revolutionaries (he was writing about the French Revolution and Napoleon). Krugman compares these revolutionaries to the Bush administration. The quote of Kissinger’s that I had to write down seems to apply to the Bush-Cheney-Rove crowd and also to the Xtian activists:
“The distinguishing feature of a revolutionary power is not that it feels threatened, but that nothing can reassure it. Only absolute security, the neutralization of the opponent is a sufficient guarantee.”
That’s a very interesting quote, Beatnik. It looks to me as if the way some deal with being scared (of whatever) is to try to become scarier than what they’re scared of. In so doing, of course, they become the thing that someone else becomes scared of. And, as Kurt Vonnegut might’ve put it, so it goes.