Comment of the Week: Fundamentalist Ranting Militant Extremist Atheists

Religious apologists who complain about or express false "concern" with the allegedly "militant" and "extremist" rhetoric of atheists are very good at ignoring the far more extreme rhetoric that comes out of religion. Apparently atheists are reprehensible for expressing ideas that are just a fraction as critical or harsh as what atheists see routinely directed at themselves and others from believers. This tells us that the people complaining or expressing "concern" aren't as interested in general principles as they are in trying to keep atheists quiet.

Mark writes:

The attitude of this senior figure in the Cult of Misery towards us is, of course, completely in line with the famous verse in Psalms Ch. 14:

The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.

It's always worthwhile, whenever some whiny Christian theist complains that their feelings have been hurt by nasty "Fundamentalist Ranting Militant Extremist Atheists" saying rude things about their imaginary friend, pointing to this verse.

Because, with this verse in mind, as long as atheist critiques stop short of saying "All Christians are totally evil, there is nothing good about them and they are totally incapable of doing anything remotely decent, even by accident" then the atheists are staying within the bounds of polite discourse, as set out by the Christian god in the Christian holy book.

Astonishingly, Christian theists will even quote that verse to atheists (often with the "all atheists are evil" bit strategically removed, just with the "all atheists are stupid" bit) as if it scores some kind of point against atheism! As if it does anything other than give atheists the opportunity to be as insulting as they like without the theist being able to complain! And yet the theists will STILL complain!

[original post]

Let me summarize and try to describe a guiding principle here: The Bible implicitly establishes a certain standard of discourse when it says that all atheists (and arguably everyone who denies the god of the Old Testament, theists and atheists alike) as corrupt, doing abominable works, and unable to do good. Many Christians express full-throated agreement with this principle when they repeat this verse to atheists, thus rendering the standard explicit rather than merely implicit.

Insofar as Christians do not repudiate this standard and this verse, and insofar as the claims and/or rhetoric of atheists falls short of this standard, then atheists remain well within the boundaries which Christians themselves explicitly accept as legitimate — and so they have no honest basis for complaint. In fact, to the degree that atheists fall short of describing all Christians as corrupt and incapable of doing good, they are actually being less extreme and more kind than what Christians believe and sometimes say.

Now, this leaves open the possibility of someone explicitly and unambiguously repudiating the above verse — it's not impossible for a Christian to insist that the verse is wrong, is immoral, and should be rejected. If a Christian does this, then they may go on to insist that they have a different set of standards which are better than those established above. It's of course possible for such standards to be inappropriate (for example, if they reject any and all criticism of others' beliefs) and there are other implications which create problems for the Christian (if you repudiate one verse, how does the rest of the text continue to have authority?), but that's a conversation for another day.