In studying the catastrophe that atheism has been for the left I've come to the conclusion that it is a rare atheist on the left for whom atheism and the destruction of religion is not their first and all important goal. From the Nation, to The Progressive, from Salon to the Washington Post, with few exceptions, atheists are primarily motivated by their hatred of religion and, with some exceptions, the passionate desire to believe they are superior to the majority of humanity due to their atheism.
I have also come to the conclusion that atheism is inseparable from a penchant for lying. Again, with some exceptions, they are as addicted to lying as the far right, the Tea Party, the fans of Donald Trump, Carly Fiorina and any of the other Republican candidates for president.
I have called out a number of atheists who write online and in magazines, none of them, though are as complete an example of what's wrong with atheism as Salon Magazine's Jeffrey Tayler. Tayler poses as the kind of pseudo-leftist I'm talking about. His weekly hate screed, this week, shows how phony he is, it is a shout out for the right-wing atheist David Silverman of Madelyn Murray O'Hair's American Atheists. In it Silverman, who is the atheist who wanted to join in the loony hatred of CPAC, praises the intelligence of O'Reilly, saying he's too intelligent to believe what he claims to in regard to religion.
But the money quote is this hilarious line of lies,
"Because religion poisons people. Religion makes good people hate . . . . Religions creates divisions that shouldn’t be there. It gives us nothing but hate while saying it’s giving us love. "
Don't hurt yourself laughing.
If you want to see what a pile of lies that is, look at Jeffrey Tayler's article, his archive at Salon, the record of American Atheists as a venue of sheer hatred, its founder, O'Hair who was probably as hated by atheists as by anyone because she was a supernova of viciousness, selfishness and hate, and, most of all, the atheists who comment on Tayler's post.
Atheism, with very, very few exceptions is a manifestation of conceit, disdain, hatred and vicious dishonesty. It has nothing in it that would tell atheists that they should try to be anything else and, unsurprisingly, they seem to violate none of those tacit ethical and moral commandments against those character flaws and sins.
But they would be nice if they could just get rid of religion.
ReplyDeleteAt least, that's what they say.
Tayler is playing the" all religions are the problem" card in a new post at Salon. Getting a lot of pushback for it, even among atheists (who don't draw the ire that religious commenters do for making the same points) .
ReplyDeleteI'm very late here, but while I agree about Tayler, you are conflating all atheists with the militant loudmouths on the Internet. I'm not an atheist, but I know a few in real life and with one exception, most are of the live and let live variety.
ReplyDeleteYou are, of course, right that there are atheists who are not liars and bigots, atheists who aren't offensive in real life. However here online they almost uniformly are. At least that's my experience. It is certainly true of those atheists who make atheism a major part of their discourse. The director Jonathan Miller noted that difference between his kind of atheism and that of other atheists, he wrote a book about it but it didn't seem to resonate with other atheists.
DeleteI've come to believe that most if not all people need a metaphysical basis, a religious basis, for them to avoid being self-centered and, in bad cases, to do bad things. At least as a general thing. I don't think a de-religionized society would maintain a general trend towards equality and justice. I think it is why we are going backwards now.