No More Mr. Nice Guy!

Here's your answer, E.J.

Today, the local toilet paper finally got around to publishing squishy liberal E.J. Dionne's "Answers to the atheists" which has already been much discussed in the blogosphere. Dionne is joining in the pile-on against uppity atheists like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris etc. He doesn't actually provide any answers, just a bunch of rhetorical questions, such as: "Are these people [Christians] a threat to reason and even freedom?" and some knee-jerk accusations of dogmatism and intolerance.

There have been many excellent responses from bloggers (for example sociologyman and jcasey at NonSequitur) but the best answer was a story that appeared on the same page of the Repulsive: "Faith, fury mix at Mormon temple." It describes an altercation between born-agains and Mormons outside a Mormon temple in Mesa, Arizona.

It seems a group of fundie born-yesterday idiots have been demonstrating the love of Jesus every Easter for the last few years by mobbing outside Mormon temples and braying through megaphones that the people inside are going to scream forever in infinite agony in the lake of fire. (I don't know if they're connected with this anti-Mormon campaign.) The leader of this charming group is the "burly" 42-year-old Lonnie Pursifull, who lost a fight with a 64-year-old Mormon woman in a wheelchair. Apparently he blocked her way, got a bump on the shins from her wheelchair, and ran off blubbering about being the victim of an unprovoked attack. Once again we see that all bullies are cowards. I think Mormonism is a Mickey Mouse religion, but there's no doubt Pursifull got what he deserved.

You see, E.J., there's the difference between religion and atheism. Religion is nothing but primitive tribalism which sets people at each other's throats when they would otherwise have absolutely no reason to hate each other. It really has nothing to do with morality. It occasionally and accidently aligns with morality, but mostly it is about brainwashing people with "us vs. them" attitudes based on irrational and unquestioning belief. (And don't bother countering with academic discussions about the questioning that goes on at the rarefied strata of theological ivory towers. I'm talking about the unquestioning belief of people like Lonnie Pursifull, or for that matter Anne Carlisle, the woman in the wheelchair.)

The problem with religious moderates like yourself, E.J., is that you provide cover for the lunatic extremists who aim to spread their meme with violence. You lecture us that we must respect their beliefs, however bizarre and even loathsome, simply because they are religious beliefs. Religion gets a free pass, a special immunity from objective scrutiny and criticism that is not available to any other human invention.

The horrific attacks of 9/11 should have convinced everyone of the dangers of letting religious fanaticism fester in the darkness of ignorance. Instead, we are fighting Islamic fundamentalism with Christian fundamentalism, and destroying the world in the process.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: religion is an embarrassing piece of baggage from the infancy of human development, and an increasingly dangerous one. Today our technology gives us more power than the ignorant savages who wrote the world's holy books could ever have dreamed of ascribing to their gods. Will the ability to destroy the planet be unleashed in the service of some ancient tribal hatred? Atheists have something legitimate to say on this matter, and squishy moderates who try to silence and marginalize them are just as culpable as the mouth-foaming fundamentalists.