No More Mr. Nice Guy!

The War on Knowledge

The trouble with the War On Christmas (TM, Faux News) is that it's very much a one-sided war - being waged only by the alleged victims. Consider the attacks against the Tree of Knowledge on the Chester County Courthouse lawn in Pennsylvania. Erected by the Freethought Society of Greater Philadelphia, it was decorated with copies of books such as Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species and Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. The tree was repeatedly attacked while nearby religious displays were untouched.

Although there has frequently been controversy over gaudy and grandiloquent religious displays being erected on public property with tax dollars, I'm not aware of any atheists physically attacking such displays. So much for Christians spreading peace and goodwill, huh!

I'm constantly amazed at the fear and dread the mere existence of atheists provokes among the believers. Only a profound and debilitating fear could cause the wildly disproportionate backlash we constantly see, whether it is the mindless, brute vandalism of the lumpen knowledge-haters or the panicked sneering and bloviating of the likes of Dinesh D'Souza, Alister McGrath, Terry Eagleton and so forth.

For all the blather about "fundamentalist atheists", "crusading atheists" and what not, we see over and over again that it is the religious who resort to violence when the other side has out-argued them. Could it be that the true believers dimly sense at some subconscious level that the elaborate and beautifully constructed edifice which is their religion is a house of cards built on quicksand? Are they afraid that if atheists are allowed a voice, if reasonably intelligent people are allowed to hear what atheists have to say and to think for themselves, then the whole rococo structure will come crashing down?