And once again, we see a simplistic and fallacious homogenisation of the atheists here, by someone who obviously never bothered to find out what we actually think, before posturing as being in a position to tell us what we think.
I’ll start by telling you up front, and with the blunt honesty that is something of a trademark of mine, that your screed bears NO relation to my actual thoughts on the subject. Worse than that, your screed is such a malicious and feculent travesty of my well-known position here, that I’m strongly minded to tell you to shove it into the same foetid orifice you extracted it from.
Let’s deal with this item by item, shall we?
Item one. I was aware that there existed other religions than Christianity (however this is defined, given the 40,000+ sects all calling themselves “Christian”) long before your sperm met your egg. I was aware not only of the existence of Judaism and Islam, but Buddhism, Shintoism and a whole catalogue of indigenous faiths, courtesy of a proper education. That despite the manner in which the grammar school I attended here in the UK, was subject to the provisions of the 1944 Education Act, which mandated specifically Christian religious teaching and worship, and despite two of the staff being clerics - one a Catholic priest, the other a Presbyterian minister. My school still managed to maintain a studied neutrality even with this backdrop.
Item two. Thanks to that proper education, I learned that ALL of our religions are based upon mythologies, be they orally transmitted or written. Furthermore, I learned that the whole purpose of those mythologies, was to present a range of unsupported and frequently fantastic assertions about the world, as if those assertions constituted fact, and present those assertions in this manner by fiat.
Item three. This leads me onto my personal view of what atheism actually is based upon actual observational data. Atheism, in its rigorous formulation, is nothing more than proper suspicion of mythology fanboy assertions. This applies regardless of the mythology and the fanboys in question, and said suspicion is proper, because not one of the mythologies in question, ever presents anything other than blind, unsupported assertions. Indeed, a central rule of proper discourse, is that assertions possess the value “truth value unknown” until a proper test of those assertions is devised and conducted. As a corollary, untested and untestable assertions may be safely discarded on that basis. The above, if you’ve bothered to read this far, should be telling you that I’m an equal opportunity sceptic of mythological assertions.
Before you start launching into the usual lies peddled by mythology fanboys on this matter, don’t even think of going there. I’ve spent 15 years destroying those lies.
Item four. Living as I do in the UK, my atheism isn’t an issue. The majority of people in my circle regard religions as at best hilarious, at worst pernicious. According to the last census, there were 22½ million of us in this country, who share this basic view.
Item five. The only time my atheism becomes an issue, is when obnoxiously vocal and entitlement-riddled Americans gatecrash the discussions I engage in on other topics, parading their fulminating wilful ignorance and bigotry before a global public audience. For example, one forum I participate in, discussing evolutionary biology, is subject to a tsunami of dreck by an army of rectally self-inserted creationists, who think that their warped eisegesis dictates how reality behaves, regardless of how much reality pisses upon this psychotic delusion. The drivel they post frequently fails to meet basic standards of literacy, let alone conceptual coherence, but, as is typical of their ilk, they plough on regardless, pretending that their infantile clinging to literalist interpretations of Bronze Age mythology overrides Nobel calibre science.
Worse still, the same specimens from this demographic, who all claim to be “morally superior” because they believe in a cartoon magic man of their own invention, are not merely willing to lie through their teeth for their heresy, but obligated to do so, because that heresy is divorced from reality by a chasm the size of the Böotes Void. Indeed, the same was noted by Judge Jones at the Dover Trial, where the farce and fraud that is “intelligent design” was exposed as such - he noted that the piety of the creationists in the dock contrasted sharply with their perjury. The dark irony of seeing these people claiming to worship a god that issued a full-blown Commandment prohibiting lying, while violating that Commandment with every utterance, is not lost upon me.
Indeed, even if I were not already deeply suspicious of religious claim from numerous different quarters, the behaviour of American creationists has ensured once and for all, that I will regard their religion as venomous, dangerous garbage. That they regard themselves and their conduct as an advertisement for their infantile bibliolatry, merely demonstrates the level of delusion they entertain.
Item six. At this point, it should be obvious that my main combat has taken place with the aforementioned obnoxiously vocal and entitlement-riddled Americans, who outnumber every other religious demographic I’ve encountered by about 500 to 1, and that’s a conservative estimate. In my 15 years of dealing with relevant discoursive issues, I’ve encountered fewer than 20 Orthodox Jews who stepped up to the plate (most of whom were taking their cue from American creationists anyway), possibly 50 Muslims, just ONE Hindu creationist, and a smattering of New Age woo types. If I concentrate upon the most numerous, vocal and obnoxious enemy, do not be surprised.
Item seven. At this point, it’s time to provide the essential concept that underpins all of the above. Namely, that those of us who take the issue of religious belief or otherwise seriously, recognise that belief itself is utterly worthless as a source of genuine, substantive knowledge. Because, at bottom, belief as practised by mythology fanboys, consists of uncritical acceptance of unsupported assertions. See my remarks in Item three above, to understand why I regard this as ridiculous.
What those of us who take subjects seriously understand, is that an assertion is worthless, unless it has been properly tested, and via said proper test, found to be in accord with either observational reality or relevant formal deductive systems (subjective matters, of course, deserve a somewhat different treatment - I’m talking here about the purportedly factual). If your ‘arguments’ fail to meet this standard, they are discardable, because at this point we’re dealing with apologetics, which is nothing more than the fine art of pretending that made up shit mythology is validated by more made up shit. You have three guesses how much contempt I have for this.
Item eight. The above should be telling you much, about how I resent being lectured upon the conduct of discourse, by people who know nothing about me, who never bothered to ask me what my views are even at an elementary level, let alone in detail, and who obviously consider the usual duplicitous stereotypes to be applicable to me. Been there, done that, read the book, seen the movie, listened to the soundtrack and eaten the pie (that’s a Watership Down joke by the way).
In case you’re wondering, I take my discoursive cue in part from the lawyer who was overheard on the London Underground, regaling his long-suffering junior colleague with “and fourteenthly …”. I can provide evidence of my persistence if need be.
the cultures of the disadvantaged. And as a southern Christian I know a protestant sect when I see one. If you aren’t a Protestant be sure you’re not found feeding at too many of the same troughs as protestants. Hitchens and Harris are two of the more conspicuous people I can think of.