D'ultimate said:
What the hell are atheists to do? Go sit in the corner and STFU?
Everyday, in most western cultures, we are bombarded with religious influences, some would say intrusions, on our everyday lives. Yet, whenever atheists speak up about the subject of non belief they are to be despised for it? Even by other non believers? Really? I mean REALLY?!?
To me, people such as yourself come off as a self hating pricks. It's much like (closet) homosexuals who rail against homosexuality to the point of legislating against it. "Damn faggots, why don't they just stfu!!"
First of all, please don't think of me as a self-hating 'prick'. I love myself. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that I'm probably my #1 favourite person in the world. Also I don't know about you, but I live in Australia. A place that, from my experience, handles multiculturalism and multi-faith integration in a pretty harmonious and effective manner. So everything I'm about to say stems purely from my own experiences and situation and may differ entirely from your own.
What my biggest problem is, is that some people who label themselves "atheists" don't tend to differentiate between the social benefits and problems that come from people having faith. I know a number of people around my local community and those who stand out in my mind as being the most friendly, the most considerate and the most respectful are all people of faith. My neighbours are a Christian family and they are the nicest people you may ever hope to meet. They live ordinary Australian lives but they're regular church goers and they are extremely active in the community, volunteering for charity service and working with the Salvation Army etc. My Uni friends and I are all non-believers and we don't do anywhere near as much for the community by comparison. Also, while they know I'm a non-believer they've never actively tried to persuade me to join their church or to read the Bible or anything like that. They don't try to force their beliefs on me or anyone else and I wouldn't dream of trying to do the same to them.
That's probably where one of my problems with "atheists" comes from, that some of them complain about religious people trying to force their beliefs on others before doing exactly the same themselves. For example, at Easter one of my sister's Christian friends posted something harmless on Facebook about thanking God for sending his son to sacrifice for us or whatever. Within minutes two of her other friends who are atheists responded by telling her to 'stop believing in fairytales' and flat out told her that she was 'living a lie'. That's not only extremely rude, it's also completely unnecessary. If she had posted something like 'if you don't believe in Jesus, you're going to hell', then those lads would've been justified in calling her out for it but she wasn't. She was simply expressing something harmless relating to her own personal beliefs and yet these "atheists" still decided to attack her for it anyway. While I don't doubt for one second that there isn't a God, I don't feel any sense of empathy with "atheists" who act like that.
I'm going to take an guess based on probability and assume that you're American. I apologise if that's an incorrect assumption, but if I'm right, then I want to say that I understand how the 'Christian-Right' conservative movement over there will probably have severely affected your opinion of religious people. Trust me, I get Fox News over here too and I completely understand that, they completely confuse and worry me as well. But that's pretty much my point. There are a number of religious people who really go too far with how they act in the name of their God and I agree, those people are idiots that need standing up to. But at the same time, there are a number of atheists who love to jump down a decent religious person's throat just because they believe in God as they feel that they are somehow a better class of person because they don't. It's that which I have a problem with and that's what I often see when this debate is held online.
Ultimately, while I share the same beliefs as the Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens (EDIT: And even
this guy, who I find far less douchy than the other two) of the world I'd much rather live in a society where we have more people like my neighbours family instead of less. I'm not saying that non-religious people aren't charitable or friendly or all act dickishly, but I do wish some "atheists" would recognise that my friendly Christian neighbours and the members of the Westboro Baptist Church (for instance) aren't the same just because they're both religious people.