The video and the reaction of a handful of aggro atheist types in this thread (well, one in particular), remind me about the flaw in the perspective of the hyper-aggressive tough guy atheist. This flaw has always been embodied best to me, in the remarks of one particular atheist a number of years ago.
This fellow, we'll call him Z, said the weirdest thing in bbs thread relating to Greek philosophy. Now it was clear Z was a jackass based on his aggressive, look-at-me-I'm-a-fucking-hardcore-skeptic attitude earlier in the thread.
So suddenly Z bursts out that the ancient Greeks were fuckin' idiots anyway, because they made up bullshit like gods and pantheons. These things were all clearly insane, and the Greeks, just like every other "ancient crude peoples" until, presumably, the precise generation Z saw himself a part of, were all just ignorant and deluded, and could barely think.
To which, others responded, the ancient Greeks were not insane (as a general observation). That they had gods, and conjectured that gods were responsible for some elements of nature and the behavior of the world, was just part of the process of human exploration of nature. To simplify it, people came up with the best explanation they could based on the observations and information they had available. Believing in a god for say, an ancient Greek, was quite reasonable. "insanity" is not merely believing in one thing that another person either thinks, or has proven to themselves, to be untrue or incorrect.
Z would have none of it. He had already created a giant category of "batshit insane stupidity" and deposited giant swaths of human thought - such as "gods" - into that box wholesale. Context didn't matter for him. The idea that people are quite sane to believe in something proven true or shown to be likely /within the framework of their own knowledge/ was irrelevant.
Modern aggro atheists remind me of Z. They believe that anyone who thinks differently from them should be justly and universally mocked and derided for being stupid, ignorant, and perhaps insane, because the aggro atheist has discovered The Clear and Obvious Truth, and this obvious truth should be instantly visible to all other people at a casual glance - regardless of their own background, education, cultural inheritance, personal observations and experience. The aggro atheist, like a religious fundamentalist, has constructed a locked reality box into which nothing may enter or leave. Truth is inside, "insanity and stupidity" is on the outside, and that's it. In all my experience, nobody is more equally unscientific and irrational than a religious fundamentalist or a seething aggro self-professed atheist.
The truth that many atheists find unacceptable and deny, is that the vast majority of the world's religions human beings are not "crazy", not insane, not deluded, and not unintelligent - within their intellectual and cultural context. Their brains and reasoning faculties are working just fine. The average religious person is capable of balancing their check book, performing complex and logical tasks, designing microchips, and NotGod forbid, doing science.
(In that old internet thread, Mr. Z responded to the suggestion that religious people were not by definition insane, and could be fully functional, rational people. Z sneered that "Serial killers can be functional and look normal too." Sure they can... except for the fact that they can't stop killing people.)
The aggro athiest has convinced himself that he's on Crazy Planet, a dangerous nuthouse full of broken insane and dangerous lunatics who believe in wacky loony toons wa wa juju. And that he is the soldier of truth. Unfortunately, it isn't that simple; the aggro, militant atheist is in for a world of hurt trying to rip people to shreds to prove he's right and they're stupid.
(For those who never saw my own position, I'm hardly religious, and in point of fact, do not believe "big box" religious institutions such as that created by Christianity can continue to function without evolving, probably into something different.)
