Saturday, June 06, 2009

A new strategy for atheism

Saint Gasoline proposes a new strategy for atheism:
Basically, atheists would have to pretend to be overly sensitive and demand the silencing of any criticism of atheism, direct or indirect, as a result of our deep, personal, emotional attachments to our godlessness. Religious people should be told to respect our atheism by removing all religious imagery everywhere, ceasing to pray within earshot, and never, ever, mentioning God or anything supernatural. With this strategy, atheists—like religious moderates—could subsequently win all future arguments without silly and difficult forays into debate, discussion, and analysis; instead, atheists would only need point out that the other side is being blisteringly impolite by saying anything contrary to atheism. Game, set, match! ...

So remember, atheists, act like whiny little dipshits from now on. You are to immediately take offense at any benign mention of religion or any remark that may fly in the face of naturalistic philosophical principles. Threaten to boycott any movie with religious overtones because it has raped your emotional sensibilities. Refuse to vote for politicians who talk about religion on the basis that they have offended you. Incessantly whine about all the books arguing that God exists, that prayer works, and so on, because they are just so horribly rude to atheists. With this strategy, we, too, can shelter ourselves from criticism. We’ve tried to criticize the religious and we have failed because in doing so we are only characterized as assholish swine; apparently, criticism of religion is automatically rude and assholish. Our only chance to counter such a strange reverence is to demand it of our own beliefs.

[I must remind my readers about the concepts of satire and sarcasm]

2 comments:

  1. In other words, become what they already assume we are - mirror images of themselves. None for me, thanks.

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