My hope for atheists

Last weekend the Global Atheist Convention rolled into Melbourne. Atheism has become, for at least some atheists, a movement. Increasingly atheists are gathering together in public places, as we've seen with the Washington DC Reason Rally and the Global Atheist Convention. To be fair, the Global Atheist Convention attracted 5,000 people which is reportedly a quarter of the [i]weekly[/i] attendance of [i]one[/i] Australian church so we shouldn't get carried away when talking about the levels of gathering. Nonetheless, it is increasing.

But, what to make of this? One thing that's interesting to note is how far the atheist movement is straying from pure atheism.

On the one hand, atheists like to claim that atheism commits them to nothing. They're just committed to denying the existence of God, or so they like to say. And this is entirely true on one level. But by reading about the atheist convention, and glancing over the twitter accounts of internet atheists and atheist groups, and you would get a vastly different impression!

They love talking about gay marriage and child abuse and terrorism and tax exemptions and AIDS in Africa. It's almost like they're really doing their best to muddy the waters and fool everyone into thinking that being an atheist is about joining a reactionary political movement.

Many thinking atheists do realise that terrorism and wars have more to do with politics, sociology and human nature than they do with religion. They realise that you cannot judge a belief system by it's worst proponents who distort the original message. They realise that churches primarily have a social purpose rather than a profit making intention, and thus cannot be labelled businesses in any meaningful sense, and nor should they be paying income tax.

But then the moronic atheists come along screaming "RELIGION IS EVIL! 9/11 shows the problems with irrational thinking and superstition. Ergo, all religion should be wiped out. Duh! Religions are just money making scams anyway. Pass the plate around and watch them all get RICH! Oh and btw, the important issue of Gay marriage is even more evidence of the problems religion is causing society! Jesus probably didn't even exist so why would anyone follow him!" .... and the calm reflection of the thinking atheists is drowned out amidst the ruckus.

Here are all these people claiming to be rational, evidence based thinkers and they come up with nonsense like this- emotional stupidity, reacting to religion with the very same intolerant irrationalism that they accuse religion of being about.

So in the end there's a tension that's caused by all of this. You've got human nature which encourages people to join social groups. The internet has brought the world together and we're seeing atheists come out of their basements and attend reason rallies and atheist conventions and the like. But, there must be some cognitive dissonance happening when some attendees hear the sorts of comments I wrote above - which seriously, are not too far away from the beliefs of many of those who are attending these atheist events- and then realise how utterly stupid they are. "Hang on, I thought we were supposed to be the rational, clear thinking ones! What's going on here!?".

I hope this will help them realise firstly that no single belief/lack of belief, movement or group has a monopoly on thinking. And secondly, that respectful discussion is better than ridicule. But, that might turn out to be a dream. Still, I can dream, can't I?