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this could just as well be Richard Dawkins the atheist leader |
On the other hand, I recently came across an article on salon.com. The author, Chris Stedman, a homosexual atheist, descibes having begun searching for an organized community of nontheists, which led him to a reception following a public discussion organized by a nonreligious group. At the reception he was shocked to discover that religion — and religious people — were roundly mocked, decried, and denied. He heard comments such as “Wasn’t it wonderful how intelligent the panelists were and how wickedly they’d exposed the frauds of religion? Weren’t they right that we must all focus our energy on bringing about the demise of religious myths?” and “We have the superior perspective; everyone else is lost,”
Stedman claims that as a former Evangelical Christian, these words were hauntingly familiar, and they represented a kind of sure-handed certainty and dismissal — a kind of fundamentalist thinking, really — that he’d hoped to leave behind with his “born again” beliefs.
So when you come down to it, atheists are not merely religious, but religious fundimentalists. Their belief that there is no Biblical God and evolution created us is ultimately no different than a Christian's belief that Jesus Christ is his lord and savior and anyone who believes differently is evil.