The atheist and his hair dryer

One of the many problems with atheism is atheists, says one who left the fold. 

If atheism ever disappears from the face of the earth, the world will react not with unrestrained jubilance but yawning indifference.

I came to this conclusion after watching Edwin Kagin, national legal director of American Atheists Inc recently on ABC's Nightline. Apparently he is offering "de-baptisms" at the annual American Atheists Convention in Newark, New Jersey. The process involves applying a hairdryer, labelled "Reason and Truth", to atheists in order to dry up the remnants of the water used during their baptism. He told the interviewer that the ceremony had "as much merit as the original baptism".

This might upset some people but all I could think of was, "Is this the best they can do?" No clear-headed thinking? No iron-clad logical arguments? No empirical evidence? No attempt at acting rationally? Whatever happened to the sceptics of yore who sincerely sought God only to genuinely feel they hadn't found Him? Their honest and intelligent assessment of the evidence believers hold dear simply didn't lead them to the same conclusion.

For those too young to remember, American Atheists Inc. is the same organization started by the scheming, backstabbing and vindictive Madalyn O'Hair, who was murdered by one of her many disgruntled atheist employees.

I make a distinction between reasonable atheists and the fundamentalist sort. There are many reasons to be an atheist. One could have grown up in a family that never much thought of religion, or one might have grown up in a country that punished with imprisonment or death any sign of religious conviction, as was common in atheist regimes throughout the 20th century. Maybe the death of a loved one or other personal tragedy has distanced the person from his creator or maybe one's lifestyle does not give much room for God. Either way, these people don't believe in God because they can't.

Fundamentalist atheists, on the other hand, don't believe in God because they don't want to. But they aren't satisfied with simply not believing; they want to make sure that no one dare disagree with them.

Truth be told, we have been witnessing the demise of fundamentalist atheism for years. When Christopher Hitchens insisted, against all the evidence, that Mother Teresa was “a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud”, you knew something was wrong. It was a bit odd that he did not include a bit of supporting evidence or even a single footnote in his potboiler. When Sam Harris insisted that 90 percent of Swedes were atheists and therefore the rest of the world should follow suit, most rational people were taken aback, as also when Stephen Fry insisted that the Poles used the Nazi invasion of their country as an excuse to build concentration camps to kill their Jewish compatriots.

The most recent nail in modern atheism's coffin was the discovery of God by Antony Flew (1923 - 2010), the famed British atheist and philosopher. Flew was the last, most civil and most intelligent feather in their collective cap. And now, even though he is dead, he's all ours.

Kagin should take a break from attacking Christianity to put his own community's behaviour under the microscope. Aside from the pain that atheist philosophies have afflicted upon the world -- through objectivism, communist totalitarianism, social Darwinism, eugenics, positivism, individualism, scientism, Freudian pseudo-science and materialism -- they should worry about the kind of people they attract to their community when they mock religion. Generous, kind and forgiving people will not be attracted to a group which mocks others.

I have been a Catholic for a long time and I have never heard the words "atheism" or "atheist" ever mentioned in church. An atheist prior to converting to Catholicism, I can assure you that that community is obsessed with the Church and incapable of discussing anything but the most recent reason for hating us. They never talk about the wonders and glories of atheism. They never raise virtuous atheists as models for themselves and their children. They never organize themselves to help the unfortunate. Frankly, after a couple of years, I simply couldn't take it anymore. I left atheism behind because it was snarky, sniping and moribund, revelling in its bitterness and denial. It is amazing that anyone survives the wholesale rejection of logic and reality, never mind hope, as they cherrypick data to uphold their opinions.

If fundamentalist atheists wish to promote a mocking, judgmental attitude aimed at hurting others, they must give up their pretence of being more compassionate than Christians, which is one of their more cherished fantasies. For all their self-vaunted intelligence, none of them have ever figured out what the Golden Rule means. Despite this lacuna, they believe themselves to be "tolerant" and theists to be intolerant, which is odd considering Catholics don't meet weekly to lambast atheists or rally to limit the latter's civil rights.

Kagin even claims that parents who teach their children any religious values are engaging in child abuse: "It is teaching children that the world works in other ways than it does. This can be extremely dangerous." If this wasn't petty enough, he also believes that all religious people are violent: "In my opinion, they are engaged in terrorism by weakening our nation and our understanding of science and things with which we can defend ourselves and progress. If it had not been for these fools we could have been at the stars 2,000 years ago."

By that insane "logic" we should hold Kagin and his cohorts accountable for all of the crimes of atheism's inglorious history including Ho Chi Minh, Yet Samrin, Pol Pot, Josip Broz Tito, Kim Il-sung, Benito Mussolini, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Nicolae Ceauşescu, Mao Zedong, Mengistu Haile Mariam, Béla Kun, Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Lenin and Mátyás Rákosi -- genocidal monsters and coincidently, atheists, all of them. (Though Mussolini converted to Catholicism, it was done only after he came into power and clearly as a political move to consolidate power. His parents were atheists, he was raised an atheist and he died an atheist.)

If atheists could live virtuous lives full of compassion and generosity which drove them to build hospitals, universities, social service centers (all three are Catholic innovations, by the way,) soup kitchens, elderly care centers and schools for poor children -- all without recourse to God's love to inspire them -- we would be in trouble indeed. But the best, the irrefutable proof of God's existence is that atheists seem incapable of this kind of generosity. If God does not really exist and inspire those who believe in him, how are Christians capable of doing that which eludes the atheist community?

As Teilhard de Chardin reminds us, "Joy is the infallible sign of God's presence." Mockery is the result of bitterness and lack of charity. Or, in other words, whoever hates, loses.

It is not at all odd that fundamentalist atheists would chose to mock those who disagree with them as they don't have a rational leg to stand on. If they can prove that God doesn't exist, they are welcome to present that proof. However, as it is impossible to prove a negative proposition (God's non-existence) it is odd that people who claim to be "rational" would insist on this point. It is as if atheists live by faith, believing in things that cannot be seen, let alone proved. And in this regard, atheists have much in common with us. What they lack is acknowledgment of God's love in their lives.

Angelo Stagnaro is a journalist for the Catholic News Service (USCCB) and for several Catholic journals in the US and Europe.

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