Atheist Fight!

I have an uncomfortable relationship with atheists.

On the one hand, I essentially live my life as an atheist. That is, I don't let the possible existence of a higher power influence my thinking as I go about my life. I believe in science and reason and think that religion has done a lot of bad things to hold them back.

On the other hand, I wish so many of the atheists I knew weren't complete assholes about it.

I recently got into an argument on Facebook with an atheist friend of mine. He's what I like to call a fundamentalist atheist, because he's just as obnoxious about his religious views as the most annoying closed-minded Christians.

It all started when he said Martin Luther King "made a career perpetuating the biggest prank in history." To be fair, he did add that King was a "force for good" despite this. But he still thinks that because MLK was a minister and believed in god, his career was a joke.

I objected. Although I know that religion can be illogical and harmful at times, I'm also able to recognize that sometimes it can be a force for good. So many people I know (or know of) who dedicate their life to helping others-- who really make the world a better place-- do it out of a sense of obligation to their spiritual beliefs. I don't think you can discount that power.

But my friend does. According to him, religion is "a force for evil in this world, it has caused death and hardship beyond any other cause. Any good done in the 'name' of religion is actually done in spite of the evil that is religion."

Wow. That is scary extreme. Replace the word religion in that statement with, say, homosexuality or Judaism or Harry Potter... and what does it sound like?

I don't believe that religion is some external evil that has been forced on human kind any more than war or xenophobia or eating meat has been forced on us. Religion is part of who we are. Scientists have discovered the part of the brain involved with spiritual experiences ("feeling god"), just like there are parts of the brain for music or language. It's hard-wired into us. I'm happy that our culture continues to move toward a more rational explanation of how the world works, but anyone who thinks that religion has NEVER EVER EVER inspired a single person to treat someone else more humanely-- well, they're just being willfully obstinate toward the observable facts. It almost feels like my atheist friend wants to deny that religion exists at all.

Yes, religion is often irrational, but so is human behavior. The annoying thing about some atheists is the smugness with which they dismiss the human experience, without acknowledging that they themselves also have irrational beliefs and behaviors. No human is completely logical.

Fundamentalist atheists, just like fundamentalist believers, like to set up strawman arguments that all religious people have (or should have) the exact same beliefs.

I believe it's not an all or nothing thing, there's a spectrum of ways to believe, from literal to metaphorical, that many hardcore atheists ignore.

So it's disturbing to me that, although I agree with my atheist friend on the nature of god, we disagree radically on the nature of religion.