Those of you who know me or know anything about who I am, know that I am an atheist but I find these people to be extremely irritating. My argument goes like this, “An atheist believes in nothing. There is nothing to preach and no reason to preach it unlike the religious person whose purpose is to save someone’s soul.” In other words, an atheist has no higher purpose to “evangelize” as a religious people do. Aside from that, it’s counterproductive; if your goal is to win support for your cause, you don’t begin your presentation by spitting in the faces of your audience. Regardless of what your argument is, if you begin in this manner it is very likely that your audience will write you off before it is even heard. The display of disrespect is evidence that the argument is disingenuous. If they are promoting atheism for the betterment of mankind, they would be better salesmen. If on the other hand, their goal is only to make a spectacle and belittle the opposition – well who cares how many people you actually convert? Say anything you want.

As an atheist, I have no desire to convert anyone to atheism. There is no heavenly reward for me if I do so and regardless of what people may want you to believe, we are not a persecuted group who deserve unequal protections. As a matter of fact we have a vast amount of societal and legal defense considering the minority of our numbers.

Once I realized who these guys were, I dismissed them as the sideshow they are and began to walk away passing a much smaller and much less attention-getting group of religious students there to rebut the atheist students.

Now this is the other side of the argument. The way I react to these people goes like this; “I take it as a compliment. It’s like being hit on by a gay guy. Of course I’m not gay but you have to appreciate it when someone tells you that they're attracted to you.” The compliment in this case being that they are taking the time to try to save you from eternal damnation.

So the guy starts talking to me, starting off with the usual arguments about the complicated nature of the world and the historical evidence for Christianity. I let him give his spiel, answer his questions and then give him my spiel. It was relatively peaceful, as it usually is and we ended having a respectful disagreement, as we usually do. As I am about to walk away, another Christian guy walks up and engages me much more aggressively; challenging my philosophical beliefs (he was attacking my belief in an objective reality) and attempting to put me on the defensive. Meanwhile the leader of the “Atheist Agenda” guys walks up and engages the aggressive Christian guy that was talking to me. This put me in the hilarious position of being the neutral voice between opposing ideological factions.

The atheist guy starts off with the usual scientific and historical evidence against religion as well as a bit of religious nonsense like the story of Adam and Eve. The two get into it and I inject that they are both setting up straw man arguments; the atheist has inconclusive science and objectivity on his side (you can never disprove religion as you can never prove a negative) and the Christian has faith and some historical evidence on his side and neither one of them has any willingness to accept the other side of the debate. I then proceeded to accurately predict what the next argument of both sides of the debate would be (and angrily, they both proceeded to use the points I predicted) and they both castigated me and made known that my opinion was no longer wanted. The Christian actually stated that I was “making him angry”. At this point I gracefully dismissed myself.

Despite the rather mundane nature of the event I actually learned something. I always say that one of the reasons I decided that I did not believe in god was because my belief would have been selfish; I would have been following a religion out of a fear of damnation, rather than taking a leap of faith as an honest believer. I deemed this selfish and completely contradictory to an honest relationship with a deity who says that we must commit ourselves with the faith of a child.

The people who do honestly follow with the faith of a child; something I call, “true faith” are very rare and when I meet them, I am overcome with respect for their honest commitment. These are the people who don’t go around looking for debates and if somehow end up in one, simply state, “I follow God because he tells me to.” Period. A person who has real faith needs no justification and needs no answer to the controversial questions surrounding his religion. That is why it is called faith! But this Christian, angrily threw me out of the discussion in order to make a much-made point to a militant atheist whose only purpose is to get in his face! I quickly realized that this particular christian’s goal was not any sort of higher purpose, his goal was to make himself feel superior by attempting to defeat the argument of the opposition, which was exactly the same purpose as the belligerent atheist! A person with true faith would not need to bolster their beliefs by engaging in such activities. Why waste time with militant opposition when you have friendly bystanders and others to engage that you could actually score points with?

After exchanging pleasantries and walking away, I saw the two as opposing sides both of whose stated purposes were false! This sort of behavior comes as expected from self-righteous, militant, adolescent atheists who believe in the populist and stereotypical image of the persecuted atheist but I expect more from the self-proclaimed “man of god”.

When I arrived at my destination I noticed the student newspaper whose headlining article covered the event and provided me with another piece of information, “Inside this no-man’s-land, a third party began to form, composed of proclaimed agnostics asking for peace. ‘Well, we don’t really believe in either side. We believe both foster hate,’” (Note the key use of the word “hate”. One would only use the word, “hate” in this way in order to cast those the word is directed at as evil, thus is a act of taking sides [Yes, you can create a side and proclaim it to be neutral, although, a true neutral party would not take a side would they? The true purpose of this stance is to oppose the other two factions and proclaim superiority. 3 groups all asserting superiority over the other – which to choose?] – or to use a descriptive word, a display of partisanship.)

Yet another organization devoid of higher purpose getting involved and claiming to be above the fray. Like myself I suppose, but I am not protesting (nor protesting the protest). All parties have the right to be there, the right to speak and believe whatever they want to believe. My purpose is to share my experience with you so that you might have more information to dump into your decision making process, regardless of what you believe, as you would like or you would not be reading this. Your religion or lack of religion is not my concern.

Keep on Trollin' Atheist Agenda

Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.

College is a place where young people solidify their personal beliefs and one of the best ways to accelerate that process is by means of the competition of ideas; butting heads with those of opposing viewpoints. Overall, that is what went down here. But the problem I have is not with the challenging of ideas but with the with fact that many of the people involved did so with malicious intent. If I am a religious person and I am challenging my own personal beliefs through debate with others, my motivation is to refine my understanding of religion or spirituality, and that is a positive, constructive motivation. If on the other hand, I proclaim myself to have arrived at the ultimate conclusion that there is no god and then I proceed to slander religion as a whole and personally attack those who believe in it, my motivation is not the refinement of my own personal values, nor is it for the benefit of others, as mentioned previously, atheism, regardless of what your beliefs are will save the soul of no one. So the motivation is negative; to attack those with opposing viewpoints. By the same token if I proclaim to be a faithful follower of a god and that my purpose is to spread his word or to save other people from eternal damnation, then that is a positive motivation. But if I neglect those who are there seeking a constructive discussion on religion or spirituality in favor of a spiteful argument with a partisan critic, I bypass that positive purpose in exchange for the same purpose as the militant atheist, as stated earlier; personal gratification through the rhetorical destruction of one's political enemies.

But not everything is as it seems here. The kids with the "Atheist Agenda" would probably say that they are countering persecution by religious people and that (ridiculously) they are trying to gain acceptance by society. But if they are so firmly set in their beliefs and feel so persecuted that they must go out and commit outrageous religious blasphemies and slander religion and religious people in an attempt to gain acceptance in the world, why would they only do it in such a proper setting; a college campus? If I were a member of a group that was being persecuted, I would be protesting city hall, the state capitol and the White House. Peaceful college demonstrations are for young people who are trying to refine their own personal beliefs and not for those who have a real beef with the world. Maybe these self-proclaimed atheists aren't as certain of their beliefs as they claim to be.

On an academic note - because this is a college after all, are these people not classic examples of the attention-starved child who will do anything - including outrageously bad behavior in order to garner some attention? What do you bet most of them come from dysfunctional families?

My takeaway here is this; Don't go around challenging the personal beliefs of strangers (especially religious beliefs) if you aren't absolutely certain of your own beliefs and if you must do so, try to do it without insulting them. What business is it of yours what other people's religious beliefs are anyway? There is no better place in the world to be for freedom of religion. Let's keep it that way.

Perhaps the true meaning of the latest bumper-sticker phrase, "coexistence" lies not in the denigration of those who we perceive as hindering our peaceful "coexistence" (by having opposing opinions) but rather in those of us who go about our duties every day without feeling the obligation to butt into other people's personal lives.

March 5, 2010 - Update:

This is how the kids with the 'Atheist Agenda' student organization summed up their last day trading religious text for porn:

"The last day proved to be the most productive out of any of the days. Most people finally learned that we were there to be civil and actually discuss things and the porn was a mere ice breaker."

"Ice breaker?" Yeah, right. I've got another great idea for y'all to use to engage passers by in meaningful dialogue; hurl dog shit at them. It's sure to attract some attention. As I noted before, the whole thing was nothing more than a childish ploy for attention.

Don't feed the trolls.

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