I once wrote a message regarding atheists who also criticized fellow atheists. I post the message on
Mr.Hemantâs blog.
John Paraiso said,January 20, 2008 at 8:30 pm
Just asking and I donât want to offend anyone. Atheists love to write or to say theyâre comments on religion and god belief (well that includes me) but are there any atheist today that also wrote his/her criticism about atheism? I always find some atheists in Yahoo chat that says their criticism against how atheist becoming too âmilitantâ now a days.What can you guys say about this issue?
John the Pinoy Atheist
Furtunatelly, the responces were quite positive and that made me think that atheists can comment even with other atheists. At least atheists are open minded...Then I found this article from the Christian Apologetic website, Tektonics -
"You may be a fundamentalist atheist if...." There is also
this article from the Huffington Post where R.J. Eskow puts forth his own definition of "fundamentalist atheist".
The fundamentalist atheists are an active and highly vocal subset of
atheists who object to a great many things, not the least of which is being
described as 'fundamentalist atheists.' But here's why I still think it's the
right term:
They're dogmatic. Their movement is based on a piece of
dogma which can't be challenged without enraging them. It's sociological and
historical in nature, not theological, and can be summed up as follows:
There seems to be an increasing number of people responding to atheist critiques of religion or theism by labeling the person a "fundamentalist" atheist. The label is problematic because there are no essential or "fundamental" beliefs for an atheist to be "fundamentalist" about. So why do people use the label? Why do so many people feel that the label is appropriate? This seems to be mostly due to misunderstandings about and prejudice against fundamentalism.
Fundamentalist atheism cannot exist because there are no "fundamental" beliefs
for atheists to hold. This myth demonstrates why this is true by attempting to
create out of thin air a belief for atheists: the idea that they reject religion
so firmly that they no longer care about further research on it and are
therefore dogmatic in their views. The errors made in this myth are so simple,
basic, and obvious that it's difficult to credit anyone who repeats it with
understanding atheism at all.
So sorry to spoil the Christian's party, there can never be a "Fundy Atheist" because there are no degrees of non-belief. Christian fundies are simply equating something they don't understand with their own familiar belief systems.
Oh by the way, if you have read the Tektonic article, this
is the best site that answered some of them.
Until next time,
John the Atheist
