My last blog post about Atheists being defamed by various religious figures went up at FDL, a place I usually put them to get more traffic.
As has happened with every single atheism themed post I put up over there, it attracted a set of trolls, this time a particularly egregious one name Doremus35 who implied that I was a ‘religious bigot’ because I wrote about a Rabbi calling Atheists ‘parasites’ alongside the Pope. Apparently this was meant to imply that all Jews are anti-Atheist or something; I’m not sure, I couldn’t follow the logic.
Also, the Pope apparently has no religious authority in the US.
Later in the same thread, Doremus35 attacked me for being a ‘gender bigot’ because I used a generic male pronoun to refer to them.
When I responded to the first accusations, of bigotry and possible anti-semitism, I was censored for calling Doremus’ ideas, as I recall (I can’t access my own old comments) ‘half-witted’ and ‘stupid’. Not the man/woman/child. Their ideas.
They, on the other hand, got away with calling me a bigot, implying I was an anti-semite, over and over again. For bringing it up to the Mods, I got repeatedly censored as well.
I’ve just about had it with posting at FDL. The traffic is nice, but there’s an obvious rancor toward any irreligious position or writers over there. I’ve been attacked by front-page authors in comments for pointing out simple facts about how the tax code favors the religious. One front-pager a few months back wrote a piece about, amongst other things, how Atheists have no joy in their lives or something along those lines, because we’re too uppity about standing up to religious figures, that he had to largely retract in comments. There are numerous featured writers who author pieces from an explicitly religious perspective, and not one open atheist or agnostic.
Let me be clear: I’m fine with Doremus calling me a bigot. That’s fine, it just shows that they throw around slander when confronted by their inability to read a simple blog post, or apparently, to any criticism of a rabbi. Whatever. I’m a big boy, and I get called far worse. I’d be less fine with, but accepting of, consistently applied standards regarding insults.
What I’m not fine with is a situation where *I* get to be called a bigot for calling out an eliminationist rabbi, censored for criticizing someone else’s ideas, and defamed for using a pronoun in a standard way, but my erstwhile opponent can do whatever they please. Whenever I point out this hypocrisy, the comment is removed. Criticism of the censors is not allowed.
So I’m now effectively banned from commenting on my own thread. It’s a troubling situation, from an authorial perspective. I feel like my intellectual property has been usurped, in addition to everything else. I’ll have to see how this turns out before I decide on the next step.
It’s been a busy few weeks for religious zealots with a hate-on for Atheists, I have to say.
First up, Rabbi Lapin, a member of Glenn Beck’s little Black Robe Regiment group of creepy theocrat wannabes, had this to say on the September 3rd episode:
“I tell them directly, I do believe, that Atheists are parasites.”
(my transcription, so if I got a word wrong, try not to burn me at the stake or what not)
You see, we’re ‘benefitting’ from the ‘energy’ put out by religious folks without putting anything into the system. Honestly, it sounds like some nerdy explanation of The Force as much as anything else.
However, as the Young Turks and David Neiwart have documented, Lapin’s hardly new to Atheist bashing, and perhaps worse. About the religious vs. the non-religious in the US, Lapin said:
“I am absolutely convinced that God is far from finished with the story of the United States of America,” he said by way of summation. “First of all, [there's] the matter of the little battle that must be fought, just as it was in the 19th century.” There were, and are, “two incompatible moral visions for this country. We had to settle it then. We’re going to have to settle it now. I hope not with blood, not with guns, but we’re going to have to settle it nonetheless. The good news is that I think our side is finally ready to settle it. Roll up its sleeves, take off its jacket, and get a little bloody. Spill a little blood. We’ll settle it. And we’ll win. And then there’s no holding us back.”
Even in our own lifetime, we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live. I also recall the regime’s attitude to Christian pastors and religious who spoke the truth in love, opposed the Nazis and paid for that opposition with their lives. As we reflect on the sobering lessons of the atheist extremism of the twentieth century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus to a “reductive vision of the person and his destiny”.
Of course the idea that Nazi Germany was Atheistic is utter nonsense, and the idea that Hitler was an Atheist rather dubious at best. He certainly claimed, over and over, to be a Christian, and had effusive praise for the power of religion, specifically claiming to be a Catholic, and that Christianity informed and guided his particular brand of insanity.
Considering the Catholic Church’s troubled relationship with fascism, ie, its often open support of Fascist dictatorships as a bulwark against Communism, I’m somewhat amused by the sheer unmitigated gall the current leader of that religion has to lay Hitler at *our* feet.
Ah well.
Needless to say this speech hasn’t gone over well with the UK’s large Atheist/Irreligious community, or, say, Richard Dawkins:
This statement by the pope, on his arrival in Edinburgh, is a despicable outrage. Even if Hitler had been an atheist, his political philosophy was not based upon atheism and had no connection with atheism. Hitler was arguably (and by his own account) a Roman Catholic. In any case he enjoyed the open support of many of the most senior catholic clergy in Germany and the less demonstrative support of Pope Pius XII. Even if Hitler had been an atheist (he certainly was not), the rank and file Germans who carried out the attempted extermination of the Jews were Christians, almost to a man: either Catholic or Lutheran, primed to their anti-Semitism by centuries of Catholic propaganda about ‘Christ-killers’ and by Martin Luther’s own seething hatred of the Jews. To mention Ratzinger’s membership of the Hitler Youth might be thought to be fighting dirty, but my feeling is that the gloves are off after this disgraceful paragraph by the pope.
I shy away from the Hitler Youth thing, if only because he’s currently, as we speak, the head of an international conspiracy to hide child molestors from the law.
There is perhaps a bright side though; attendance at the Pope’s events is far, far below expectations, and the Humanists in Scotland are ready for his visit with some hilarious billboards touting the country’s rapidly growing secularism.
Heh heh. Made me laugh, anyway.
Still, I see stories like this and I can’t help but wonder at the whole spectacle. Religious figures really can get away with saying whatever ignorant, hateful thing they want about atheists, can’t they? There’s really no consequence for doing so. It’s completely within the scope of acceptable political discourse.
(Inevitably necessary disclaimer: Yes, they have the free speech right to say these things, at least here in America, though Lapin’s edging pretty close to inciting violence. The point is that, come next week, Lapin will still give appearances and go on tv without being noted as a vile eliminationist, and the Pope will still be ranting about Atheists causing all the woes in the world, and that’s apparently perfectly acceptable. Imagine the outcry if you substituted ‘Islam’ for atheism, or ‘Jews’ for atheist, in this type of speech. Don’t you think the reaction would differ?)
Once again, zealots have decided that a form of speech that offends them needs to be punished, and even here in America free speech is anything but free, let alone adequately protected, as the woman who created Draw Mohammad Day has unfortunately learned the hard way:
You may have noticed that Molly Norris’ comic is not in the paper this week. That’s because there is no more Molly.
The gifted artist is alive and well, thankfully. But on the insistence of top security specialists at the FBI, she is, as they put it, “going ghost”: moving, changing her name, and essentially wiping away her identity. She will no longer be publishing cartoons in our paper or in City Arts magazine, where she has been a regular contributor. She is, in effect, being put into a witness-protection program—except, as she notes, without the government picking up the tab. It’s all because of the appalling fatwa issued against her this summer, following her infamous “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” cartoon.
In other words, because this woman dared to draw a cartoon that some mouth-breathing idiots didn’t like, she’s being forced to give up her entire life, her very identity, in the hope that they will be unable to find her and carry out their terroristic death threats.
In spite of this obvious lunacy, you also always get concern trolls coming out of the woodwork, who always make it clear that, yes, you have a *right* to do these things, technically, legally.. they suppose… but if you dare to exercise it, why, you’d better expect some nasty, even violent consequences, you silly libertines.
I’m of the opinion that pissing on a symbol for what someone else holds as sacred generally proves you to be a douche, or a provocateur who’s in it for attention.
Should it be legal, as free speech? Hell yes.
Does free speech mean you won’t encounter some potentially violent consequences, from some wacked-out fringe members of the community you mock?
Sorry. It doesn’t. Your relative privilege as a white American doesn’t make you immune to that.
Silly me, I thought that the First Amendment and laws against violence were there to protect us from that.
The concern trolls also like to trot out the argument that we need to forfeit our rights at home because someone might retaliate against the soldiers we have stationed overseas in the perpetual War on Terror (which is bound to be over soon), but I’ll let the ACLU answer that one:
When asked about the national security aspect of burning the Quran–meaning the inflammatory act could put troops in harm’s way–Hensler told CBS News: “we’re not insensitive to endangering troops abroad… but you can’t censor speech based on hypothetical outcome. The Reverend clearly has the free speech right to burn a Quran, as disgusting and vile an act as it is. It’s everybody else’s right to exercise their free speech against him. You can’t pick and choose who has constitutional rights.”
Nice in theory, but then again, what’s a little thing like the rule of law when a religious person’s feelings get hurt? I guess we’d better just give up on all these rights we can’t actually exercise. It’s a lot safer that way.
