Thursday, April 21, 2011

Atheists march

A headline today reads
Spanish atheist march banned in Easter Week
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13158138

This business highlights one of my chief complaints about my fellow atheists; namely, confusing atheism with religious antagonism.  These Spanish so-called atheists wanted to march right past Catholic churches (hard to avoid, in Madrid!) during Easter ceremonies. Their intent plainly is to provoke.

I have no problem with provocation. By all means tweak those Catholic noses, some of which deserve tweaking. And make your point that in Spain, separation of Church and State is a bit of a shadow play.

But don't call it atheism. This is anti-Catholicism, unadulterated.

The atheist doesn't care a fig for the outrages of this or that religion, or at least it's not his atheism that is outraged. His moral sensibilities may be, and that's fine. Any of us can condemn any number of aspects of any number of religions on the grounds of human decency or violation of civil law, and so on.

But atheism merely says there are no gods. It's a simple enough proposition, self-sufficient. Many people, though, make the moral leap to the active statement that believing in gods is Bad. And should be not only condemned but fought against.

I disagree. Believing in gods is not Bad, it's merely silly. Pointless. Delusional. I'll condemn evil done in the name of anything, gods included, but then I'm condemning the man who did the act, not the ideology that he employed to justify his actions to himself. Hate the sinner, not the sin, to counterfeit a phrase.

I'm not glad that the marches in Madrid were banned. Yes there probably would have been clashes and the civil authorities were probably behaving responsibly, but you still have to let people march and let the confrontations happen and then clean up afterward. Let them dance, let them dance, although they may not be the only ones [Young: 3:8-11]

But call yourselves Catholic Haters of Spain or something. Not atheists. You give us a bad rep.