A few weeks ago I saw a fellow wearing a T-shirt which proudly declared “I’m an atheist. Debate me!” And I thought to myself, if that guy were stuck in an elevator with a Calvinist wearing a shirt emblazoned with “John Calvin is my homeboy” … would either one make it out alive?
So this morning I came across Brendan O’Neill’s blog article “How atheists became the most colossally smug and annoying people on the planet.” It’s a great article and because O’Neill is an atheist himself, he’s allowed to engage in some hyperbole as when he observes that Dawkins’ faithful army of Twitter followers “makes those Kool-Aid-drinking Jonestown folk seem level-headed in comparison”. Yikes.
Okay, so O’Neill’s venting his frustration. But even if he’s exaggerating, there are a whole lot of colossally smug and annoying atheists out there. Just like there are a whole lot of colossally smug and annoying Christians. What worries me is that both groups seem to be growing, feeding off each other’s polarizing ignorance and acerbity.
And just as one insult can obliterate a hundred compliments, so the power of these vitriolic ignoramuses will always be wholly out of proportion with their numbers (and middling IQ scores). That’s a depressing fact, all the more so since it ain’t no exaggeration.
