You Might be a Fundamentalist Atheist If… February 24, 2008

You Might be a Fundamentalist Atheist If…

By Guest Contributor
February 24, 2008

A list, years in the making, that finishes the statement “You may be a fundamentalist atheist if…“:

275. You have turned into a Jew and say “G-d” for the sole reason of not saying “God”.

276. You complain to Christians that “all your music sucks.” When asked what kind of music you listen to you give a list of bands including POD. When someone poins out that POD is a Christian band you say “They can’t be, I hear them on the radio.”

277. Once someone finds quotes and/or lyrics proving they are, in fact, a Christian band, you immediately respond, “Well, I don’t really care what they believe, I just like their music.”

278. You believe any person who writes a book critical of Christianity is doing it for “education” purposes. Conversely, you believe that any person who writes a book defending Christianity is “just in it to make money.”

There are enough to sort through that you’ll find some of them to be funny, others to be wrong/offensive, and many that just make no sense at all.


[tags]atheist, atheism[/tags]

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  • Vincent

    who the hell is POD?

  • Moi’s officially ignored film/research
    into the origin of Christendom.

    Since the film is
    the awful facts it must be disregarded by those that tout
    the beautiful untruths.

    The Religious Authorities, and those that GAIN from there being religions [e.g., People in the “Business” of Atheism] always say NOT to view that which they DO want you to see and avert their eyes, and remain quite silent, about that which they hope you will not chance upon.

    Part I

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzY2bVsZK5s

    Part II

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sckuqPulRGk

    Stay on groovin’ safari,
    Tor

  • POD is one of those Linkin Park-eque butt-rock-whine-fest-rap-metal bands. They’re godawful.

    Oh, wait.

    They’re g-dawful.

    //Wait, what?

  • Well, I thought POD had a few decent songs on their album. Alive was pretty good so I had a friend burn me a sample copy. I knew that they were a Christian band, but that hasn’t always stopped me in the past. (I remain a Larry Norman fan, even as I am not an atheist.) Honest, I would have bought the album if I had liked it.

    The remaining tracks on the CD wouldn’t have made it on any other band’s CD. They sounded like out-takes, like the kind of music that gets saved as a demo so that the band can work on them and polish them. Or discard them. What they put out should have been discarded.

  • At the risk of letting the Christian apologists define the term, perhaps I am a “fundamentalist atheist”… In scanning through the list, there are a few items that pertain to me. There are many straw men as well.

    On the other hand, I can myself define fundamentalist Christian in such a way as to espouse only the non-selfish aspects of Jesus’ teachings which have NOTHING to do with what is commonly referred to as fundamentalist Christianity (with all of its intolerance and bigotry). I think the modern day Christian fundamentalists have hijacked the term “fundamentalist” for their own purposes to gain disproportionate influence in Christendom.

    I don’t think “fundamentalist” is a bad word in itself. Its only bad if used to leverage undeserved influence while mischaracterizing the topic it pertains to.

  • Milena

    My favourite:

    152. You’re saving up to move to some more enlightened place, like Sweden.

    216. You can’t understand why people can’t see the logic in your question,”The Lord of the Rings is a book. The Bible is a book. What makes one fiction,and the other true?”

    And to think, we could all be worshipping/denying the existence or Eru right now. Sounds much more fun!

    Some of the statements really were stupid, though.

  • I’d love it if there were an item on that list that said, “You think every single Christian is a Creationist, and that the rest of them simply aren’t true Christians,” but *oh wait* they probably would agree!

  • These criteria don’t so much describe “fundamentalist atheists” as they do “silly atheists”, the kind we spend a lot of time distancing ourselves from.

    That said, I think the very first item is pertinent:

    1. You became an atheist when you were 10 years old, based on ideas of God that you learned in Sunday School. Your ideas about God haven’t changed since.

    I think a lot of people meet their first atheists in high school or thereabouts, before they (the atheists) have had a chance to mellow out and read up. And just as a some atheists haven’t let their conceptions of deity progress beyond what they learned in Sunday school, a lot of theists haven’t let their conceptions of atheists and atheism progress beyond the jackasses they met in high school.

  • Joel: “These criteria don’t so much describe ‘fundamentalist atheists’ as they do ‘silly atheists'”

    What they attempt to describe, sometimes successfully and sometimes not, are atheists who mirror the very sort of sloppy thinking that they deride in real fundamentalists. In a sense, “fundamentalist atheist” is an intentional oxymoron meant to highlight the hypocrisy of certain atheists.

  • AJ

    I wish these people would look up what fundamentalist means. I don’t mind language evolving, but if you use the word “cat” to mean “dog”, you’re a douche.

  • J Myers

    You might be a fundamentalist atheist if…

    … If you redefine “fundamentalist.” Without a creed to be fundamentalist about, the label “fundamentalist atheist” is incoherent. But such details are are no reason to forgo some gratifying ad hominem attacks against your philosophical foes now, are they?

    Gods either exist, or they do not. Given the utter lack of evidence for the former, atheism is a perfectly reasonable position. People need to keep in mind that it is a singular position; it means that one does not believe in any gods, and any aspects of one’s personality (e.g., ignorance, arrogance) have no relevance to the external reality of the existence or nonexistence of any gods. “Ideas of God from Sunday school”? Whatever they were, they are no more fanciful than the “ideas of God” piling out of that academic clown car known as theology; until you have some evidence that any gods exist in the first place, any “ideas” about their supposed attributes are nothing more than products of your imagination.

  • Scott Talbot

    You might be an Atheist Fundamentalist if:
    You first write an atheist handbook that provides the wisdom and dogma that all ‘true’ atheists must follow doggedly, and punish all of any/no faith fail to adhere to.

  • Unless one agrees that atheism is a belief system, worldview, or religion (which I do not), the whole notion of fundamentalist atheism is without merit.

  • Tom

    “fundamentalist atheist” is a crock of… well. I’ll bite my tongue.

    The word fundamentalist came into popularity when the religious right began to reassert itself in reaction to the 60’s and 70’s liberalism. It’s an easy word to use because it’s used a lot. Using it to describe atheists is LAZY. It’s like today’s infatuation with the word “nano.” Suddenly it’s this hype-y catch all phrase that you use to sound cool and in the know. Nanofinance. Nanoart. Fundamentalist atheist.

    I will plug my own preference: Extremist atheist

    I’ve also heard it called “hurt”

  • Claire

    Why does it really not surprise me that this was based on redneck humor? Ignorance calling to ignorance, I suppose.

    I’m not sure what the point of posting this list/link was – it wasn’t particularly funny (unlike the Anita Renfroe link, which was), and it didn’t tell me anything new – I already knew that there were plenty of christian sites with spiteful comments about atheists. Seeing one more certainly doesn’t make me feel any friendlier.

    Still, if it weren’t for all the herring, 152 might apply to me…..

  • Sam

    This isn’t a page of ‘name that logical fallacy?”??

  • Sam

    You deface money by scribbling God off of dollar bills.

    I do that 🙂

  • You think questions like, “Can God create a rock so big that He cannot lift it?” and, “Can God will Himself out of existence?” are perfect examples of how to disprove God’s omnipotence and ultimately how to disprove God. When someone proves to you the false logic behind the questions (i.e. pitting God’s omnipotence against itself), you desperately try to defend the questions, but then give up and go to a different Christian site to ask them.

    Argh! Do people still use that one? Seriously, that’s one of the dumbest arguments we can make; if there was some all-powerful being, utterly defying logic would certainly be within its abilities.

    Of course, that depends on your definition of “all-powerful.”

    278. You believe any person who writes a book critical of Christianity is doing it for “education” purposes. Conversely, you believe that any person who writes a book defending Christianity is “just in it to make money.”

    Guilty as charged, but only mostly.

    It’s clear that books that cater to the godless among us are good sellers right now, and I don’t doubt for a moment that a lot of atheist writers are hammering out books just for the money.

    That being said, a lot of the Christian books that I’ve seen are self-help books in some fashion. The fact that this market continues to exist tells me that self-help books don’t work – and yet people are still writing them. I don’t want to be too cynical here, but I do question the motives of a lot of these authors. Maybe I just have a bad taste in my mouth because of L. Ron Hubbard practically creating this industry?

    That being said, I’m sure that there’s a lot of interesting books on Christianity in general that aren’t motivated by money, but rather to inform. Personally, I’d like to see a no-nonsense history of the various bibles we have about right now; I only recently learned that Cathloics have their own and that the popular King James version is used by those “filthy heathen Protestants.”

    Wow, I’ve really rambled on here…

  • grazatt

    Aren’t tektonics know for being a bunch of assholes? If MikeC came up with such a list I might be inclined to pay some attention to it, and it would probably be funnier too

  • Cade

    I tend to stop reading when I hear Christians spewing stuff about creationism. I’m much more inclined to think they have something valuable to say if they’re at least indifferent to evolution. If they actively make arguments against it, it makes me question their sources.

    By the way, “When you go to bookstores, you move all the Bibles to the “fiction” section.” I totally do that, and I think it’s hilarious.

  • Aj: “I wish these people would look up what fundamentalist means. I don’t mind language evolving, but if you use the word “cat” to mean “dog”, you’re a douche.”

    And if someone uses “fundamentalist” loosely to describe a demeanor reminiscent of known religious fundamentalists, how is that similar to using word “cat” to mean “dog”?

  • cautious

    Everything from #24-58 reminds me that science education in this country needs some help.

    I’m still trying to figure out how this one makes sense:

    You may be a fundy atheist if….You descended from apes.(Think about it.)

    Is that …supposed to be a “Yo momma” joke?

    Also #53’s quote “from a Chinese paleontologist” is apparently a quote by Jun-Yuan Chen, who works on the awesomely cool Chengjiang fauna. The quote seems to appear in a Phillip Johnson WSJ commentary from 1999, when he says a scientist said it at a talk. Johnson was at first hesistant to say which scientist, which makes me really…really…really question the veracity of the quote.

  • grazatt

    Why not just use word like asshole or zealot?

  • grazatt: “Why not just use word like asshole or zealot?”

    Because it isn’t as good at capturing the irony of those who act too much like those that they rail against, as I noted above.

  • Maria

    Joel: “These criteria don’t so much describe ‘fundamentalist atheists’ as they do ’silly atheists’”

    What they attempt to describe, sometimes successfully and sometimes not, are atheists who mirror the very sort of sloppy thinking that they deride in real fundamentalists. In a sense, “fundamentalist atheist” is an intentional oxymoron meant to highlight the hypocrisy of certain atheists.

    well said, though “fanatic” might be a better word, b/c “fundy” is mostly applied to religion and dogma.

    There are enough to sort through that you’ll find some of them to be funny, others to be wrong/offensive, and many that just make no sense at all.

    that’s pretty much how I felt too.