My pompous letter in the paper below, has elicited a number of comments from my fan club. But I also got one congratulatory phone call from a 'supporter' who assured me there was evil afoot and did I want information about how the Greens were spreading evil through the Parliament, and that Bob Brown (Greens leader) was not only an atheist but also a homo!
I did try to say that the point of my letter was that people should be allowed their opinions, and they should not deny me the right to mine. This obviously went over her head, she just wanted to shoot the lot of them!
Sadly, I think I prefer the atheistic intolerance I was decrying to the sort of bigotry that many of my fellow-believers seem intent on inflicting.
I didn't feel like arguing the point!
4 comments:
As an addendum to my remarks on the other post, a couple of points.
1. Intolerance (esp. intolerance of religion/religious believers) is not a prerequisite of atheism. That isn't to say, however, that atheists can't possibly be intolerant.
2. Denying individuals the right to their opinions is not a prerequisite of atheism.
On the second point, I must say that your posts intrigue me. I gather your letter was written in response to letters or remarks from atheists that were published in The Advertiser. Were these individuals of the view that religious people such as yourself should be denied the right to their opinions?
They certainly were...my particular objection was to a comment that "we would be better off without them"....where 'them' happens to be me! or anyone who happens to construe things differently.
I recognise that I have fallen into the sweeping generalization trap too...of course denying the religious freedom of speech is not an atheistic prerequisite...but it is so often said!
of course denying the religious freedom of speech is not an atheistic prerequisite...but it is so often said!
That's an interesting claim. I have rarely encountered the notion that religious people should be denied freedom of speech, and I suspect that it is not a commonly-held notion among atheists (though it may be among that subset of atheists who write to newspapers and whose letters are selected for publication).
my particular objection was to a comment that "we would be better off without them"....where 'them' happens to be me! or anyone who happens to construe things differently.
I think we are definitely better off without certain manifestations of religion. I think Dawkins wrote in the preface to his paperback edition of The God Delusion that if most religious people were of the Bonhoeffer and Tillich ilk, he would have written a different book.
I think the Dawkins' book is poor. But I agree with his point that Christians should eb like Bonhoeffer (about whom I preached last Sunday.. http://coromandelpreachings.blogspot.com/2008/11/this-week-we-follow-our-christianity.html)
The woman who rang me was just an abominable example of what a modern Christian should be...but then I rather wish that atheists should be more like you.
Enough of this I think!!
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