I've been seeing violent bigotry, from certain groups of online atheists, for a while now. Not just Dawkins-style casual sexism, but full apologies for European colonialism, and defense of patriarchy and white supremacy as inherently "rational".
I'd figured this was isolated idiots. Sad to say, it seems now to be part of a larger trend.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/barrierbre ... for-trump/
... and makes me feel sadly correct about my unwillingness to call myself "atheist" these days.
(Read the comments too. Most of them are quite informative, in a horrifying way.)
What happened here, though? I thought the core idea was that disbelief in gods does not entail disbelief in morality and justice. That we can do the right thing because it's right, without fearing punishment by an Invisible Sky Father. That reason and compassion needn't be opposed.
And now we have these clowns throwing out morality and justice too, for not being "rational." Embracing the exact stereotype of the Evil Nazi Atheist. Thanks a lot, you idiots. We could have made the world better, we could have made the world a place worth living in, and you wrecked it all because... because who the fuck even knows why. What kind of zealotry drives a person to throw out fairness because it's "irrational"? What kind of sickness drives one to vaunt white supremacy as the height of rational thought?
All this time, we were trying to prove that we can be human beings, that people don't have to distrust us. That we're not monsters.
And now, you gleefully act like a bunch of monsters, and break all the trust we've built. Oh, and try to get a raging bigot elected. A raging religious bigot, who promises to destroy the religious tolerance in this country that you and I owe our lives to.
You are going to destroy us, and all our progress, on the altar of your zealotry. Just like good old religious fanatics.
Thanks a whole fucking lot.
... And yeah, I'll just call myself nonreligious, or something. Though at this point, the biggest item of faith I've lost is my faith in humanity.