Who We (atheists) Are

We think a winner should have been declared in Church v. Logic. It’s as simple as that. We’re bookish. We’re squares.

Countless debates have gone on in human history with the correct party rewarded immediately, or not. History rewards them in either case because we always find out who was right. The world is round, ketchup doesn’t come out that way, here give it to me etc.

This debate is incredibly simple as philosophical debates go. The religious have no leg to stand on and their arguments are the kind that can be used for anything. It’s what you say when you get caught taking money out of a cash register in the dark, after hours at a grocery store. “I own this place.” “They stole money from me!” “I’m your superior officer.”

And anyone who has caught someone with their hand in the till so to speak (especially a little kid) knows that arguments will go on as long as you want with the accused adding more and more unlikely details. I don’t need to prove this since we know that 1, 2, 3… goes on forever, and the argument “none of this is real” is always available. (The distinction between “real” and “something else” has been used by defenders of the supernatural since before cash registers, or cash for that matter. Fraud, unfortunately, started with the ancient currency of fleas-I-picked-off-you-and-ate.)

So it has gone on. The surprising thing is that it survives almost everywhere and has broken us into a very splintered subgroup. There is no elite atheist cabal that controls the world because, ha ha, you all didn’t believe us. That is the world of Wright Brother deniers, the believers bopping around in their jets to meet with each other, or coming back from vacation tan.

Nonbelievers would be, in that case, surprised, and at a significant disadvantage.

From this idea of disadvantage, one is inevitably drawn to the thought of war. Certainly if there is a belief that wins wars, it has been sorted out by history already. There are Holocaust deniers but there are no Hiroshima deniers. The Holocaust deniers are rewarded with the fraternity of other antisemites and punished rarely, while atom bomb deniers risk evaporation.

So what am I saying? That religion wins wars (and elections, and gives the religious a distinct advantage in life outside of philosophy class)? Don’t need to prove that point, too easy. Of course it does. They say there are no atheists in foxholes. Not true. But foxholes are definitely not full of atheists. We’re not lining up for war. And I don’t need to say what would happen if you pitted two otherwise equal fighting forces against each other in which one side THINKS IT IS IMMORTAL. Even though the atheists would have a better grasp of logical fallacy, that fight is not fair.

Am I saying atheists should be more militant? Nope. We’d lose. See above.

I’m saying I want our day in court. The argument is not treated like an old fight that was won long ago. To anyone who has read or seen such a debate, it is the verbal equivalent of a boxing match between a skinny little emperor wearing no clothes and a collection of heavyweight champions. And announcers call it like a close match! “There! It looks like the emperor is showing signs of life here in the eighth round… You can see his twitching head is starting to look like the deft evasion techniques of our finest athletes! Not the epileptic spasms of a 90 pound man lying in his own blood for most of an hour, as some outspoken members of the crowd have suggested.”

Furthermore, before the fight, and most of the time after the fight the believers nudge each other excitedly — none of them actually having watched one of these things — waiting for the opening volley: the emperor, clothed in the finest silks, shoots fire from his hands. It never comes. You lost, and you will continue to lose unless you can come up with better arguments, and that’s putting it charitably. (Not that charity is going to do you any good at this point. Your boxer is trying to slide out of the ring, oddly aroused.)

UPDATE: If there is an elite atheist cabal and I don’t know about it, I’m going to be pissed you guys.