What’s with the soap box, guy?

By Tom Beasley on March 17, 2014

Well I’m glad you asked; I was just thinking about that! I’ll be less formal than usual about this because I get this sort of thing a lot – why are you so vocal and why do you care what other people think? This has been talked about so much I can hardly add anything novel but discussing this gets to the heart of why I even ramble on endlessly about things like religion. Sometimes I wonder why I should even bother. Why should I spend time talking about religion when all the other noise drowns out my reasons? I could talk about this forever but let’s avoid lots of hoops and hurdles and let me simplify this and drop the excessive elaboration so that I can be as clear as possible. I will stick to the major reason: people don’t just dislike atheists, they also distrust them. Lots of information is out there that just ‘coming out’ and talking about it can be helpful. One example, and there are many, is in the LGBT community where people are, no surprise, more favorable towards gays and lesbians if they know one. I’m not saying you have to know me or like me or be friends with me, that is a special kind of plague I rarely inflict on people – what I am saying is that people call themselves atheists because they want people to know that it’s okay to not agree with everyone else and that it’s okay to not believe in God. They also like the topic — I can recall a lecture by Bart Ehrman where he asks the audience how many people are Christian and then asked how many have read the Bible. If you really think God sent a messenger to earth, wouldn’t you want to know what he said? It seems like the questions surrounding religion are important and, to me and others, interesting.

Well you think everyone else is wrong and you are so right what makes you any better? Hey, pal, I don’t claim moral superiority, either for myself or my position of atheism. If anything I’m probably morally inferior because I’m an asshole – that doesn’t mean my atheists brothers and sisters are though. And I think I am right and others are wrong? Well, to complicate the issue more than I said I would: what God are we talking about? For example, if we’re talking about deism, I don’t really know that those believers are wrong. Also, calling out someone for thinking others are wrong is bizarre. By the very nature of me having a perspective I, by definition, think that other positions are worse otherwise I would have them. Granted, there are non-cognitivist positions or others that are almost non-positions. These positions, while I personally think of as sometimes naïve, can be argued articulately, and paradoxically to the less-informed, passionately. Barring that kind of position and that virtually everyone who lodges these complaints has some sort of position on something it’s bizarre to “call someone out” for thinking someone else is wrong. If I thought that someone else was right on something and that my position was wrong I wouldn’t have my position any more. Why is it then that atheists are called out so much? Well there is a jerk way to tell someone else they are wrong and a non-jerk way. Are there jerk atheists? Yes and in my private life I am probably one of them at times. I think public atheism, such as this writing, should have a different evaluation because I am not being a jerk to specific people and I am just discussing ideas. Well if I am a jerk why am I so vocal and making all the other atheists look bad? Well I’m trying my best to help in the way I think I can to let them know I’m out here and I think things like them. Mostly, from all the atheists I have met they are great people who I think push society forward and they aren’t jerks so be nice to them!

Oh, you also asked me why I care what people think at all? Well, we live in a democracy. If you want to make me a totalitarian leader then I’ll stop caring as much what others think.