Sunday Morning Blasphemy: Yup, Atheists Can Be Just As Cruel As A Fundamentalist
on October 21, 2012 at 10:30 am
You’re a disgrace to your species.
This is the Amazing Atheist. He’s a blogger. I’m not personally familiar with his writing but I see his name pop up from time to time. Apparently, he is living proof that you don’t need religion to be a cruel and heartless douchebag. This isn’t to say that atheists believe that you do need religion to be a heartless douchebag but there is a significant percentage of the religious that think you need religion to be a moral being in the first place. They’re wrong but AA certainly doesn’t help make the case.
If you don’t know the sad story of Amanda Todd, she was a 13 year old girl that, on a lark, flashed her breasts on an internet chat. Someone took a screen cap and began stalking her, demanding she perform for him or he’d spread the picture around. She refused and he did. She left her school from the fallout. He did it again at her new school. The harassment went on for about two years until she tried to commit suicide. She failed and made a video in which she called for help using pages with writing, which is what the piece of trash above is mocking. She tried again two weeks later and was successful. She was all of fifteen.
Now her death is getting a lot of traction in the blogosphere. This disturbs some people like AA. How dare people feel bad about this one girl when so many other die every day?! Of course, the response is: Who the fuck are you to complain you egotistical little shit?
If he had made an argument that people only care because she was pretty and white he might have had a leg to stand on. It’s a well known fact that the evening news isn’t going to lead with with a missing black girl if there’s a missing white girl as well. He might have complained that people are only paying attention because she’s dead and where were they when she was alive? Not completely unreasonable. But he didn’t. He simply mocked her last plea for help and dismissed her death as mere background noise.
This is about as callous as it gets. What makes it so much worse is that he doesn’t even have the excuse of religion to hide behind. Let’s be honest, no one is born hating Jews for “killing Christ” or for not believing in Mohammed. It takes years of indoctrination to twist our moral intuition into a shape that can accept the killing of men, women and children over a book. Yet, raging over a young girl’s death because it has been elevated, for a moment, above the sea of death and misery that surrounds us at all times takes a special kind of moral vacuum that even fundamentalist religion doesn’t easily reach. The anger fundies express is directed at perceived violations of their religious tenets. AA is just mad that Amanda is receiving attention.
I think he might just be jealous. Maybe if he kills himself, he’ll get the attention he’s so desperately envious of. But I’m sure I wouldn’t shed a tear.
I’ve had run ins with the Amazing Atheist before. He’s an egotistical sexist asshole. I disagreed with him once and he insinuated that I wanted to date him. LOL I personally think he has a problem with women. I don’t think he particularly cares for women and he doesn’t see them as equals capable of deep thought or real emotions. He obviously doesn’t understand the impact of bullying and cyber stalking and how it can affect a young girl. The fool who did this to her should be arrested for distributing child porn.
I agree with what you’ve written. Ultimately, what the Amazing Atheist shows is that we make our own world to a large extent, whether we believe in a deity or deities, none, or, like me, accept that there are some things that are inherently unknowable (if life started with a single atom, where did the single atom originate?). I’m not naive. I know that there are large forces we can’t control but we can control what we do and say and, most of all, whether or not we refuse to add to the amount of coldness, lack of empathy, and heartlessness in the world.
Some stories resonate not because they’re the standard missing pretty, young (usually blonde) female story but because they give a name, a face, and a story to an issue. Yes, there are many people who died around the same time that Amanda Todd did and whose tragic stories we will never know. However, just as Matthew Shephard’s death made real the suffering and death of many young gays to people who had never confronted the issue, Amanda Todd’s makes real the costs of online bullying. The Amazing Atheist doesn’t seem to realize that Amanda Todd has family and friends who, if they see his contemptible sign, will feel even more pain.
John Donne was right about any man (woman, boy, girl)’s death diminishing each of us. If the Amazing Atheist can’t feel empathy for the pain of this girl, then it doesn’t say anything about atheism but it says a lot about him, first and foremost being that he’s not amazing, after all.
Atheist here. And the self-titled “Amazing Atheist” is a misogynistic arrogant callous piece of shit that makes the online atheist community look as despicable as the fundies make us out to be. I remember seeing a thread once where he tried to trigger a rape victim. Just a terrible human being.
Good reply Peggy. What AA does say about atheism is as the post says. Those who say they don’t need God in order to be good people, fail to recognise that neither they nor anyone else is good. All of us fall short of even our own moral code, let alone that of our Creator. We judge others by their actions while judging ourselves by our intentions. Every single one of us, to one degree or anything is a hypocrite, bigot, dishonest, cruel, greedy, selfish, etc. From a Christian perspective the issue isn’t how good we are but are we forgiven. Good does not lead to forgiven while forgiven should lead to better than before Jesus came into our lives. Anyhow, I don’t want it to be lost that I liked your reply Peggy.
God Bless.
I hope to someday see you There!