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I noted the use of a new term ”evangelical atheism” in recent article on the Daily Maverick website by a Christian whining about actions being initiated to stop government funded schools promoting themselves as “Christian” schools and abusing their secular status by proselytising one particular religious view to pupils. The author of that hypocritical diatribe clearly sees no problem with a publicly funded school, that serves a diverse local community, imposing the views of her particular religious minority cult on all pupils at the school.
The term “evangelical atheist” (more usually “militant atheist”) is almost always an oxymoron as the people on which these titles are bestowed are peaceable writers, debaters, and thinkers rather than wild eyed bellowing zealous theocrats, dictators or murderers.
A far better term would be to describe us as “confrontational atheists” as we are simply reacting to and opposing the ceaseless attempts by dominionist religions to impose their religious strictures and narrow world view on society as a whole. Typical cases in point are the issues of contraception, abortion, stem cell research, teaching creationism and religious brainwashing in schools, and what we may choose to read, watch or hear. They have got away with this for so long that they are confounded by the sudden upsurge in opposition to it.
There are no formal groupings among the atheist community in South Africa. We hold no atheist meetings, there is no dogma for us to evangelise and we certainly do not go door to door or hand out brochures and bellow on street corners trying to convert people to our way of thinking. We simply react to pressures from the religious to dictate to us and to mould society and the legal systems to suit themselves. The most effective method that many atheists have discovered is to write books and use the internet forums to confront religion head on and to give society a different view to that which religions have been able to propagate, often by force, for thousands of years.
It is hardly evangelistic to vigorously object to religion being force fed to our children at public funded institutions. In my school zoned area there are two public primary and two public high schools (evenly English and Afrikaans). If the Afrikaans schools choose to promote the ideas of, say, the Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk and the English schools the Methodist religion, then who is catering for the needs of the Jehovah's Witnesses, Baptists, Anglicans, Christian Scientists, Catholics, Apostolics, Pentupcostals, Mormans, Jews, agnostics, Buddhists, Pagans and atheists? Why should we allow our public schools be hijacked by a particular version of religion? If the religious want to set up institutions to brainwash their children into servile religious conformity (manufacture future tithers) they are free to do so but not at my or the general public expense. They are free to use their own money to build, staff and support that kind of activity.
Why should the religious be given any special recognition by government on issues such as the censoring of what may be shown on television? Why should politicians be allowed to defer to religions and imply that religion instils some form of greater morality on adherents when it clearly does not? Are we just supposed to shut up and accept it? Is voicing loud opposition to e-Tolls evangelising?
“I'll tell you what you did with Atheists for about 1500 years. You outlawed them from the universities or any teaching careers, besmirched their reputations, banned or burned their books or their writings of any kind, drove them into exile, humiliated them, seized their properties, arrested them for blasphemy. You dehumanised them with beatings and exquisite torture, gouged out their eyes, slit their tongues, stretched, crushed, or broke their limbs, tore off their breasts if they were women, crushed their scrotums if they were men, imprisoned them, stabbed them, disembowelled them, hanged them, burnt them alive.
And you have nerve enough to complain to me that I laugh at you.” - Madalyn Murray O'Hair
We have had enough and we are not going to allow the religious to get away with it any more. And the little matter of my taxes being used the subsidise Scientologists, the Pope's wardrobe, Ray Creepy Crawley's lifestyle, ISIS or Al Qeda, or the antics of a drunken faith healing scamster in Stilfontein is certainly on the table.
Are we militant? Is having a good laugh and ridiculing the hypocrisy and antics of the religious being militant? I have not heard of an atheist flying a plane into a building, murdering an abortion doctor or placed a bomb in a area full of innocent people to promote an atheist objective.
Are we evangelical? We have no product to sell. There is no money to be made from pointing out the obvious. Referring to us as “evangelical” or “militant” is simply the same dishonest ploy the religious use when they refer to “the atheist religion”. There is no such thing - they know it - but that does not deter them from lying about it.
A lie told often enough becomes the truth. - Vladimir Lenin
Professionally conducted surveys repeatedly demonstrate that religious belief is on the wane in advanced democratic countries. The younger generation in particular are abandoning religion in droves. Even the churches from time to time reluctantly admit to shrinking congregations and church closures.
It is therefore of no wonder that the religious resort to making up and spreading dishonest labels for us in a fruitless attempt to denigrate what we really stand for. They reveal clear signs of panic.
