Richard Dawkins’ website recently reposted a rather disturbing column from a Northern Ireland newspaper: apparently, the atheist bus ads running in London are pulling London down the S-bend of morality, and this is no surprise, because atheists are the scum of the Earth. Here’s a highlight:
The advertising campaign has cost around stg £100,000. It was all started up by — predictably — Professor Richard Dawkins, the neo-Darwinist scientist and atheist campaigner. He put down a deposit of some £8,000, and the rest came from public contributions — mostly from readers of The Guardian newspaper, in which the campaign was publicised.
It says something about the affluence of Guardian readers that, in a time of recession, they can contribute £90,000 to a bus campaign dissing the notion of God.
One note: Richard Dawkins did not begin the campaign. It was started by the Guardian. I thought fact-checking was still a part of journalistic practice. Another: It’s true that over 100,000 pounds were raised, but it is also true that over 8,500 people donated to the campaign. That’s about 15 pounds each, on average. That must count as affluence to this deluded person.
I’ve never yet met an atheist with a sense of joie-de-vivre (unless, in the case of one well-known public atheist, a certain drunken cordiality) most of them seem to be miserable blighters.
How many atheists does she know? Perhaps more pertinently, how many religionists does she know? What does sexual repression and subjugation of women do for people’s happiness? After all, most of the world’s believers live under such conditions, or worse. Have I hit her problem on the head?
Well-meaning folk might suppose that atheists are simply searchingly honest persons who, doubting the tenets of faith and committed to reason and logic, conclude that they just cannot commit to faith.
There may be some of this ilk, but militant atheists, in particular, are deeply unpleasant and caustically intolerant. Any time I have written about this subject, I have received offensive e-mails from militant atheists. While professing themselves to be campaigners for “freedom of thought”, “reason”, and “logic”, their main tool of argument is often personal abuse; they quickly start shrieking that believers are simply “stupid”, or, in the case of a female believer, “a stupid cow”.
“Caustically intolerant”? She must have forgotten what “caustic” and “intolerant” mean. She would have remembered if she had read her own writing. And she wonders why she gets offensive e-mails?
Now, we all know that believers of this particular stripe find the very existence of atheists offensive. The very fact that we are not daily struck by lightning, or found grovelling in leprous huddles in our own filth, is an affront to their worldview. But that does not excuse the use of truly offensive language in countering their delusions.
That said, I feel entirely justified in saying that Mary Kenny, the author of this deeply offensive and profoundly ridiculous column, is stupid.
She is a stupid cow.
(Here’s a nice letter to the newspaper in question that politely puts Mary Kenny in her place.)
Tags: atheism, atheist bus belfast, atheist bus campaign, independent.ie, intolerance, mary kenny, northern ireland, Secularism
Allusions of Grandeur 
December 1, 2008 at 12:31 pm |
Miserable blighters? Deeply unpleasant and caustically intolerant? Do you think she missed the irony or just hoped we would?
My son made an interesting observation a couple of days ago. As you probably already know, we live in Texas and my son attends middle school here, so there’s no shortage of Christians to observe. My son said to me, “Mom, have you ever noticed that a lot of Christians seem to be tense, angry and afraid?”
I told him that I had notice that and asked what he thought about it. He said that it makes him think that even though they claim to have a monopoly on peace, love and happiness, they really don’t; that they’re just kidding themselves. He further observed the irony of the Christian notion that we should want to be like them. He basically said, “Thanks, but no thanks.”
I’ll second that.
December 2, 2008 at 4:05 am |
Great piece and I totally agree with conclusion. Mary Kenny has always been and always will be a stupid cow as her long history of ill-informed neurotic rants posing as journalism demonstrates.
Nice post from Lottie too.
December 16, 2008 at 4:59 am |
Yeah, I read this on PZ Myers’ blog a few days ago (I can never spell the name :(.) It saddens me that people like this still exist, and if we can find the in Britain, imagine what we would get in the United States.
And, yeah Lottie. As I go to a Christian school (it’s a very long story, but short answer, I’m a atheist leaning agnostic, I’ll post about it later,) I can relate.
May 11, 2009 at 6:02 am |
It is interesting that the Irish Independent has now removed Mary Kenny’s name from the top of the article see: http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/atheist-bus-more-like-a-bandwagon–on-highway-to-hell-1550742.html
I wonder why? In the end perhaps she was embarrassed by it and so sought anonimity. Speaking of which why does the author of this piece hide behind the moniker soulbiscuit. Is he too ashamed to use his real name?
And I wonder is he trying to be ironic when he called the Irish Independent a Northern Ireland news paper and then criticised Mary for being sloppy.
May 11, 2009 at 6:50 am |
Correction accepted on the location of the newspaper. Perhaps I saw the name “Belfast” in the article and wrote too hastily.
On anonymity, my name is Christopher Petroni. It says so right on the front page of this blog, and always has.
May 11, 2009 at 10:26 am |
Apologies I had missed your name.
Well, I think we agree the article was slightly offensive to atheists and very badly researched. It would seem to me that in spite of Mary’s article, The Irish Independent is more pro-atheism than theism. Their colomish Ian O’Doherty frequently has athist rants, on the other hand explicitly pro-christian opinion pieces are rather rare. Similarly with the letters they publish. Most that I’ve seen on religious topics are from non-believers. Last week had the following line, which I think summed things up nicely:
religion is, and always was, a nonsensical fraud
I thought that the following letter was amusing:
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/letters/blasphemy-law-a-distraction-1734692.html