Recently, I caused quite a stir on my Facebook news feed about comparing some militant atheists to a form of terrorists because of a recent news post out of Virginia. I’d like to clarify my statements, and examine some key components that I can see backing up my statement.
Let’s first look at a few definitions.
Definition of TERROR
1: a state of intense fear24: violent or destructive acts (as bombing) committed by groups in order to intimidate a population or government into granting their demands <insurrection and revolutionary terror>(From Merriam-Webster)
- Religious people are tired of atheists and secular parties attacking their traditional values they have held on to for so long, and it’s leading to anxiety.
- Religious people fear us, because we are trying to remove what was once a very traditionally held onto belief that it was okay to show baby Jesus and a Nativity scene in front of a court house.
- Religious people fear atheism in general because they fear that if we anger the gods, the gods will come down and smite the entire country.
- Atheist people are tired of religious people persecuting them for their non beliefs, and it causes us anxiety.
- Atheist people fear religious people, because they are a majority that holds a lot of power in our government and public establishments
- Atheist people fear religion in general because it brings forth a lot of seriously scary people like Todd Adkins, and the like, that dictate what we should do with our bodies and our liberties/civil rights.
Do you see, we are in a “Mexican Standoff” because we have the deeply devoted religious people, along with the deeply passionate secular/atheist people, and then we have everyone else screaming bloody murder for coexistence (Because it takes 3 parties or more to be a Mexican Standoff). Nothing is going to get accomplished if we don’t calm the fuck down.
Notice how I made in bold, two key words. Fear and anxiety. What’s the key components for terror? Bingo. Both Religious and Atheist/secular people can cause terror, therefore they can be labeled terrorists. So where do we go from here? What do we do to fix this? It starts with you lowering your gun. Showing the other parties that you will not shoot, leaves it up to the rest of them to decide if they want to come to the meeting table. Start by talking to someone religious, finding out what makes them tick. Find out what they truly believe in, where they stand on things, etc. After that, it’s up to our speakers and public relations to get this through their thick skulls.
- The Secular Nerd
