Atheists vs. atheists: the problem with fundamentalism

I’ll have nothing to do with the organized miscreants who call themselves “Atheists” with a capital “A” (as if they speak for all atheists, and are the Official Arbiters thereof). Their hubris is unbearable.  Visit their websites, peek in at their online discussions, and you'll quickly learn that, by and large, all they've done is substitute one religion for another:  they preach from The Gospel According to Marx.

This, of course, is antithetical to the atheism of Ayn Rand and those of us who consider ourselves Objectivists.  We eschew anything and everything pertaining to Marx.  More about this later.

Yes, there is a problem - a big problem, at the moment - in America with fundamentalists who believe that 1) the Bible was written by God Himself and everything in it must be taken literally; 2) the American system of government was founded on Christian principles; 3) demand that our cultural myths be taught in science classes as if they were facts; and 4) demand that their peculiarly strict and impossible-to-practice sexual mores be the only choice available to a supposedly free people. They are dangerous in that they want the same thing the radical environmentalists want: a return to pre-Enlightenment, pre-Industrial Age conditions in which no one was free to think any thoughts unapproved by the Ruling Class, poverty was the natural state of man, and Divine Revelation (aka ignorance and superstition) trumped human reason.

But the capital-A organized Atheists, who are fundamentalists in their own way, are just as opposed to Reason as the fundamentalist Christians are. Instead of fighting for things that really matter, they waste their time “hacking at the branches of Evil” (Thoreau).

Our cultural myths are important: they tell us something about who we are, and a society needs to remember and celebrate them. In our culture, that means, among others, the Christian myths of the Nativity and the Resurrection; just as the myth of St. Patrick is important to Irish culture, and the myths of the sacred mountain known (to the White Men) as Shiprock is important to the Navajo Nation.

Most Navajos know that Shiprock is a volcanic dike formed 20-some million years ago; few, if any, literally believe the tribal myths of its origin. And I suspect that most Irish folk are aware that there never have been snakes in Ireland. Still, the Navajos practice some kind of sacred ritual at Shiprock, and the Irish still celebrate St. Patrick's Day. As they should.

Unfortunately, that does not extend to America, where far too many people believe that the beautiful, inspiring, mobilizing myths in the Bible -- all of which contain elements that are physically impossible -- actually happened.  Worse, they'll get in your face and tell you that if you don't believe the literal texts, you'll burn in Hell for eternity.  

That’s a problem, but so is having hissy fits over cultural matters - such as a cross on a hillside - that harm no one while ignoring the far graver threats to Western civilization posed by the fundamentalist Christian Right.  To my knowledge, there has never been an Atheist protest at a Native American rain dance, and no one protesting at a St. Patrick's Day parade that there never were snakes in Ireland (but I probably shouldn't give them any ideas).

The threat that Christian theocrats pose to American values lies in the fact that Christianity is a Collectivist system, and therefore anti-American.  Of course, the large-A Atheists will never protest that, because they, mostly Marxian in their worldview, are even more Collectivist than the Christians.

And so we have two opposing factions who hate each other, but both want the same thing:  to rule over others and decide for them what they're allowed to know, what they're allowed to do with their lives, and what they're allowed to think.

"For centuries, the battle of morality was fought ... between those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of ghosts in heaven and those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of incompetents on earth.  And no one came to say that your life belongs to you and that the good is to live it."
          --Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged