Last night in a Hindu and Buddhist Philosophy, I was teamed up with the two most unnerving fanatics in the class. One was fanatically Buddhist (I can cope with her) but the other was fanatically atheist and he was really starting to grate on my nerves. Being an atheist myself, I guess I took it personally.
I tend to pick the unusual viewpoints in philosophy, or at least what seems to me to be unusual. Even if I happen to be wrong, I think there’s a benefit to trying out new ways of looking at things. Unfortunatly, my atheist debate partner was so angery about religion that he seemed totally uninterested in trying to see any other viewpoint. He wasn’t really listening to what people were saying, but he was quick to make dismissive comments towards people’s beliefs anyway.
I think he may be an atypically vivid example of the kind of atheism most people are exposed to, but he’s far from being an isolated case. Because there is so much hostility towards atheism in this society, it becomes very hard for someone to identify as an atheist without taking it to that same level of hostility. This is pretty much the same kind of hostility that I see in every other flavor of fanaticism.
This guy had rejected religion for his own reasons, and that’s his right, but if all he does is spew anger and vitriol towards the world whenever religion comes up, how much has he really rejected it?
