Sunday, June 05, 2016

Types of Atheism

I have discovered that there are two types of atheists. The first type focuses primarily on attacking organized religion such as Christianity and Islam. The second type focuses primarily on attacking disciplines such as astrology, zen and paganism.

The first tend to be free spirits who don't want people telling them what to believe and how to live. The second tend to be control freaks who do not want people to have an existence or an identity outside of what they can control. The creed is the same; the character cannot possibly be more different.

What about the atheists who are against both organized religion and these other disciplines? They tend to have features of both. I know someone who does not work, is bisexual and lives a very free-wheeling existence, but has called me reading poetry at a restaurant “aggressive panhandling” and called my former girlfriend a syphilitic ho. I know someone else who has called divorced women “brood parasites” and stated that the problem with the world is that “the freaks don't know their place” but wrote passionate essays in favor of sexual freedom. These people are free spirits in some ways and control freaks in others; and the mix can be rather difficult to predict.

What this shows is that in atheism, as in religion, there is potential for both liberating and controlling practices; and the fact that someone is an atheist does not mean that he is going to be solely either or both. Just as Biblical religions can mean anything from “kill all the Amalekites” to
“love your neighbor,” so can atheism mean anything from a fascist to an anarchist. And of course I have known both.

If atheists want to organize themselves into a political force, they have a lot of work on their hands. They include people who are characterologically nothing like one another. It will be a ragtag alliance of people who include everything from medical students and scientists to anarchist writers and radicals to feminists to engineers, and they will have to be both disciplined and creative in order to stay effective as a political group.


As for me, I started out as an atheist but have had spiritual experiences that have proven me wrong. Call me a loony if you want to; but I know what I've seen and I know what I've known. I encourage people of atheist persuasion to investigate what else is out there. Chances are, they will find their lives vastly enriched.

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