Why angry Atheists are angry, a primer

There’s this thing called double-standards. You may have heard of it. It means that you hold others accountable for things which you yourself disregard. Things like standards of behavior, like insulting signs or language. Having a double standard means that you can carry an sign which is offensive, insulting, hurtful, demeaning, or derogatory, but object when someone does something even remotely similar in return.

One of many signs using insulting language at the protest on Sunday.

“Angry” Atheists have probably had simply enough of rolling over. For you Christians reading this blog, we’ve been putting up with these things, and with fundamentalist hypocrisy for years, and remained silent.

At every event, from things as innocuous as Folklife or Seafair, folks like this show up, toting legions of signs that say things like “IDOLATERS GO TO HELL REPENT OR PERISH [sic],” or how we are degenerates, sinners, homosexuals, whores and worse. They show up with megaphones, yelling and screaming. 

This Atheist sign in the rotunda was just a tiny fraction of the same sort of treatment we’ve had to put up with for a long, long time. We get it from nasty signs, from Bill-O, Fox, MSNBC, politicians, blogs, and snide news anchors. All. The. Time.

… the Wicked for their SINS!

So when people like Ken Hutcherson and Wendy Treat whine about how persecuted Christians are by a little tiny Atheist sign in the rotunda, I feel no sympathy whatsoever. Atheists are insulted and belittled at every turn by everyone that holds a sign, or who comes over and yells at us. The incredible irony here is that Wendy Treat and Ken Hutcherson’s main theme at the rally was that Christians were tired of being doormats, of turning the other cheek. Interesting and very, very ironic. I’d say the insulting Christian signs to insulting Atheist signs ratio was about 100:1. And that’s being generous to Christians.

Ken Hutcherson's reasoned reply to the controversy.

In fact, here’s how they responded to the sign in the rotunda: by mocking Atheists as fools. In fact, I saw many people holding bumper stickers that said that the Atheist national holiday should be April Fool’s Day. Insulting to Atheists? Definitely.

That is why I condemn the language of the sign. But I can see why it’s there, and hopefully now you can too.