Essay: Double Standards and "Shoving Them down My Throat"

This stamp can apply to anyone, but I am particularly addressing this to certain members of the atheistic community who make the rest of them look bad.

Some things that need to be said up front:

• This is not meant to be a statement against atheism in general, nor is it intended to incite hatred against the atheist community.  Many if not most atheists I've met are people for whom I have great respect.
• I am among the first to admit that the Christian community has many shortcomings of its own, and this stamp is not an attempt to deny that fact.  The words and actions of fellow Christians are often just as offensive as the words and actions of those challenging Christianity.
• In this essay, I am referring mainly to the extreme, militant atheists.  When I simply use the term "atheist" in this essay, it is not from an intent to generalize: merely a shortening from "extreme, militant atheist" for the sake of conciseness and sanity.  If you are part of the silent majority of athiests that does not behave this way, please take no offense.
• This is not meant to be a university-level dissertation with eight thousand scholarly journal sources to back up my argument.  It is simply an informal essay based on my own observations of the behavior of how people behave.

Now to business.  Read if you dare (but please do if you want to talk about this).

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Over the years, I have heard many complaints atheists have against the Christian community.  Many of these complaints, unfortunately, are legitimate issues that Christians are in desparate need of addressing.  The church will learn many lessons the hard way if it does not start seriously and objectively examining itself.  Sadly, many of these complaints, even the legitimate ones, often apply to atheists as well, though many of them do not want to address that fact.  These double standards, I daresay, are one of the main sources of tension between Christianity and atheism.  Letting go of these double standards may repair the rift between people.  With that said, let's examine some of the double standards currently in place.

1. Christians say the same thing over and over again even when people are tired of hearing it.

One of the things Christians constantly stress is the danger of hell.  I'm not denying that it gets annoying, and I'll address that later on.  On the other hand, one of the main messages Christians stress is the love of God.  Whether an atheist believes the message or not, this message can hardly be called offensive in and of itself.  Granted, even an inoffensive statement can be annoying when repeated too many times.  But that's a little off the point.  What's the double standard here?  This is one I directly address in the stamp that serves as the preview image for this essay.  Every time I turn around, it's always "shove down my throat" this and "shove down my throat" that.  Again, I'm not meaning to deny that some Christians can be very pushy at times.  The truth of the statement, however, is irrelevant.  It, like the "going to hell" message or the "God loves you" message, is stated and restated ad infinitum et ad nauseam.  Atheists who take issue with Christians saying the same thing over and over again need to stop doing it themselves.

2. Christians are rude and inconsiderate.

I've heard this countless times.  Many times, the people who say it the most are the same people who throw terms like "Zombie Jesus", "Ancient Sky Wizard", etc. in Christians' faces, knowing the terms are impolite and offensive.  Granted, sometimes people claim (maybe even truthfully) that they are not using the terms to offend.  The term "Zombie Jesus" is one for which I have heard this argument.  If a person uses this term, there are three possibilities:

• The person does not understand what a zombie is (an animated corpse)

• The person does not understand what Christians believe about Jesus (that he rose from the dead, not as a corpse but as a completely living, sentient being)

• The person is intentionally misusing one term or the other, which is offensive (kind of like using the term for black people - the one that starts with an N - even though the person knows it's not a nice thing to say).

These kinds of things are rude and inconsiderate, and getting angry with Christians being rude is holding a double standard.

3. Christians are ignorant and never know what they're talking about when they argue something.

True enough - I get so tired of hearing Christians say of evolution, "I didn't come from a monkey" or "It's only a theory".  Christians, if you're going to argue evolution, please do your homework.  Saying things like this does indeed make you look ignorant.  That said, there is a double standard here, too.  Atheists will often criticize Christians without understanding Christian beliefs, too.  A lot of times the statement is something like, "Well, I guess I'm going to hell, since Christians think everyone who doesn't agree with everything they say is going there."  This is nowhere near the belief of the vast majority of the Christian community.  Yes, hell is a part of Christian belief; unfortunately, there's no getting around that.  But that's just part of it - to cite it alone is to take it out of context.  The other part of the belief is that anyone, absolutely anyone, can avoid going there, regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, religious background, sexual orientation, past (and future) sins, or any other factor.

I don't wish hell on anyone, not my worst enemy, and I know very few Christians who do.  Many atheists have this idea that Christians are out to get them.  By and large, this is also a misunderstanding of Christianity.  I'm not sitting here waiting for you to make a mistake so I can jump on it.  I promise.  Despite what you may have heard from some of the Christian extremists, most Christians do not believe you are required to "clean up your act" before you can be saved.  As the saying goes, "God loves you enough to take you right where you are, but he loves you too much to leave you there."  If people had to be sinless before they could accept Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, there would be no Christianity.  If people had to be perfect after accepting Jesus, there would be no Christianity.  These are just a few examples of misunderstandings.  There are enough of them on both sides of the debate.

4. Christians always have an "us versus them" mentality.

"Christfag", "Jesusfag", "Religious freak".... If that's not an "us versus them" mentality, I don't know what is.

5. Christians are paranoid and have no tolerance for other religious viewpoints.

Revealed faith is not harmless nonsense, it can be lethally dangerous nonsense.  Dangerous because it gives people unshakeable confidence in their own righteousness.  Dangerous because it gives them false courage to kill themselves, which automatically removes normal barriers to killing others.  Dangerous because it teaches enmity to others labelled only by a difference of inherited tradition.  And dangerous because we have all bought into a weird respect, which uniquely protects religion from normal criticism.  Let's now stop being so damned respectful!

This quote was made by atheist Richard Dawkins as a response to the attacks on September 11, 2001.  Not only is this a blatant and unfair generalization (notice that his statement does not encompass just religious extremism or sectarian violence, but any revealed faith), it is an unbelievably paranoid and intolerant statement.  The paranoia can be seen by his overreaction; because of the actions of a few religious extremists, he labels all religion as dangerous.  The intolerance can be seen in his assertion that religion (and, by extension, anyone who follows a religion) is undeserving of respect.

And before anyone is too quick to play the "respect is earned" card, that's a double standard, too.  Christians always seem to be required to be polite, tolerant, and respectful of every other view, "earned" or not, no matter how offensive, or they're considered to be bigots.  It shouldn't be too much to ask everyone else to adhere to the same standard.

6. Christians worship someone of dubious quality.

Again, I must point to Richard Dawkins.  My belief that he is a questionable source of information stems from reading his book, The God Delusion.  If a book with a similar tone was written on, say, biology or history, researchers would not consider it to be a reliable source because it is very clearly influenced by the emotions and personal bias on the part of the author.  Yet, by many in the atheist community, he is hailed as a great scientist and freethinker (despite the so-clearly-not-free thinking exhibited in the previous point), and anyone who questions this in the slightest is just a hateful religious wacko.  If that's not worship, it isn't too far from it.

7. Christians get upset over little things; they need to grow thicker skin.

It takes a lot of faith to be an atheist.  Now, if that statement makes you mad, then don't get upset with Christians for expressing similar emotions.  Because that's a little thing.  And if you think it's not, remember that there are things about Christianity that may be little to you but are a big deal to Christians.  Let's keep the same standard for both.

8. Christians are always pushing their agenda on everyone else.

They're not the only ones.  People who don't believe me can look at the comments section of almost any news article on the internet.  The exchange usually goes something like this example:

Headline: 3-year-old Girl Escapes House Fire Unharmed

Jane Doe: Thank God that little girl's okay.

NietzscheFanboy: Your god is a fairytale

GodIsDead: yeah lets all get on r knees and thank jeebus that morons like u are still on the internet lol
_{[MrAtheist and 3 others like this.]}

ZombieJesus: She survived without help, you religious nutcase.

The_Free_thinker: Why do people always have to bring god into it?

Mention God in any context, any context, to the most minor, inocuous extent, and the sparks fly.  And Christians are accused of pushing an agenda.  This is the exact same thing.  It happens off the internet, too.  The whole debate over "Merry Christmas" vs. "Happy Holidays" (which shouldn't even be an issue - most people reading this live in a country with freedom of speech, and simply wishing someone a Merry Christmas is not pushing a religious agenda) is a great example.

...

There are other double standards out there, but these are some of the main ones I've noticed.  I'm not saying Christians are blameless in these areas.  And I'm not suggesting that Christians don't do some of the things listed (although, because of the double standards in place, people read into what Christians say and do and often accuse them of doing these kinds of things when they really don't.).  What I am saying is that members of the atheist community should be holding themselves to the same standards to which they hold Christians.  And right now, that's not always happening.

Again, I need to stress that this is not directed at all atheists, nor is it a statement against atheism itself.  But, as I often challenge the silent majority of Christians to hold the problematic extremists to account, I challenge the silent majority of atheists to do the same thing to the members of their own community who are causing so many of the problems and division between others.