Author: Ophelia Benson

It’s a funny thing, but there are people who think it’s worth pointing out that ‘atheists are no more rational than anybody else.’ Gosh, really? And here I was thinking that just by being an atheist, I automatically and indisputably occupied an Upper Level of humankind where the air is thinner and the rationality flows like wine.

No actually I don’t think anything so stupid, and I never have. I do think something much more limited and carefully phrased than that…but of course that wouldn’t be exciting to contradict, because if you make limited carefully-phrased claims then you’re probably not saying anything as obviously and risibly stupid as ‘atheists are more rational than anybody else.’ What would I say? That atheism as such is more rational than theism as such. That’s about it, really. There are plenty of atheists who aren’t atheists for particularly rational reasons, and there are rational people who are theists, though that one is trickier (because I don’t agree that being theist is itself rational). There are also plenty of atheists who are atheists for rational reasons but who still aren’t demonstrably ‘more rational than anybody else’; there are also atheists who are more rational than most people…but that’s so far away from the invented claim that ‘atheists are more rational than anybody else’ that it’s beside the point.

Maybe such claims don’t mean atheists in general but rather explicit or vocal atheists – ‘New’ atheists, in short. Maybe the jibe is really ‘New atheists are no more rational than anybody else,’ because the idea is that any atheist who is overt about it must be thinking she is more rational than anybody else. Maybe the idea is that being overt about it is the same thing as thinking one is more rational than anybody else. But that isn’t necessarily the case. One can want to be rational, careful, critical, thoughtful, reflective, questioning, skeptical, without thinking one is any of those things, much less that is more so than anybody else.

But it’s otiose to point this out, of course; jeers like ‘atheists are no more rational than anybody else’ are part of the Sarah Palinization of discourse. Nyah nyah, you read too many books; neener neener, you think you’re so smart; you New York latte-drinking elitists think you know everything.

The BBC is tipping its hand again. Check out this bizarre subhead:

Anti-religious campaigners have condemned the conviction of a “militant atheist” who left rude images in Liverpool Airport’s prayer room.

‘Anti-religious campaigners’ being their hand-tipping tendentious hostile ill-mannered term for secularists and, you know, people who believe in freedom of speech – otherwise known as liberals. And what is up with that ‘militant atheists’ and what are the scare-quotes for? Who, exactly, is being quoted there? Anyone? Or is that just a very underhanded way of throwing more mud at atheists while pretending it’s someone else doing it. That’s what it looks like to me.

Anyway – what it’s reporting on is jaw-dropping to a Yank.

[Harry] Taylor, 59, of Griffen Street, Salford, admitted at Liverpool Crown Court religiously aggravated intentional harassment, alarm or distress…The atheist admitted leaving images of important religious figures in sexual poses but said he was simply challenging the views of others. The chaplain at the airport, who was “severely distressed” by the discoveries in November and December 2008, immediately reported the images to the police, prosecutors said…The maximum sentence for such an offence is seven years in prison.

I can’t even think of anything to add to that – it’s so grotesque it speaks for itself. Is the UK a giant daycare center instead of a country, or what? Are you allowed to go outside without someone holding your hand? Do the police come along to check your underwear every couple of hours?

What was that I was just saying about the Catholic church presuming to lecture everyone on how to be good and what a flesh-crawlingly bad joke that is? Well spare a thought for the bishop of Ferns.

Dr Denis Brennan, the Bishop of Ferns, was inviting parishioners (and any individual priests who felt so inclined) to donate money to assist the church in footing a bill, the tally for which comes to more than €10m, to meet the legal costs of defending civil cases brought against the diocese in relation to clerical sexual abuse. In other words the Roman Catholic Church in Ferns is asking the victims of its own bitter failings to pay the price for the crime.

That’s pretty, isn’t it? Empathetic? Compassionate? Thoughtful? Sensitive? Self-aware? Humble? Remorseful? Other-regarding? Unselfish? Generous? Everything admirable?

The reports into clerical abuse in Ferns and Dublin have shown a distressing level of complicity within the wider community. How could the police, the health service, schools and many private citizens, have sat back and allowed such atrocities to happen? The priest who abused my friends was well-known as having a fondness for his altar boys, yet no one ever confronted him about it. And in its arrogance and lack of self-awareness, the church interpreted this as tacit approval.

And in its continued arrogance and lack of self-awareness, the church expects its victims to help it avoid the consequences of its generations of brutality.