Atheists not evil, shock horror

Via Joe Miller I see that Andrew Sullivan is disturbed:

Most disturbing to me are the high numbers of self-decribed Christians favoring torture: only 26 percent of Catholics oppose it in all circumstances, while only 31 percent of white Protestants rule it out entirely. If you combine those Christians who think torture is either never or only rarely acceptable, you have 42 percent of Catholics and 49 percent of white Protestants. The comparable statistic of those who are decribed as "secular," which I presume means agnostic or atheist, is 57 percent opposition. In other words, if you are an American Christian, you are more likely to support torture than if you are an atheist or agnostic. Christians for torture: it's a new constituency.

New constituency, my ass. Sullivan seems to share the smug and apparently widespread antipathy towards atheists. The irony is that this shouldn't be surprising at all. It is generally the case that self-righteous zealotry (and a tendency to divide the world into proponents and opponents of one's own superstition) is the preserve of those who subscribe to one of the three monotheistic religions. Those who don't believe in God, or an afterlife, or those who profess to be skeptical, are under a greater obligation to treat others with consideration. When he sacked Béziers and massacred its inhabitants as part of the Albigensian crusade, Abbot Arnaud Amaury was quite happy to save himself the bother of distinguishing between catholics and the "heretical" cathars by ordering his crusaders to "Kill them all, God will know his own". No such consolation is available to the atheist.

Comments

[Abiola]

Looked at in a certain light, it isn't at all surprising that more Christians should favor torture than secularists. Consider that their very deity is an enthusistic endorser of torture: what is the Hell of the New Testament but a great big torture chamber?

[Frank McGahon]

Indeed: if someone believes in a) an afterlife and b) unceasing, unspeakable torment for sinners/unbelievers in that afterlife and remains relatively blasé about the fate that awaits numerous people in their own circle - friends, neighbours, co-workers, family members after their death - why should they be bothered about what happens to a bunch of strangers before their death (in many cases, only moments before) in a faraway land of which they know little (so to speak).

[Jim]

"No such consolation is available to the atheist."

And why would he need one? All he would have to watch out for would be vengeful survivors or heirs, and there are methods for that.

[Frank McGahon]

My point is that the atheist 'knows' that this life is all there is. Now, that knowledge in itself doesn't stop him becoming a heartless misanthrope (as I can attest!). But a religious person who is trying to be good - and Abbot Arnaud Amaury had convinced himself that he was serving the greater good, including those catholics he had butchered: he 'knew' that they would simply go to heaven - is still capable of great evil.

[Fergal]

To be fair to Sullivan, though he's a hopeless god-botherer himself, he's been quite good in recent days on the rights of atheists.

[Frank McGahon]

I suppose it's just that it's an unthinking thing. Many people share Sullivan's apparent intuition that belief in god and behaving ethically/morally are somehow necessarily linked and I don't expect that he has given it too much thought.