Calling down the wrath of secularists

Mary Kenny
Atheists often claim that they are rational people, but it seems to me that many of them are angry, aggressive, abusive and full of hatred. I say this in consequence of receiving more than 200 coruscating e-mails from atheists and secularists after I wrote an article in The Guardian about the recent proposal to teach atheism in schools. My viewpoint was that atheism had no stories or parables, and failed to furnish a child’s mind with moral reasoning or imaginative sensibility.
I am still reeling from the onslaught of abusive responses. And I think it is instructive to cite from some of these texts. One Josh Wetzel wrote: “Dear Holy-than-thou-cow: Let’s start with Nietzsche shall we and then work backwards. No wait, let’s not let’s just leave you being the nasty f***tard ignorant c***cow that you are. May you step inadvertently into traffic and live in pain the rest of your miserable days.” Another correspondent, signed Dr William Harwood, had this to say: “There are four kinds of godworshippers: the stupid, the ignorant, the insane and the intestinally challenged. Anybody who has actually read the Bible and failed to recognise that it is the most obscene paean to evil ever written, with Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf and the Marquis de Sade’s Juliette fighting it out for second and third place, and that its paramount god is as evil as Hitler and as insane as Caligula should consider a brain transplant.” Many of the e-mails exhorted me to “grow up!” and “get real!” for defending the traditions of Christianity, and I wondered how grownup or mature the writers were, or what experience of life they had. I felt inclined to reply that I did not appreciate invective from pipsqueaks who had not a 10th of my experience: but, true to the discipline of my Catholic education which prompted “blame the sin, not the sinner”, I restrained myself and answered with the best courtesy I could muster.
But I can’t say the experience wasn’t upsetting — there was just so much of it: “How dare you criticise atheism for not cleaving to your stupidity and superstition? How dare you imply that you are better, more creative, more intelligent than atheists when you are ignorant, hateful and so uninspired that you believed in dead myths rather than thinking for yourself? Drop your hollow, vicious myths; to believe them and worship them now is the height of arrant, wilful ignorance.” “I find it amazing that you find the Christian religion with its countless barbarities, absurdities, concocted fiction and fantasy, more interesting and a challenge to young minds, than the more humane reality of freethinkers, atheists etc, who deal with reality, not illusions.” “What bulls***! The priests teaching this rubbish paused only to bugger innocent little boys, while the nuns were busy thrashing some poor girl to within an inch of her life. The Church — now dying, I’m pleased to say — was a worldwide force for evil.” “Is the ‘Light of Faith’ the same one that is burning down schools for girls in Pakistan? The light turned on for me when I abandoned religion many years ago.” Science, not religion, was held up a the supreme value. “You imply atheism cannot inspire in the way the Bible stories etc do,” wrote one of the more polite messages, sent by Roger Fletcher. “Try learning a bit of molecular biology, or look at some astronomical stuff, to see just how exciting the world of science can be. More lasting than myth and ancient beliefs.” I cite extracts from these e-mails because, although often hate-fuelled, they are instructive. I felt saddened by the number of people who seemed to have had a negative memory of religious education, and drew nothing inspiring or uplifting from it. I also think Christians should be aware of just how aggressive the secularising lobbies are now becoming.
Not all the responses were hostile, or rude. Some were thoughtful, and one or two appreciative. One was a sorrowful commentary on many young people today. “I saw this problem, no faith, no commitment, God is not cool, materialism, no spirituality, no love, during my many years teaching at universities,” wrote Kamran Mofid. “At the time when many students face many a ‘crisis’ in their lives, given the emptiness that they harbour, they have left no room for imagination, prayer, a sense of belonging to guide them towards more hopeful times. This, coupled with family breakdowns, careless society, unkind environments and more, has created a hell for our young people. Some thing must happen to show them a different way.” Mr Mofid says we have to do a lot better in the way religion and faith are taught, and that proposal certainly leaps out from the bitter words of which I have been the startled recipient.