It was one of those generalised comments, how evil we all are, how dare we not believe the Wrath of God (or Allah or Jehovah or wharrever) mythology. usw usw .....
The curious thing was the generalisation. A lot of people lay into all Muslims without even understanding the difference between Shia and Sunni, so this I sort of get. After all, the teachings of Mahomet are at times extremely bloodthirsty, and most of the rabid hoodlums (a small minority of Muslims incidentally) who misuse these mythical texts cannot understand that 1500 years have passed and things are different now.
I mean it may well have been the done thing in Arabia at the time for 52 year old men to take 9 year old girls to bed with them, and while that may be out of order today (actually IMHO it is totally out of order, but I digress), so maybe we have to make allowances for the evils of the time. And then again ....
But back to the generalisations about atheists. I have no problems with my views on the subject, and I am not aggressive in respect of people who prefer to stick to their mythical views of the world (though see also above). But occasionally it is fun to hear an erudite Richard Dawkins dissect opposing arguments, or Bill Maher point his telling sense of humour in the direction of believers, or hear the likes of Pat Condell absolutely shred religious beliefs.
But Pat Condell - now there is an interesting example of why generalisations about atheists simply do not work.
I have one thing in common with Pat Condell - we are both atheists. For the rest, we are like chalk and cheese. He supports the UKIP for one thing (the posh man's version of the guttersnipe neo-Fascist BNP), while I remain a totally committed pan-European (not the time for me to get into why the Euro for all its weaknesses is still eminently preferable to national currencies and the re-entrenchment into the myopic thinking and the banking ripoffs involved, and handing over individual countries to the whims of speculators. Well the UK has been run for the benefit of speculators and not for its people for longer than I can remember, so point proved!).
Another point about Pat Condell (along with Bill Maher for that matter) is that he is a strong supporter of Israel. All well and good hating fundamentalist Islam usw (see also above), but let us quickly revert to Israel. Israel was founded as a Jewish state - Judaism is a religion, and a pretty nasty one at that if you study the Old Testament closely enough. Fortunately the excesses of the teaching are mainly ignored these days, but the tenets for becoming an Israeli still have this religious undercurrent to it.
There were in 1938, 300,000 Jews in the area that is now their country. Which means that some 6 million plus have been added to their population by immigration, based on the fact that they follow or followed a religious creed that said that they had a divine right to live in that place and the others who lived there should clear off out.
Fine - several generations after Jehovah's original divine gift to "his chosen people", my ancestors were still based in Denmark (before some of them eventually set out in longboats and headed off for reasons best known to themselves to England - they must have had something wrong in their heads to even want to do that, but anyway). Maybe now is the time for me and a few others to reassert our right to land in Denmark that Odin and Thor offered us as their "chosen people" centuries ago.
It is exactly the same principle!
So when Pat Condell says that the Israelis have the right to the land and Palestinians have none, he is, curiously, reinforcing a religious principle.
Strange for an atheist to take sides on behalf of any religious thinking, even if the adamant supporters of Sunni Islam - namely Hamas - are hardly people whom you would want to support, even on a bad day (the same can be said of the Shia fanatics in Iran and Lebanon incidentally).
The atheist pragmatist that I am would not ask the Israelis to leave their land now (at least the land that they were awarded in 1948) - the status quo is always more important than any antiquated myth or silly idealistic solution that merely serves one side in a dispute. For my views on a solution, see previous pieces on here.
Anyway to reinforce my point, the fact that I am an atheist does not mean that I agree on everything with other atheists. As we have just seen, this not at all the case. So there is no point generalising about us. There may be trouble with us as individuals, but those are to be taken up individually (and any problem that you have with me, please take up politely with me - not with someone else), not in a fundamentalist rage that covers all eventualities.
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