American Atheists, a non-profit that claims to protect the rights of atheists and to ensure the “absolute separation of government and religion,” always seems to find itself in the middle of controversy, writes Billy Hallowell at the news website the Blaze.
“As if the most recent Ground Zero cross lawsuit the group launched isn’t enough to inspire widespread angst, an explosive new blog post on the organization’s web site advocating for the ‘eradication’ of fundamental Christians (and Islamists) is certain to make waves,” notes Hallowell:
In the post, Al Stefanelli, American Atheists’ Georgia State Director, makes a bizarre connection between radical Muslims and Christians. In speaking about “fundamentalist Christian and radical Islamic doctrines,“ Stefanelli says that both are ”dangerous, damaging and disingenuous.” Throughout the blog post, he continues to create ties between these two groups, but declines to truly define them.
Aside from making this comparison, he goes on to write that “most of these people” (again referring to both fundamentalist Christians and Islamists) “lack the maturity and intelligence” to act in “a socially acceptable manner.” Many of these adherents, he believes, are “sociopaths,” “psychopaths” or simply “delusional.”
He then claims that radical interpretations of the Bible and the Koran require that believers “kill the infidel,” but he provides no evidence that Christians here in America are seeking to do anything along those lines.
It doesn’t take long for Stefanelli to take aim at conservative media and political leaders (including Glenn Beck), either. He writes:
“The atheist community gets angry when we read about the antics of idiotic, ignorant and imbicillic [spelling his] politicians and celebrities like Palin, Bachmann, Beck, Limbaugh, Pawlenty and Santorum. We post our thoughts on our social networks and our blogs and try to expose these creeps for exactly what they are. Most of the GOP, just about all of the Tea Party movement and even some Democrats and Independents should be ashamed of themselves for going out in public wearing the equivalent of an intellectual diaper. We criticize them for their rejection of science in favor of their fairy tales and write our letters and support our advocate organizations when our legal rights are abrogated.”
He quickly turned up the volatility, continuing:
“But the underbelly of fundamentalist Christianity and radical Islam does not operate in the legal system. They don’t respond to lawsuits, letters, amicus briefs or other grass-roots campaigns and they must, must, must be eradicated.”
Read Previous Post