“Atheism is a Product of Irrationality”

The above was the title of a recent Letter to the Editor that appeared in our local newspaper.

There has been something of a letter war going on by the very small number of religious extremists in New Hampshire, and the Freethinkers in our state. Barely a week goes by when something really inane isn’t posted by a religious whacko that naturally provokes a logical and measured response from the large number of god-less NH residents.

Here’s an extract from the latest offering by the religiously impaired:

“To me, atheism is not only a moral evil but a metaphysical evil because, as defined by Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), evil is the absence in nature of something that ought to be there; for example, it is a physical evil to have been born with only one eye.”

“Atheism is a mental evil because the mind does not have the rationality it ought to have. Abdicating all sense of balance, ratio, and proportionality, atheists are irrational because they deny that of which they have no clear idea.”

About as backward and topsy-turvy illogical babble as one could imagine. I just couldn’t just let it go. My response follows.

In Mr. Cervo's letter of Sept. 24 entitled "Atheism is a product of irrationality" he exposed the problem inherent in "theist think." Indeed, his letter is the quintessential example of the ills of avoidance of secular thought that seem to be the hallmark of the religiously afflicted.

Missing an eye is a "physical evil"? Atheism is a "metaphysical evil'? Lacking belief in supernaturalism is a "mental evil"? One can practically hear the screams of the heretics under the Inquisition's torture devises clanking away in Mr. Cervo's basement.

When the absence of delusion and gullibility and the acceptance of the scientific method and evidence are defined as irrationality; and when blind belief in supernaturalism born of the imagination of ancient pre-scientific cultists is considered rational, then we truly have not progressed far beyond the Dark Ages. It is the doctrine of a Bizarro World where “rational bad, irrational good; reality bad, unreality good.”

I wonder if Mr. Cervo 's concept of rationality includes not "suffer[ing] a witch to live" , attributing a two headed frog to Satan's handiwork and plague to God's wrath. That's the rationality religionists have embraced for thousands of years ... that’s what they call a "balanced" mind. It would be laughable if it were not so frightening in its implications.

And on it will go. A similar letter of nutty devotional apologetics will, no doubt, appear next week. It’s sort of like watching the movie “Groundhog Day,” although if groundhogs could talk, they’d likely make more sense than these crazies.