An amusing list of the traits of a fundamentalist atheist. The full list is here, but here are some of my favorites (this might seem like a lot, but the whole list has 275 things):
You may be a fundy atheist if...
1. You think the primary aim of an omnibenevolent God is for people to have FUN.
2. You believe that your extra-drippy ice cream is a logical proof against the existence of God, because an omniscient God would know how to stop the ice cream from being extra drippy, an omnipotent God would have the ability to stop the ice cream from being extra drippy, and by golly, an omnibenevolent God wouldn't WANT your ice cream to be extra drippy.
3. You think questions like, "Can God create a rock so big that He cannot lift it?" and, "Can God will Himself out of existence?" are perfect examples of how to disprove God's omnipotence and ultimately how to disprove God. When someone proves to you the false logic behind the questions (i.e. pitting God's omnipotence against itself), you desperately try to defend the questions, but then give up and go to a different Christian site to ask them.
4. Related to the above, you spend a great deal of your spare time writing to Christian sites asking them these very questions.
5. You spend hours arguing that a-theism actually means "without a belief in God" and not just "belief that there is no god" as if this is a meaningful distinction in real life.
6. You consistently deny the existence of God because you personally have never seen him but you reject out of hand personal testimony from theists who claim to have experienced God as a reality in their lives.
7. You call a view held by less than 10% of the American public "common sense".
8. You're a spoiled 15-year-old who lives in the suburbs and declare that, "I know there is no God because no loving God would allow someone to suffer as much as I...hold on. My cell phone's ringing."
9. You believe that if something cannot be touched, seen, heard, or measured in some way, then it must not exist, yet you fail to see the irony of your calling Christians "narrow-minded".
10. You believe that planes, computers, calculators, compasses, etc, were "all obviously designed," yet the human body, being intricately more complex was "obviously a product of biological evolution." It seems the more complex the apparatus, the more obvious the "fact" that it was not designed.
11. You claim that evolution and the big bang are two entirely separate theories that explain different aspects of the universe, yet, in what school of learning can you find any real separation or distinction between the two?
12. When you watch a punt returner run a 93 yard touchdown, you marvel at what evolution has done for the human race. But when someone gets cancer, you blame God for it.
13. As a member of the Skeptic's Society you pride yourself on being skeptical of extraordinary claims. You also pride yourself on silencing everyone who is skeptical of the extraordinary claims of evolution.
14. You think that humans are products of chance but when it comes to human reason we can believe in logic!
15. You think you arrived at your position because you are a free-thinker who rationally weighed the evidence, and then freely chose atheism over theism. YET, you also believe that your thinking and actions are nothing more than the FIXED reactions of the atoms in your brain that are governed by the Laws of Chemistry and Physics.
16. You have recently stuck a Darwin fish on your car in the hopes the people with the Jesus fish on theirs will be offended.
17. When the Pope says that God may have used evolution, he is an enlightened religious leader whom Christians should listen to. When the Pope preaches on the sanctity of human life from conception, and thus denounces abortion, he's just a senile religious bigot who should keep his opinions to himself.
18. Concerning the origins of life, you feel that though the chances of life forming without an intelligent creator are small it DID indeed happen that way. And yet you don't believe me when a rock, coming from my direction, hits you in the back of the head and I tell you, "I didn't throw it. There was a sudden shift in the earth's gravitational pull and the rock levitated into your head...Sure the chances are small but it DID happen that way."
19. You insist that science is completely partial to all ideas, is not dogmatic and researches all possibilities -- except creationism and/or intelligent design.
20. When a creationist points out problems with the evolutionist model you claim that the whole point of science is to answer problems like these. But if you can point out even one problem in the creationist model it should instantly be abandoned as absurd.
21. You are a person who absolutely believes that life came from nonlife, yet absolutely deny the possibility of anyone rising from the dead.
22. You won't bet $10 on the football game because a 50/50 chance isn't good enough, but you have no problem gambling with your life on the nearly impossible odds of a cell randomly generating from nothing.
23. You think man evolved from monkeys but get mad when somebody calls you one.
24. You believe that any scholar who believes in a historical Jesus must be a theist. If they are an atheist, then they must secretly want to be a theist.
25. You insist that "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence", then claim that Jesus never existed.
26. You believe that when our forefathers are framing the Constitution, they're staunch deists, but when they're beating their slaves, they're Bible-believing Christians.
27. You think that the Declaration of Independence is unconstitutional because it mentions "the creator".
28. On that basis, you think that the Declaration is therefore void and the United States should return to British rule.
29. When it is returned to British rule, you plan to go straight to London and tell those Brits that having the Anglican church as a state church violates the constitutional separation of church and state.
30. When Christians tell you that The Bible is inerrant you go on and list a bunch of "contradictions"; when the Christian shows to you that those are not contradictions but the result of taking things out of context you list more "contradictions" when the Christian does the same with those you complain that he/she is just making stuff up and/or that the answer the Christian gives you are not "satisfactory" and proceed of course to list more "contradictions".
31. You like to complain about the wars and killings found in the Bible and like to claim that this is some sort of proof to conclude that it is not The Word of God. When the Christian points out that the Bible is about reality and that it exposes humanity and all what comes with it, you complain that it is nonsense and that no good God would allow for that to happen. You would then just claim that it is too perfect and not true.
32. You refuse to use the word "excruciating" because of its origins in describing the agonies of crucifixion. (ex crucis - "from the cross")
33. You desperately wish that Stalin and Mao hadn't been atheists.
34. You not only spell "God" with a lower case "g," but you also add an "E" to "B.C.," and replace the word "Christ" with an "x." Yet, when asked to name the planets you have no problem with spouting out the appropriate list of Roman Gods. Heck, you'll even spell them with capital letters! Not only that, you can even spell and pronounce the name of the 800-mile-diameter Trans-Neptunian Object 'Quaoar', and are delighted that it comes from the creation mythology of the Tongva people (aka the San Gabrielino Native Americans).
35. You think that the Spanish Inquisition killed millions (or at least hundreds of thousands), even though the population of all of Spain at the time of the Inquisition was only about five million, and the actual total killed numbers about 2000. When informed of this, you accuse the informer of belittling or being insensitive to the deaths of 2000 individuals.
36. You believe that Hitler claiming to be a Christian is undeniable proof that he was a Christian, while George Washington only claimed to be a Christian in order to win the people's favor.
37. You complain about desecrating the Koran while holding a burning Bible.
38. You continually argue that Hitler was a "real Christian" even when he and his fellow Nazis were slaughtering millions of people (and you "conveniently" ignore the very obvious distinction between someone claiming to be a Christian and someone actually living as a Christian, and the fact that the Nuremberg prosecutors denounced Nazism as fanatically ANTI-Christian!), but you deny that the scientists who rejected Galileo's work were real scientists.
39. You think if a Christian won't address your arguments, they are too frightened to do so, or know they can't answer them; but if they do address your arguments, you think it is because they are "threatened" by them.
40. Missionaries who give up their personal comfort to aid starving, impoverished and persecuted third-world people are actually "corrupting ancient tribal cultures with western religious dogma", while you sit at home and complain about the price of KFC.
41. You assert that the crimes and failings of some Christians (acting inconsistently with the teachings of Christ at that!) disproves the whole edifice of Christianity but that the crimes and failings of some atheists (acting consistently with the fact that atheism can provide no basis for objective morality!) should on no account be held against the philosophy of atheism.
42. You get angry when Christians tell you you're going to a place that you don't think exists.
43. You consistently decry Christians for soliciting financial support yet find no problem in atheistic 'missionaries' doing the same thing."
44. When a group of Sydney University (Australia) academics, including a historian, sign a public statement saying the Jesus Christ is "one of the great figures of history" and that his claims to be Son of God "bear up under closest scrutiny", this is a gross abuse of their position. But when Richard Dawkins uses his position as an Oxford professor to pontificate on his atheistic religion and related philosophical matters outside HIS field (animal behavior), that is a responsible use of academic freedom.
45. Further to the above, you're paranoid that these Christian academics will discriminate against you, even though their statement hasn't the remotest hint of that. But you applaud Michael Dini, a professor at Texas Tech, who refuses to recommend students for Medical School, even if they got "A"s in their courses, unless they not only understand but BELIEVE in goo-to-you evolution. And you're disgusted that creationist medical doctors have the gall to think they know more about medicine than Dini (who never practised medicine or even went to medical school), because by definition an evolutionist is more knowledgeable than a creationist on ANY subject!
46. You think Christians are narrow-minded for believing in only one religion, but atheists are open-minded for believing in absolutely none.
47. You believe that Christianity discriminates, because you have to join their religion in order to be a member of their religion.
48. You're stupid enough to think atheists are treated like second-class citizens. Yet of course, you spend most of your day belittling Christians and other religious people.
49. You're convinced that all Christians are idiots. But when you meet the "rare" Christian who's clearly intelligent, you can only conclude that he was fooled into believing...by the idiots.
50. You think Focus On The Family is a "white supremacist hate cult".
51. You demand that theists explain news items where bad things have happened to theists, even though no theists have claimed to you that belief in God is some kind of a lucky charm that wards off bad luck.
52. You demand that theists explain news items where theists do bad things, even though no theists on have claimed to you that it is impossible for theists to do bad things.
53. You can't remember if she was Mother or Sister Teresa, but you can name every pedophile priest listed in the media over the last seven years.
54. You feel that Marilyn Manson is really, really profound.
55. You deface money by scribbling God off of dollar bills.
56. You think God was cruel for killing all of those innocent babies in the flood, and that Christians are cruel for opposing a woman's right to abort her baby.
57. You think the USA is a theocracy.
58. You spell America "AmeriKKKa" and Christian "KKKristian".
59. You quite rightly denounce the methods of those who deny the historicity of the Holocaust, then use the same methods(inventing excuses to ignore evidence)to deny the historicity of Jesus.
60. You think it violates the separation of church and state for a city to have a name like Corpus Christi("Body of Christ"), Los Angeles("The Angels"),Las Cruces("The Cross"),Sacrament-o, or anything with San(saint),Santa(holy),or Saint in it.
61. You believe that nativity scenes should be banned from public view, but that anyone objecting to inappropriate contentography only has to look the other way.
62. You object to any mention of "God" and "Jesus" in the media and education systems except as swear words.
63. You think marriage is an obsolete fundy institution except for homosexuals.
64. You believe that gender roles are the product of Christian patriarchy, but homosexuals are born that way.
65. You oppose studying telling schoolkids that the Pilgrim Fathers came to America to practise Christianity free of persecution, that the Declaration of Independence mentions a Creator, and that the first public schools used a Bible as a textbook. But you support using "Heather Has Two Mommies" as wholesome literature.
66. You think that it's wrong to execute a convicted serial killer, but abortion on demand is a constitutional right.
67. You object to using mice for scientific experimentation but don't mind when babies are killed for stem cell research.
68. You have actually calculated, for purposes of "argument by outrage," an estimate of the number of people drowned in The Flood.
69. You refer to the crucifixion of Jesus as the "cruci-fiction".
You may be a fundy atheist if...
1. You think the primary aim of an omnibenevolent God is for people to have FUN.
2. You believe that your extra-drippy ice cream is a logical proof against the existence of God, because an omniscient God would know how to stop the ice cream from being extra drippy, an omnipotent God would have the ability to stop the ice cream from being extra drippy, and by golly, an omnibenevolent God wouldn't WANT your ice cream to be extra drippy.
3. You think questions like, "Can God create a rock so big that He cannot lift it?" and, "Can God will Himself out of existence?" are perfect examples of how to disprove God's omnipotence and ultimately how to disprove God. When someone proves to you the false logic behind the questions (i.e. pitting God's omnipotence against itself), you desperately try to defend the questions, but then give up and go to a different Christian site to ask them.
4. Related to the above, you spend a great deal of your spare time writing to Christian sites asking them these very questions.
5. You spend hours arguing that a-theism actually means "without a belief in God" and not just "belief that there is no god" as if this is a meaningful distinction in real life.
6. You consistently deny the existence of God because you personally have never seen him but you reject out of hand personal testimony from theists who claim to have experienced God as a reality in their lives.
7. You call a view held by less than 10% of the American public "common sense".
8. You're a spoiled 15-year-old who lives in the suburbs and declare that, "I know there is no God because no loving God would allow someone to suffer as much as I...hold on. My cell phone's ringing."
9. You believe that if something cannot be touched, seen, heard, or measured in some way, then it must not exist, yet you fail to see the irony of your calling Christians "narrow-minded".
10. You believe that planes, computers, calculators, compasses, etc, were "all obviously designed," yet the human body, being intricately more complex was "obviously a product of biological evolution." It seems the more complex the apparatus, the more obvious the "fact" that it was not designed.
11. You claim that evolution and the big bang are two entirely separate theories that explain different aspects of the universe, yet, in what school of learning can you find any real separation or distinction between the two?
12. When you watch a punt returner run a 93 yard touchdown, you marvel at what evolution has done for the human race. But when someone gets cancer, you blame God for it.
13. As a member of the Skeptic's Society you pride yourself on being skeptical of extraordinary claims. You also pride yourself on silencing everyone who is skeptical of the extraordinary claims of evolution.
14. You think that humans are products of chance but when it comes to human reason we can believe in logic!
15. You think you arrived at your position because you are a free-thinker who rationally weighed the evidence, and then freely chose atheism over theism. YET, you also believe that your thinking and actions are nothing more than the FIXED reactions of the atoms in your brain that are governed by the Laws of Chemistry and Physics.
16. You have recently stuck a Darwin fish on your car in the hopes the people with the Jesus fish on theirs will be offended.
17. When the Pope says that God may have used evolution, he is an enlightened religious leader whom Christians should listen to. When the Pope preaches on the sanctity of human life from conception, and thus denounces abortion, he's just a senile religious bigot who should keep his opinions to himself.
18. Concerning the origins of life, you feel that though the chances of life forming without an intelligent creator are small it DID indeed happen that way. And yet you don't believe me when a rock, coming from my direction, hits you in the back of the head and I tell you, "I didn't throw it. There was a sudden shift in the earth's gravitational pull and the rock levitated into your head...Sure the chances are small but it DID happen that way."
19. You insist that science is completely partial to all ideas, is not dogmatic and researches all possibilities -- except creationism and/or intelligent design.
20. When a creationist points out problems with the evolutionist model you claim that the whole point of science is to answer problems like these. But if you can point out even one problem in the creationist model it should instantly be abandoned as absurd.
21. You are a person who absolutely believes that life came from nonlife, yet absolutely deny the possibility of anyone rising from the dead.
22. You won't bet $10 on the football game because a 50/50 chance isn't good enough, but you have no problem gambling with your life on the nearly impossible odds of a cell randomly generating from nothing.
23. You think man evolved from monkeys but get mad when somebody calls you one.
24. You believe that any scholar who believes in a historical Jesus must be a theist. If they are an atheist, then they must secretly want to be a theist.
25. You insist that "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence", then claim that Jesus never existed.
26. You believe that when our forefathers are framing the Constitution, they're staunch deists, but when they're beating their slaves, they're Bible-believing Christians.
27. You think that the Declaration of Independence is unconstitutional because it mentions "the creator".
28. On that basis, you think that the Declaration is therefore void and the United States should return to British rule.
29. When it is returned to British rule, you plan to go straight to London and tell those Brits that having the Anglican church as a state church violates the constitutional separation of church and state.
30. When Christians tell you that The Bible is inerrant you go on and list a bunch of "contradictions"; when the Christian shows to you that those are not contradictions but the result of taking things out of context you list more "contradictions" when the Christian does the same with those you complain that he/she is just making stuff up and/or that the answer the Christian gives you are not "satisfactory" and proceed of course to list more "contradictions".
31. You like to complain about the wars and killings found in the Bible and like to claim that this is some sort of proof to conclude that it is not The Word of God. When the Christian points out that the Bible is about reality and that it exposes humanity and all what comes with it, you complain that it is nonsense and that no good God would allow for that to happen. You would then just claim that it is too perfect and not true.
32. You refuse to use the word "excruciating" because of its origins in describing the agonies of crucifixion. (ex crucis - "from the cross")
33. You desperately wish that Stalin and Mao hadn't been atheists.
34. You not only spell "God" with a lower case "g," but you also add an "E" to "B.C.," and replace the word "Christ" with an "x." Yet, when asked to name the planets you have no problem with spouting out the appropriate list of Roman Gods. Heck, you'll even spell them with capital letters! Not only that, you can even spell and pronounce the name of the 800-mile-diameter Trans-Neptunian Object 'Quaoar', and are delighted that it comes from the creation mythology of the Tongva people (aka the San Gabrielino Native Americans).
35. You think that the Spanish Inquisition killed millions (or at least hundreds of thousands), even though the population of all of Spain at the time of the Inquisition was only about five million, and the actual total killed numbers about 2000. When informed of this, you accuse the informer of belittling or being insensitive to the deaths of 2000 individuals.
36. You believe that Hitler claiming to be a Christian is undeniable proof that he was a Christian, while George Washington only claimed to be a Christian in order to win the people's favor.
37. You complain about desecrating the Koran while holding a burning Bible.
38. You continually argue that Hitler was a "real Christian" even when he and his fellow Nazis were slaughtering millions of people (and you "conveniently" ignore the very obvious distinction between someone claiming to be a Christian and someone actually living as a Christian, and the fact that the Nuremberg prosecutors denounced Nazism as fanatically ANTI-Christian!), but you deny that the scientists who rejected Galileo's work were real scientists.
39. You think if a Christian won't address your arguments, they are too frightened to do so, or know they can't answer them; but if they do address your arguments, you think it is because they are "threatened" by them.
40. Missionaries who give up their personal comfort to aid starving, impoverished and persecuted third-world people are actually "corrupting ancient tribal cultures with western religious dogma", while you sit at home and complain about the price of KFC.
41. You assert that the crimes and failings of some Christians (acting inconsistently with the teachings of Christ at that!) disproves the whole edifice of Christianity but that the crimes and failings of some atheists (acting consistently with the fact that atheism can provide no basis for objective morality!) should on no account be held against the philosophy of atheism.
42. You get angry when Christians tell you you're going to a place that you don't think exists.
43. You consistently decry Christians for soliciting financial support yet find no problem in atheistic 'missionaries' doing the same thing."
44. When a group of Sydney University (Australia) academics, including a historian, sign a public statement saying the Jesus Christ is "one of the great figures of history" and that his claims to be Son of God "bear up under closest scrutiny", this is a gross abuse of their position. But when Richard Dawkins uses his position as an Oxford professor to pontificate on his atheistic religion and related philosophical matters outside HIS field (animal behavior), that is a responsible use of academic freedom.
45. Further to the above, you're paranoid that these Christian academics will discriminate against you, even though their statement hasn't the remotest hint of that. But you applaud Michael Dini, a professor at Texas Tech, who refuses to recommend students for Medical School, even if they got "A"s in their courses, unless they not only understand but BELIEVE in goo-to-you evolution. And you're disgusted that creationist medical doctors have the gall to think they know more about medicine than Dini (who never practised medicine or even went to medical school), because by definition an evolutionist is more knowledgeable than a creationist on ANY subject!
46. You think Christians are narrow-minded for believing in only one religion, but atheists are open-minded for believing in absolutely none.
47. You believe that Christianity discriminates, because you have to join their religion in order to be a member of their religion.
48. You're stupid enough to think atheists are treated like second-class citizens. Yet of course, you spend most of your day belittling Christians and other religious people.
49. You're convinced that all Christians are idiots. But when you meet the "rare" Christian who's clearly intelligent, you can only conclude that he was fooled into believing...by the idiots.
50. You think Focus On The Family is a "white supremacist hate cult".
51. You demand that theists explain news items where bad things have happened to theists, even though no theists have claimed to you that belief in God is some kind of a lucky charm that wards off bad luck.
52. You demand that theists explain news items where theists do bad things, even though no theists on have claimed to you that it is impossible for theists to do bad things.
53. You can't remember if she was Mother or Sister Teresa, but you can name every pedophile priest listed in the media over the last seven years.
54. You feel that Marilyn Manson is really, really profound.
55. You deface money by scribbling God off of dollar bills.
56. You think God was cruel for killing all of those innocent babies in the flood, and that Christians are cruel for opposing a woman's right to abort her baby.
57. You think the USA is a theocracy.
58. You spell America "AmeriKKKa" and Christian "KKKristian".
59. You quite rightly denounce the methods of those who deny the historicity of the Holocaust, then use the same methods(inventing excuses to ignore evidence)to deny the historicity of Jesus.
60. You think it violates the separation of church and state for a city to have a name like Corpus Christi("Body of Christ"), Los Angeles("The Angels"),Las Cruces("The Cross"),Sacrament-o, or anything with San(saint),Santa(holy),or Saint in it.
61. You believe that nativity scenes should be banned from public view, but that anyone objecting to inappropriate contentography only has to look the other way.
62. You object to any mention of "God" and "Jesus" in the media and education systems except as swear words.
63. You think marriage is an obsolete fundy institution except for homosexuals.
64. You believe that gender roles are the product of Christian patriarchy, but homosexuals are born that way.
65. You oppose studying telling schoolkids that the Pilgrim Fathers came to America to practise Christianity free of persecution, that the Declaration of Independence mentions a Creator, and that the first public schools used a Bible as a textbook. But you support using "Heather Has Two Mommies" as wholesome literature.
66. You think that it's wrong to execute a convicted serial killer, but abortion on demand is a constitutional right.
67. You object to using mice for scientific experimentation but don't mind when babies are killed for stem cell research.
68. You have actually calculated, for purposes of "argument by outrage," an estimate of the number of people drowned in The Flood.
69. You refer to the crucifixion of Jesus as the "cruci-fiction".
