Birthday Wish 1: Atheist Schools

I have another birthday coming up.

As I have done in the past, I want to spend the week talking about what I want for my birthday. If you would like to get me a present, please consider one of the things on my list.

The first thing that I would like to have on my list is a set of atheist private schools.

We have religious schools all over the place.

We also have public schools that are supposed to be secular. Yet, a student cannot attend such a school without being surrounded by signs that say, “You can’t be one of us unless you trust in God” or being pressured into pledging allegiance to “a nation under God”.

It appears to me that this type of psychological abuse – the constant reminder told to a young child that a person who does not believe in a God is inferior to one who does not – does lasting psychological damage. The reason why atheists are so politically impotent in spite of their numbers is due, to a large degree, to this psychological abuse which tends to make those who suffer from it passive and subservient.

A school without these abuses would be a good thing.

It would be a school where science is respected would be a good thing. This would be a school that actually teaches evolution – rather than hides from it because some parents might be offended. It is a school where a geology teacher does not have to suffer a moment of hesitation before talking about events millions or billions of years ago. A school where the teacher can say, “God did not do it,” without fear of a lawsuit.

It would be a school where the teachers could teach a logic class using real-world examples of both sound and unsound reasoning. In this school, the students would take transcripts current speeches made by current politicians and analyzes them for logical consistency. Where parents may disagree with what a child is being taught, the solution will not be to censor the teacher but to provide some option for people to express why they accept one position and reject the other. One of the problems with these types of schools is that they tend to isolate and segregate students. However, the public school system is not a healthy alternative. It allows students to mix with other types of students, but prohibits any type of education on different beliefs and belief systems. Have a high school social sciences teacher give a course on Islam and watch the parents go into convulsions. We demand silence on the part of public school teachers – but silence is the antithesis of getting an education.

So, the school that you can help to create as a part of my birthday present would not be silent on matters of religion. Nor would it present a one-sided mockery of religion. Rather, it would invite or even require students to be exposed to the major religions in an environment that is not hostile to those religions. It would invite or even require students to attend church services, to interview others about their beliefs, to read religious texts, and require that they show an understanding of the belief systems of the people they are going to have to share the world with as adults.

I want there to be a school like this in every major city across the United States.

Of course, it need not start off as some huge project if somebody does not have the means to build a full-fledge school. Though, clearly, if religious institutions having significantly fewer members are able to build multitudes of schools, atheists should be able to gather the financing for one or two to start with.

While religious schools might train their students to go out and be warriors for Jesus or Allah or whatnot, this school would not seek to create a group of atheist preachers. Its purpose would be to create a student body who can go out with an understanding of science and logic and save the world. They will be the people who can design better ways to predict hurricanes, cure diseases, improve crops, create more efficient generators of renewable energy, design a more effective drug abuse treatment program, understand the mentality of terrorists so as to better prevent people from becoming terrorists in the first place and stopping them from being effective in the second place.

In short, they would be students who will make the world a better place than it would have otherwise been.

That’s the first thing on my list.

 

Palin's Resignation and the Obligation to Serve

On the topic of Sarah Palin's resignation as the governor of Alaska, I have encountered the claim that her election represents a contract with the people of Alaska to serve out her term, and her resignation is a violation of that promise. As such, it is morally illegitimate.

In this case, the argument against Palin itself is illegitimate.

The first duty of a governor is to serve the people of the state in which she was elected (within certain moral limits). In theory, a person running for public office believes that those interests are best served by having him or her in that office.

In practice, many people run for public office because they see an opportunity for personal gain. However, the fact that morally corrupt politicians exist does not damage my argument. We can at least grant that a moral political leader holds that the best interests of the people of a state are served by her remaining in office.

However, the instant that this becomes false, there is no “contract with the voters” holding a politician to that office. That politician not only has a right, she has a duty, to resign her office and hand those powers to somebody better qualified to serve those interests.

For example, let us imagine for a moment that President Bush had selected a politically astute, intelligent, and, most of all, virtuous vice-President; somebody like Colin Powell. Two and a half years into his administration, he realizes that he is in way over his head. He does not have the capacity to comprehend what is happening let alone the disposition or diplomatic talents to resolve the situation without bringing about the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people.

In this case, it would be foolish to imagine that the President's contract with the voters is to complete his term. The President's contract with the voters is to promote the interests of the people of the United States within certain moral limit, such as those bound by the duty defend the Constitution of the United States.

With Cheney as his vice-president, Bush's duty to serve the interests of the people of the United States and to protect and defend the Constitution meant keeping Cheney out of the oval office. Cheney represents the closest America has come, perhaps in its history, to the establishment of a tyranny.

Cheney’s view that the President, when acting in the role of Commander in Chief, is absolutely no limits to his power would provide the foundation for such a tyranny, and only the willingness of the people to stand against the President and those forces that would have gone ahead and enforced his decrees would have stood against such a tyranny.

However, the obligation here is not one in which the office holder is under an implicit contract to serve out his term. The obligation here is that which every person has to resist the establishment of a tyranny in America. It is an obligation that Bush could have better exercised by not having picked Cheney for his Vice-President to start with, once that damage was done, it would have counted against the moral legitimacy of any resignation.

I am not at all suggesting that Palin actually resigned for such noble reasons. It is the case that Palin is intellectually unqualified to hold an executive office. Yet, unfortunately, one of the facts that the intellectually unqualified are habitually unaware of is the fact that they are intellectually unqualified.

Furthermore, I know nothing about her successor as governor, so I cannot judge whether or not she is leaving her office to a more qualified leader, or to a greater evil as Bush would have done.

Yet, the absence of noble motives on Palin's part does not disprove the thesis that political office holder has no obligation to remain in office to the end of her term. We should be more than happy to accept, even to applaud, the resignation of any politician who feels that the rest of the world would b better off with that power in the hands of a competent leader.

Young Earth Creationism and Qualifications for Legislature

In my last post I wrote that it is not necessarily an injustice for a group of people to be under-represented in the legislature. What matters is the reason why they are under-represented. Racial segregationists are legitimately denied proportional representation in the legislature. Atheists are not.

This should not be brought about by barring certain people from running for public office or barring people from voting for such a person. This should come about through the moral education of the electorate, so that they demonstrate their virtue by refusing to vote for such a person.

One group of people that should not have proportional representation in the legislature are those who believe that the Earth is 6,000 years old. The reason is because such a person must have such a poor grasp of basic chemistry, physics, geology, and science in general, that they cannot be trusted to make laws grounded in reality. It would be like asking a dental hygienist to approve the details for a new bridge.

A striking example of this is that of Arizona State Senator Sylvia Allen (R).

A recent video getting heavy attention on atheist blogs has her voicing her support for uranium mining by stating . . . twice . . . that the Earth is 6,000 years old.

Several bloggers have noted the irony of a person commenting on uranium mining while displaying a mind-numbing ignorance of the physics of uranium. Scientific understanding tells us how we can get energy out of uranium, how to run the nuclear power plant safely, and how best to dispose with the spent radioactive fuel. This same scientific understanding gives us evidence that the uranium formed 4.5 billion years ago.

To put somebody who is so willfully ignorant of the scientific facts regarding uranium in charge of approving or disapproving mines, regulating nuclear power plants, and disposing of the fuel is monumentally foolish. Allen is simply not qualified to do that particular job.

While a civilian legislator need not be an expert in every field in which she is responsible for evaluating the merits of legislation, she does have an obligation to pay attention to the claims of those who are experts. In this case, she fails in that obligation.

I lead up to this post with a discussion of the merits (or, more precisely, demerits) of the argument that states that if Group A makes up X% of the population, then they should make up X% of the legislature. Specifically, I was concerned with the claim that people who say that no God exists make up about 8% of the population, so people who say that no God exists should make up 8% of the legislators.

I argued that there was no such right. If there were, then we would have to make sure that if we follow this line of reasoning we would have to clear room in the legislature for those who endorse segregation or the treatment of slaves (or women) as mere property. It is permissible to have a group of people under-represented in the halls of the legislature. What we need is a good reason to exclude them.

We have good reason to exclude people who believe that the Earth is 6,000 years old. Their understanding and appreciation for the facts of the real world – for what we know through the sciences of physics and chemistry – are so poor that they cannot make competent decisions regarding legislation that touches on these sciences.

They simply are not competent legislators.

This is not to say that they should be banned from holding public office. Their right to run for public office must be respected. The right of individuals to vote for these scientifically illiterate should also be protected. Rather, the effort should go into teaching the electorate the foolishness of making legislators out of people who cannot understand the subjects that they are making decisions on, and who arrogantly put their own ideas above the determined conclusions of educated scholars.

Proportional Representation

Those who claim that there is almost certainly no God make up about 8% of the population in the United States. Yet, they make up less than 0.2% of the legislature. By rights, with 535 people in the combined House of Representatives and the Senate, there should be about 43 atheists in the federal Congress – and several hundred atheists scattered around in the various state legislatures.

This is a very poor argument.

Consider the same line of reasoning combined to racial segregationists. If racial segregationists made up 8% of the population, this would not entitle them to 8% of the legislative seats. In fact, for racial segregationists to hold even 0.2% of the seats in Congress would be 0.2% too much.

Because of the moral bankruptcy of racial segregation, the mere fact that somebody is a segregationist would be a good reason to vote against him.

This reduction ad absurdum shows the logical invalidity of the argument in the first paragraph. This implies that a reason-loving culture (or subculture) would not use that argument.

Furthermore, they would condemn anybody who did use that argument because such a person certainly displays insufficient love of reason – where love of reason is a desire that people generally have reason to promote. Such a person would be worthy of our condemnation.

If we want to find anti-atheist bigotry, we cannot find it in the fact that atheists are under-represented in the legislature. We must find it in the reasons why atheists are under-represented in the legislature. Do those reasons stand up to scrutiny?

Here, the answer is that they clearly do not. The claim that atheists lack a moral foundation is a belief that no virtuous person would embrace. A virtuous person would begin by giving atheists the benefit of the doubt, and then look for proof beyond a reasonable doubt for rejecting that original assumption. No such evidence exists.

It is an article of faith that declares that atheists lack morals. To a virtuous person, this is as repugnant as holding it as a matter of faith that the accused is guilty of murder, or that women are to be treated as slaves, while blacks are to actually be slaves. Accusations of wrongdoing – accusations that an individual group is of a lower (second) class of moral order may not be grounded on faith.

Yet, the claim that atheists have second-class moral status that makes them unfit for public office is a faith-based conviction of guilt – the very thing that a virtuous person would never embrace.

This is further evidence of bigotry in that people do not get their morality from God or any divine source. There is no divine source for them to get their morality from. Instead, they assign their morality to God. So, if God turns out to be a hate-mongering bigot, it is because we are talking about a God who was created by hate-mongering bigots, who have assigned their bigotry to God.

And if God is kind and just, it is because kind and just people invented that God, and assigned their kindness and just dispositions to that God.

There are two conclusions that I want to draw from this.

One conclusion is that a culture that embraces reason would reject the type of argument depicted in the opening paragraph and condemn those who use such an argument as somebody who lacks a proper respect for reason.

The other conclusion is that some groups do not warrant proportional representation in the legislature. Though their right to run for public office shall not be infringed, nor should the right of people to vote for such a candidate be revoked, the people themselves should be intelligent enough and virtuous enough to keep such individuals out of public office.

The fact that these groups are under-represented in a freely elected legislature should be seen as a sign of the virtue of the overall population. Or, conversely, if representatives of these groups get elected, it should be taken as a sign of the electorate's lack of virtue.

That they freely vote to keep such people from public office is not a mark of injustice. That the reasons they give for keeping such people out of public office are the baseless prejudices of a hate-mongering bigotry (or the bigoted God they may have created), on the other hand, would be a mark of injustice that a virtuous person would condemn.

I will illustrate these points with a specific example in my next post.

Blasphemy in Ireland

The Irish Government is acting so as to undermine the fine work I am seeking to do with this blog.

They are working on passing a Blasphemy Law. This law, if passed, would make "blasphemy" a crime. Where, according to the Irish Times:

"Blasphemous matter" is defined as matter "that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion; and he or she intends, by the publication of the matter concerned, to cause such outrage."

(See: Irish Times: Crime of blasphemous libel proposed for Defamation Bill; The New Humanist Blog: Ireland moves closer to blasphemy law)

How does this undermine the work of this blog?

One of the topics that I have written the most about is the right to freedom of speech. I have argued for principles such as:

• The only legitimate response to words are words and private actions. Private actions are based on decisions that require no justification, such as where to shop, what to buy, what to eat, what to wear, and the like.

• A right to freedom of speech is not a right to immunity from criticism. It is a right to immunity from violence, including state violence, for what a person may say or write.

For a government to even consider a law such as this – other than to reject it outright, denies both of these principles. The law itself gives an illusion of legitimacy to those who would react to words with violence by adding state violence to private violence. Instead of condemning those who would react with violence, it condemns the speaker, and empowers the violent.

Furthermore, it is an invitation on the part of the government to religions to harvest outrage. It is a propaganda weapon that says, "C'mon, followers, if you can muster enough outrage – if you can display enough anger and rage at whomever says this, then we get the government on our side. Then the government will attack our enemies. But if you do nothing, then the government will not act."

These are not absolutes, so it is no criticism of these principles that one can imagine exceptions. To offer criticism one must only only imagine an objection, but apply it to the case at hand.

Which is clearly something that Ireland is sorely in need of – a government subsidy for religious rage.

Almost as abusrd as the law itself are the reactions to it. According to the New Humanist, one reaction comes from Michael Nugent, who chairs Atheist Ireland.

It is silly because it revives a medieval religious law in a modern pluralist republic, and it makes Ireland seem like a backward country. People need protection. Ideas do not. Ideas should always be open to criticism and ridicule. If the law is passed, we will be immediately testing it by publishing a blasphemous statement.

Silly? This means it is trivial, a waste of time. In which case one would have to ask why Atheist Ireland is wasting its time on something that they themselves declare to be trivial.

It is not trivial, in fact. It is quite important, for the sake of maintaining civil order, to promote an cultural aversion to the habit of responding to words with violence. The people of Ireland should have no trouble recognizing the value of that lesson.

I applaud the fact that Atheist Ireland plans on challenging the law as soon as it is passed, if it is passed. However, it would be better if they did not do so because the law was 'silly'. It would be better if they did so for good reason.

We stand here in defense of the right to freedom of speech. Freedom of speech is not the right to immunity from criticism. It is a right to immunity from violence, including state violence, for what one says or does. It is the right to speak or write without fear, and it is a duty on the part of every citizen not to use fear as a weapon to silence one's critics. It is most important that the government, in a civilized country, raises its voice in defense of those who would speak freely, rather than give its encouragement to those who would harvest rage as a way to silence its critics.

"Silly?" Since when is the right to immunity from violence for speaking or writing "silly?"

Unhealth Care

This is an interesting convergence of news articles.

President Obama is pushing health care reform, talking about the catastrophic consequences of high-cost medical care. At the same time, a report come out that Americans are fatter than ever.

(See CNN: Mississippi tops U.S. obesity rankings; Obama takes health care push to the airwaves)

Here is a recipe for cutting trillions of dollars of health care costs every year.

Eat less, exercise more.

A great many of our health-care costs are due to lifestyle choices. Overeating, smoking, drinking, the use of drugs, and unhealthy sexual activities. If people would reduce their involvement in these activities, he medical community would be able to devote more of its resources to caring for those who really need the help – those whose illnesses and injuries are of a type that afflict people regardless of the choices they make.

This is a medical cost containment program that does not cost a dime in government money. In fact, it would increase government revenue, allowing the government to collect more money that it can then use on other programs that actually have real merit. This is because healthier Americans are more productive. They miss less work due to health-related issues, and they are simply able to do more when they do work.

Furthermore, this program will help to fight the effects of global warming, as people leave their vehicles in the drive way and walk more – whether they walk to the store for groceries, or walk to the bus stop and use public transportation.

Unfotunately, we are heading for a health-care system that is built on the principle of abdicating personal responsibility for one’s choices and forcing other people to pay the bill. The current health care reform proposals are, to a large degree, a license for everybody else in the country to make poor lifestyle choices, and then charge much of the costs of their poor choices on my credit card.

And if I should decide to take greater responsibility for my health – if I should decide to put in an hour of exercise every day, to maintain a healthy diet, to choose not to smoke or drink or engage in unhealthy sexual activities, I get none of the savings. My paycheck still gets drained by the rest of the population that takes less care of itself and then garnishes my paycheck to pay their medical bills.

One thing I expect is that the government is substantially underestimating the cost of this health care bill. To the degree that people can pass on even more of their health care costs to others, to that degree people will make choices that will increase their demand for health-care services.

Whatever the government decides to subsidize, it can expect people to demand more of. If the government were to offer universal free gasoline, SUVs and gas-burning vacations would become the rage while public transportation and evenings at home with the family would take a beating. As the government pays for more health care services, people will discover needs for medical care that they never even imagined before.

So, this health care reform is going to end up being a very useful government program for encouraging more obesity, more smoking, more irresponsible sexual activity, and more of the things that people would have a greater incentive to avoid if they were to suffer the total costs of their own irresponsibility.

By the way, this is not so much an argument against adopting the health-care reform package. It is a warning against some of the costs of that type of legislation. However, against the fact that some people have legitimate healthcare issues, these consequences may well be necessary evils.

However, it does provide an argument for taking those consequences seriously. This means that the choice of whether and how much to drink, smoke, and eat, as well as with whom and how one has sex, are no longer private choices. They are private so long as the individual is willing to pay the costs of his or her mistakes.

However, as soon as he demands the authority to garnish the wages of other people to pay for those effects, those others being forced to pay gain the right to have a say in the activities that a person engages in. These choices gain a moral taint . . . or, more precisely, an immoral taint . . . that they would not otherwise have.

So, do you want to be a better person? Give up smoking. Eat less, get some exercise, keep your car in the garage. Quit sleeping around – find a partner that you can be happy with and declare your fidelity to each other.

Most important, be willing to deal with these as moral issues. This means that the desires behind these behaviors become a legitimate target of praise and condemnation. In a public health care community, people who do not take care of their health are not just harming themselves. They are displaying a selfish willingness to do harm to others who do not deserve to be harmed and without their consent.

Talking About Atheism Part III: Moral Permissibility

I am spending a few posts going over Greta Christina's reasons as to why atheists must talk about atheism presented in an article on Alternet.

(See: Alternet, Why Do Atheists Have To Talk About Atheism)

The third reasons Christina offered is a reason that actually works. In this posting I want to look at that reason more closely to show more precisely in just what way it works.

Reason 3: Because Atheists might be right.

[R]eligion is, above all else, a hypothesis about how the world works and why it is the way it is. . . . . We see no reason to treat religion any differently from any other hypothesis about the world. We think it's valid to ask it to support its cae just like any other hypothesis . . . and just like any other hypothesis, we think it's valid to poke holes in it in public.

This is a perfectly legitimate reason.

Obligations, Permissions, and Prohibitions

To be honest, this does not support Christina's conclusion that atheists must (moral obligation) talk about atheism. It supports a softer conclusion – atheists may (non-obligatory permission) talk about atheism.

However, this is all that Christina needs to prove in order to make her point.

If somebody argues that X is morally impermissible – that people who do X deserve condemnation – then it is sufficient proof against this thesis to demonstrate that X is permissible. This proves that the original claim was false.

Christina’s argument establishes the permissibility of atheists talking about atheism. It is as legitimate to engage in open discussion about the existence and nature of a God as it is to debate and discuss whether human actions are contributing to global warming, the economic effects of deficit spending, or the merits of various candidates for public office. The claim that a person’s beliefs on any of these matters may not be openly challenged and questioned is false.

Malicious Error

More importantly, the objection to atheists talking about atheism is not an innocent error. It is a malicious falsehood that shows that the person making this error is a hate-mongering bigot.

The claim is that atheists who discuss atheism are intolerant and bigoted. The intent of people making such a claim is not to simply to make an assertion that happens to be false. Their intent is to denigrate and demean others – to cast them as people to be looked down upon. Yet, these denigrating and demeaning comments are made in the face of a clear argument that shows them to be absurd.

As Christina points out, the claim that a person who defends a proposition in public is 'intolerant' or 'closed minded' is simply false.

First, if it were true, then the person who asserts that a God exists in public is just as intolerant and closed-minded as the person who asserts that it is highly unlikely that a God exists. No justification exists for the hypocritical asymmetric condemnation of one side of this debate that would not apply equally to the other.

Second, if it were true, then the person who says that the Earth is round is also intolerant and closed-minded. The person who says that 3+3=6 is intolerant and closed-minded. In fact, if this condemnation of atheists for defending the proposition that it is highly unlikely that a God exists were valid, anybody who makes a fact-based claim of any type is displaying a closed-minded intolerance of other possible beliefs.

This is absurd. Furthermore, it is absurd on its face to the degree that it is remarkable to think that the person making such an accusation against atheists could have missed it.

Hate-Mongering Bigotry

When people make such a blatant error, we have reason to ask what drove them to it. Clearly, they could not have been driven by the power of reason. And where reason does not drive a person to a particular belief, we may speculate that desire is what drove them to that conclusion. It is the habit, and the love, of making denigrating and demeaning comments about atheists that drove some people to this error and blinded them to the amazingly simple objections.

These are people who have come to the market-place of ideas to fulfill a desire to sell the idea of blatantly unfounded hostility towards others. When I identify such a person as a hate-mongering bigot I mean precisely what I say. This is a person who sells the unjustified hatred of a group on the market-place of ideas.

The Scope of Criticism

In making this criticism, it is important to note that the scope of criticism is limited specifically to those who would identify a person who is exercising a morally permissible right to present and discuss ides openly as ‘intolerant’ and ‘closed-minded’.

If the atheist unjustifiably attempts to expand this category to include all of religion, then that atheist is as guilty of being a hate-mongering bigot as the people that I have criticized in this post. That atheist, also, is somebody who has come to the market place of ideas for the purpose of selling a blatantly unjustified hostility towards all members of a particular group.

If the atheist unjustifiably attempts to restrict this category to those who demand the special protection of religious ideas, then that atheist is a hypocrite, seeking to create and apply a double-standards whereby the religious are judged by one set of rules, while atheists are judged by a much less restrictive set of rules.

The Liberal/Atheist Argument for Protected Status

On this second point, we should note that the idea that it is wrong to criticize other world view has a strong foothold among secular liberal thinkers as it does among the religious. The liberal (even atheist) version springs from the idea that (there is no God and thus) there are no objective moral standards. As such, it is a mistake to judge the customs of another person or culture as if such an objective moral standard exists.

Some who started with these premises took the further step of claiming that is morally wrong for a person to condemn the members of another culture, and would morally condemn those who were caught doing so. This was in spite of the fact that this criticism puts the person making it in clear violation of his own principles.

If we are going to be fair in criticizing the position that religious or cultural norms warrant a special protected status and those who violate this protected status deserve condemnation, then we must also cast blame on liberal/atheist thinkers who defended the same set of ideas.

Atheists are not morally perfect people. They are prone to moral flaws. One of the ways those flaws can manifest themselves is in the hate-mongering bigotry found un unjustifiably expanding a particular criticism to include all of 'religion'. Another way it can manifest itself is in the hypocritical exclusion of atheists from condemnation for committing the same types of wrongs one attributes to (some) theists.

The trick is to remain focused on the specific moral offense that one is writing about and on the specific set of people who commit that offense, without regard to whether the offenders are theists ore atheists.

The offense in this case is that of leveling the charge of ‘intolerant’ or ‘closed-minded” against those who have come to the market place of ideas for the purpose of debating whether a particular proposition (e.g., a god exists) is true or false.

Conclusion

Atheists have no obligation to sit down and shut up. People who claim that an atheist expressing his belief that there is probably no God is intolerant and closed-minded are mistaken. However, this is no ordinary mistake. This is a mistake motivated by a love of denigrating and demeaning others, because a fair and just person would have clearly seen the error and not made placed such a demand. Yet, this is not a mistake that can be fairly attributed to all of religion. Nor is it a mistake that can be attributed only to those who are religious. It is a charge that the morally responsible person would make only against those who are guilty, without regard as to whether the guilty are atheists or theists.

Talking About Atheism Part II: The Evils of Religion

This is the second in a short series of posts on Greta Christina's article in AlterNet describing why atheists have to talk about atheism.

(See: Alternet, Why Do Atheists Have To Talk About Atheism)

Reason 2: The Evils of Religion

Another part – and probably more important – is that many atheists see religion not just as a mistaken idea but as a harmful one . . . We see people bombing buildings, abusing children, committing flagrant fraud, shooting political dissenters, etc., . . . all behind the armor of religion . . . and we feel the need to speak out.

Yes, atheist bigots do this.

There is a principle of logic called modus tollens that says that if A implies B, then whatever counts as a reason for rejecting B also implies the rejection of A.

So, if the proposition, "at least one God exists" entailed that it is legitimate to bomb buildings, abuse children, commit flagrant fraud, or shoot political dissenters, then the reasons that exist to reject those conclusions would also imply that we should reject the proposition that at least one God probably exists.

However, the simple fact is that A does not imply B in this case. You cannot draw any moral implications from the simple proposition, "At least one God exists." Therefore, the claim that the reasons we have to reject B are reasons to reject A violate the fundamental principles of logic.

This, in turn, is evidence atheists are just as capable as theists at letting their need to denigrate others cloud their thinking, causing them to embrace illegitimate arguments purely because it helps them to feel good about treating others unjustly.

Religions are make-believe stories. As such, people do not get their morality from religion. Instead, they assign their morality to religion. All of the moral faults that one might assign to those who believe in God are a part of human nature.

The evils that some people assign to God others are just as capable of assigning to a non-religious moral power.

Intrinsic values, categorical imperatives, social contracts, impartial observers, Gaia, man-qua-man, the fundamental nature of humans, these are all just as imaginary as any God. As such, people are just as capable of assigning their evils to these entities as they are of assigning their evils to God. Any one of these can be turned into a justification for bombing a building, or for shooting a political dissenter.

We see this in Sam Harris' argument in defense of torture, Christopher Hitchens' defense of the invasion of Iraq, the defense of defrauding churches of their property (when PZ Myers sought a communion wafer to desecrate), and, indeed, the very example of illogical and unjust anti-theist bigotry being discussed in this posting.

We also have moral subjectivism, by which an agent can justify anything he wants to do merely by recognizing the fact that he wants to do it.

Those who want to give their natural desires an illusion of legitimacy without assigning them to God can now assign them to evolution instead. On this account we have evolved a moral sense such that if one has no 'evolved sense' that something is wrong, then it isn’t wrong.

If the block the channels by which people assign their prejudices to God to give them an illusion of legitimacy, it is a simple matter to shift to one of these other non-religious channels instead. These evils come from human nature itself, and it is foolish to think that atheists are somehow immune (or that you can make somebody a better person merely by changing his beliefs about God).

The real culprit here is not belief in God. The real culprit is the practice of blinding oneself to easily disproved logical fallacies embraced, not because they are reasonable, but because they give an illusion of legitimacy to a conclusion that one finds emotionally appealing.

The practice of claiming that 'religion' is responsible for bombings, shielding child abuse, and shooting political dissenters rather than ‘rationalization’ turns out to be just one more example of people abandoning reason to give an emotionally appealing conclusion an illusion of legitimacy.