“Today’s atheists are bullies — and they are doing their best to intimidate the rest of us into silence.” That’s the title of an opinion piece on Fox News by Anthony DeStefano. The article is rather absurd so I’d like to break down each part.

There’s no polite way to say it. Atheists today are the most arrogant, ignorant and dangerous people on earth.

Wow, tell us how you really feel Anthony! The title already gave it away, but you can quickly see how this guy is coming from such an outrageous stereotype of atheists that’s it’s honestly just funny to read. But let’s try to actually go through his points for the amusement.

We’ve all seen how these pompous prigs get offended by the slightest bit of religious imagery in public and mortified if even a whisper of “Merry Christmas” escapes the lips of some well-meaning but naïve department store clerk during the “holiday season.” To cite a few recent examples: Last December, the group “American Atheists” launched its annual billboard campaign with the slogan: “Stay Away from Church—it’s All Fake News.” In February, the “American Humanist Association” became furious when President Trump had the gall to mention Christianity and Jesus Christ without also mentioning atheists—at the National Prayer Breakfast! (How dare he!) And just this month, the “Freedom From Religion Foundation” raised holy hell because the Reverend Billy Graham was laid out in state in the Capitol Rotunda before his burial.

Ah yes, the classic “War on Christmas” nonsense. Who are all these atheists who get offended from Merry Christmas? I’ve been involved in the atheist community for years and have yet to meet them. Yes, American Atheists is known for producing provocative slogans, but that is a single organization. It doesn’t represent all atheists by any stretch. And yes, atheists have every right to be upset when there is a breach between the separation of church and state. It’s funny to see Christians only care about church and state separation when Satanists try to get the same privileges as Christians.

Yes, these atheists are loud, nasty, unapologetic and in-your-face. But while their arrogance is annoying, it’s nothing compared to their ignorance. Atheists believe that the vast majority of human beings from all periods of time and all places on the Earth have been wrong about the thing most important to them. They basically dismiss this vast majority as being either moronic or profoundly naïve. What they don’t seem to know – or won’t admit – is that the greatest contributions to civilization have been made, not by atheists, but by believers. Aristotle, Francis Bacon, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Isaac Newton all believed in God. Nobel-prize winner Wilhelm Rontgen, the discoverer of X-rays; Antoine Lavoisier, the father of modern chemistry; William Keen, the pioneer of brain surgery; rocket scientist Wernher von Braun; and Ernest Walton, the first person to artificially split the atom—all believed in God. And speaking of pioneers of science, who do you think coined the term “scientist” in the first place? William Whewell, an Anglican priest and theologian! He also came up with words “physicist,” “cathode”, “anode” and many other commonly used scientific terms. Essentially, the very language used by scientists today comes from the brain of a believer. Even the Big Bang Theory itself – which atheists mistakenly think bolsters their arguments against God – was proposed by Fr. George Lemaitre, a Belgian astronomer and Roman Catholic priest! And the father of genetics—which provides the basis for the whole theory of evolution—was Gregor Mendel, an Augustinian monk!

Okay so there were many religious scientists at a time when you could be killed for speaking out against god. That has nothing to do with why atheism is bad. But if you want argue that scientists are mostly religious, you would be wrong as scientists are disproportionally nonreligious. It’s just such an odd argument to try and twist religiosity as a driving factor for science. Religion has and continues to fight against science that conflicts with it’s doctrine.

But are they really dangerous, too? You bet they are. The truth is, the atheist position is incapable of supporting any coherent system of morality other than ruthless social Darwinism. That’s why it has caused more deaths, murders and bloodshed than any other belief system in the history of the world. Atheists, of course, are always claiming hysterically that Christianity has been responsible for most of the world’s wars, but that’s just another example of atheistic ignorance. The main reasons for war have always been economic gain, territorial gain, civil and revolutionary conflicts. According to Philip Axelrod’s monumental “Encyclopedia of Wars,” only 6.98 percent or all wars from 8000 BC to present were religious in nature. If you subtract Islamic wars from the equation, only 3.2 percent of wars were due to specifically Christian causes. That means that over 96 percent of all the wars on this planet were due to worldly reasons. Indeed, in the last 100 years alone, upwards of 360 million people were killed by governments—and close to half of those people were killed by atheist governments! Yes, there is a profound and frightening connection between atheism and death. Atheist leaders like Stalin, Mao Zedong, Hideki To ̄jo ̄, Pol Pot and many others bear the blame for the overwhelming majority of deaths caused by war and mass murder in history. And while many atheists make the preposterous claim that Adolf Hitler was a Christian, his private diaries, first published in 1953 by Farrar, Straus and Young, reveal clearly that the Fuhrer was a rabid atheist: “The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity,” Hitler stated, “was the coming of Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianity’s illegitimate child. Both are inventions of the Jew… Our epoch will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity.” The facts are incontrovertible. Between the years 1900 and 2017, approximately 150 million people were killed by atheistic political regimes. 150 million!

And this is where Anthony starts to go into a dangerous territory himself. Calling an already marginalized group of people “dangerous” is an awful thing to do. He uses faulty arguments to justify bigotry towards atheists. No, none of these wars he mentioned were “in the name of ATHEISM.” Just because something isn’t about religion, it doesn’t automatically mean it was inspired by atheism. What an absurd leap. And even if someone did kill “in the name of atheism” (which doesn’t make any sense), it certainly wouldn’t mean all atheists are dangerous. There are plenty of theists who do actually kill in the name of their religion and it is wrong to generalize all theists as murderers too.

And it makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? Atheists don’t believe in God, so they don’t believe in any transcendent, objective moral law. Nor do they believe that human beings are made in the image of God, and so they don’t believe humans possess infinite value and dignity. When you put these two beliefs together, you have a deadly recipe that makes killing “problematic” human beings quite easy and defensible. One has only to look at the growing numbers of abortions, suicides, homicides, and cases of state-sponsored euthanasia, and infanticide, to see the atheist-death connection. As a thoroughly secular and functionally atheistic culture, we are fast becoming accustomed to “killing” our problems rather than dealing with them in a compassionate, loving, and sacrificial way.

An attack on atheists is not complete with the classic “atheists have no morals” trope. It may be surprising to Anthony that there are entire academic fields on secular morality. I also find it amusing that Anthony doesn’t bother to provide any citations for this growing death epidemic in our society. But I wouldn’t expect him to or his readers to care. It’s always odd when theists accuse atheists of not having on objective moral code because theists don’t either. Theists disagree with each other all the time! So often their morality is subjective and dependent on the priest’s interpretation of the holy book. It’s such a facade to pretend otherwise.

So yes, the modern breed of atheist is arrogant, ignorant and dangerous. Too many books written in response to these pseudo-intellectual hatemongers have been altogether too nice. Too many Christian authors have tried to be kind and amiable in an effort to demonstrate that believers don’t have to sink into the mud in order to defend the faith. That tact is very charitable, but unfortunately, it just doesn’t work with bullies. And that’s exactly what modern-day atheists are—bullies; bullies who are doing their best to intimidate the rest of us into silence. Well, we can’t allow that to happen. As I say in my book, “Inside the Atheist Mind: Unmasking the Religion of Those Who Say There is No God,” there is only one way to deal with bullies, even in this politically correct world—and that is to stand up to them and fight them; to fight them in a bold, aggressive, and fearless way, and to fight them now.

I understand Anthony’s angle here. He wants to rile up the older Christian conservatives who watch Fox News and sincerely believe there is a War on Christmas. He certainly knows his audience and is fear mongering his way to selling many copies of his book. However, Anthony better sell his books as fast as he can because the stigma against atheists is dying with the older generations.

So this guy may be too entrenched in his ideology to listen to why he is so wrong on so many things. But I would be curious if he has ever actually talked to an atheist. If he actually tried to listen to our concerns about church and state separation. If he actually had a conversation and genuinely heard our side beyond a few atheist slogans from a single provocative atheist organization.

I doubt he has. But if he wants to, I’d be happy to chat with him. We wouldn’t even have to do some sort of debate as public debate is essentially theater anyway. We could just chat on the phone privately so he could at least hear a perspective that he appears to have never considered. Let me know Anthony!

PS: I now have a Patreon if you’d like to support my writing and podcasting.