IT'S hardly a new charge against atheists, but it has come up again several times recently in the blogosphere: that today's secularists, atheists, anti-theists and whatnot, including the publicly active ones, are "just as fundamentalist as the fundamentalists". It appears again and again in reader e-mails sent to Andrew Sullivan's blog (currently in the hands of guest-bloggers). This trope needs to be laughed out of existence, immediately.

First and most salient, as Oxford's Tim Garton Ash writes , "there are no al-Darwinia brigades making bombs in secret laboratories in north Oxford." Yes, sigh, many atheists like Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennet are just as convinced that there is no God as Osama bin Laden is convinced that there is no god but God and Muhammad is his messenger. On one hand you have faith that makes people fly planes into buildings, genitally mutilate young girls, murder abortion doctors (in church), stone adultresses, outlaw certain forms of consensual sex or even just make it impossible to buy beer on Sunday in some states. On the other hand there is the atheist "faith" that makes people write smug op-eds, put ads on buses (see photo), file frivolous lawsuits against nativity scenes on public property, and the like. Show me what harm in the world a prominent atheist intellectual has done.

Ah, but Stalin and Hitler and Mao! Give me a break. Sure, they were atheists. But they did not kill because they were atheists. Hitler was a fanatical racist and Mao and Stalin fanatical communists, and they killed in the name of those fundamentalist philosophies. If atheism somehow correlated with fanaticism, Denmark would be the most violently radical place on earth. Instead, as Daniel Dennett notes, it is one of the safest, richest and happiest.

Finally, there is the bogus equivalent with atheist certainty and religious certainty. Yes, Answers in Genesis is certain that the world is 6,000 years old, and Richard Dawkins is certain that it isn't. The fact is that only one of them is right, and I'm going to say it right here: it's Mr Dawkins. There is a difference—call it a fundamental one—between being certain and wrong and being certain and right.

Atheists can be smug and annoying. So can Christians and Jews, Yankee fans and Red Sox fans. The claims of religious writers and atheist writers should be debated on their merits. But let's can the "fundamentalist atheist" meme. The fundamentalist mindset is defined as one that cannot be changed by evidence. As Sam Harris, another atheist, has said, God could easily prove all the world's atheists wrong. (Mr Harris's challenge : "I have just written a 30-digit number on a scrap of paper and hidden it in my office. If God tells you [or any of our readers] what this number is, I will be appropriately astounded and will publicize the results of this experiment to the limit of my abilities... Hint to the Creator: I'm thinking of an even number, and it's not 927459757074561008328610835528".)

Until god does prove the atheists wrong with an indisputable miracle and Messrs Harris, Dawkins and Dennett still cling to their atheism, fundamentalist religion and "fundamentalist" atheism cannot be put on the same footing. And until those al-Darwinia brigades arrive and start beheading people, "fundamentalist" is a slander against athiest journalists and academics whose sharpest weapon is a pen.

(Photo credit: Jon Worth/British Humanist Association)