In response to Julia Monturo's post "There Is, There Is Not a God" (March 10, 2012):
I absolutely agree that stubborn atheism and stubborn theism can be equally bad. However, it seems that stubborn theism has a worse reputation in general among agnostics and others who choose not to take sides; its reputation also seems to be based more in its dogmaticism than in its 'blasphemous nature' or other spiritual flaws. When dogmatic atheists criticise theists, the criticism seems to be primarily towards the theists' supposed idiocy and blind faith, whereas when dogmatic theists criticise atheists, the criticism seems to be directed more at the atheists' evil or ungodly world-views. The latter sort of criticism is, I think, relatively easy to dismiss if one adopts a viewpoint of religious relativity; the former is more difficult to dispel. However, I think that the former can also be applied to stubborn atheists; as such, even if we cannot dismiss it, we can at least distribute our criticism more fairly. I would guess that the currently common idea that only theists can be guilty of faulty, blind dogma comes from the fact that there have been, historically, many more wars and other tragedies due to theistic blind dogma than to atheistic blind dogma, but that is not due to atheism's inherently greater rationality (which does not, I think, exist); it is instead due to atheism's far smaller historical following.
