Editor:
Open letter to Mr. Washington,
I cannot fathom how you can state that you do not believe in atheists.
Atheists exist, as you know, and therefore must be believed in as in incontrovertible fact.
Perhaps you meant that you didn’t believe in atheism - perhaps not.
You many not understand, as a religious person yourself, how any of us could not believe in a god, just as many atheists have a hard time understanding how a religious person comes to hold their beliefs.
However, you can rest assured that our lack of religious faith has nothing whatsoever to do with “really just wanting religious people to leave them alone.”
I’m also not sure how you equate the stating of a lack of belief in a god with being arrogant.
This is a country that upholds freedom of speech.
There is nothing arrogant about stating our position on such a universal topic.
You arguments, if they can be deemed arguments, are both patronizing and simplistic - your diagram of known and unknown facts as an example.
It is amusing that you say that atheists “stick with a truly blind faith that there is no God and shun any evidence to the contrary.”
We are not the ones with the ‘faith’, blind or otherwise, and we have yet to hear any convincing evidence.
You suggest that ‘intellectual honesty’ should make us rename ourselves agnostics.
Do you think that we don’t know what an agnostic is?
If we were agnostic, then that is what we would call ourselves.
Your argument here is that “it is impossible to definitely say that God does not exist.”
Well, actually, it’s as easy for me to say that as it is for you to state that your god does exist. For my part, I believe in religious people.
I can live with the fact that you do not believe in me.
Barb Hagreen