There is a lot of hypocrisy within America’s most popular new “religion.” This new “religion” I am referring to is atheism. In an article in The Daily Gamecock’s Monday issue titled “Show some respect,” the author complained that fliers promoting atheist awareness were torn down and defaced. He argued that they were hung around campus to promote interfaith understanding. However, the same group that supposedly promotes “interfaith” understanding recently spoke out about a table on Greene Street occupied by an Islamic Awareness Group.
Pastafarians have previously made enormous generalizations by grouping Islamic USC students with radical Islamic terrorists, once even saying that they promote a violent and backward religion. This is hypocrisy at its best. Whether they like to believe it or not, atheism has practically become a religion in itself, one that also bares doctrines and beliefs in supreme beings. Awareness rallies, bumper stickers and even nearly-worshipped figures (Charles Darwin) surround atheism.
Christianity has reaped the benefits of its enormous following for centuries in the Western world. The benefits have included political power, wealth and much more. However, its large following has also earned it much opposition, such as church burnings and the persecution of Christians, just to name a few. Islam reaps similar benefits in the Middle East and also endures enormous persecution in the Western world.
Despite what many of them think, atheists are not the only people who meet opposition to their beliefs. If they wish to continue to reap the rewards of their beliefs and obtain the support of their followers, they must also be willing to accept the same adamant, and sometimes ignorant, opposition that every other religion has faced throughout history.