The atheists are gathering …

Something you will never see: an atheist boarding a plane with a bomb strapped to him, waving a copy of On The Origin Of Species, before he blows himself up in a violent attempt to further his cause.

So says David Nicholls, the head of the Atheist Foundation of Australia, the man at the increasingly pointy end of the reinvigorated and freshly vocal atheism movement.

And, by way of response, cliches cluster …

Atheists may not be suicide bombers (”Atheism’s true believers”, February 13-14) but it doesn’t mean they are any less adept at mass murder than Islamists. Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot come to mind. In extolling the virtues of atheism, David Nicholls shows a severe case of historical amnesia – Lyle Shelton Kaleen (ACT)

Let’s get one thing perfectly fucking straight here, shall we?

Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot constructed societies where all authority was vested in one individual and one only, and a personality cult, a cult of worship around this one individual was expected, encouraged or made compulsory, replete with nifty little uniforms and symbols and slogans and all manner of cheap and whiffy paraphernalia.

In this respect, these individuals have far more in common with the “cult” of Jesus Christ, the Pope, and the Pells and Jensens of this world than they have with your average atheist or agnostic, all of whom would just like to be left the fuck alone and would dearly love it if the theists would kindly stop attempting to ram their beliefs down our throats by way of influencing state and federal legislation.

Now, I don’t know whether this qualifies as some variation on a “Godwin’s Law” type thing, but the next time some crotch-fiddling nutball attempts to equate atheism with Hitler and Stalin, would you kindly point this out to them and then tell them to fuck off out of it.

Because it’s giving me the shits.

Ta.