When religion is offensive to atheists
Well, guess what, we atheists are sensitive, too. The difference between a Catholic and an atheist is that the atheist is not offended by the existence of the Catholic.
The Catholic, on the other hand, finds atheism threatening and deeply offensive.
The atheist sees religion as an interpretation of the world based on the delusion that human beings are superior to other animals and are therefore immortal.
We are not offended by religious belief; but we are offended when religious discourse interferes in rational discourse affecting legislation that applies to all individuals.
Liberal thinking on this island emerges battered and bruised from centuries of Catholic totalitarianism. Such was Catholic offence at freedom of expression that great writers such as Joyce and Beckett had to leave the island forever.
What devout and hypersensitive Catholics need to realise is that there is nothing to be feared from secularisation.
After all, only for secularisation we would still be afraid to talk about the heinous crimes perpetrated by religious orders in this country over the centuries for fear of incurring ‘offence.’
Free thinkers in this country have been ‘bashed’ and marginalised for long enough. We regret that our existence causes offence to religionists, but more importantly, we regret that religion, particularly Catholicism and Islam, sees itself as supreme in matters of human legislation with a rich history of misogyny, homophobia and paranoid intolerance.
If I may allude to Joyce, Irish Catholics need to fix their cracked looking glasses and examine themselves carefully, as it was not we who ‘bashed’ them, but themselves.
Gearóid Coleman
1 Ballintree Square
Tyrrelstown
Dublin 18
