Still not getting it
Looking through the referrers to this site, I was surprised to notice one particular search that came through via Google:
even though cillian murphy is atheist is he a caring person1
What sort of person would ask that question?2 To me, this says that the person that asked it thinks that atheists are, by default, not “caring” people, and it takes an especial effort to be a caring person, and they do so in spite of their lack of god-belief.
As with the framing that was exhibited on the monstrosity that is the Paula Zahn show, this question could just as easily take the form of one of the following:
“Even though Will Smith is black, is he a caring person?”
“Even though David Bowie has mismatched eyes, is he a caring person?”
“Even though Gary Larson is a cartoonist, is he a caring person?”
Of course, each of these questions is ridiculous, and shows the ignorance of the enquirer. By the same token, the question posed to Google is also ridiculous, and the enquirer equally ignorant.
One thing that I take from this is that the message that atheism ≠ immorality is not getting out, or if it is, it’s either being ignored or being run over roughshod by those who have a vested interest in maintaining this repugnant fiction. I don’t think I’m stretching the realm of credibility by assuming that the person who asked this isn’t an atheist themselves.
My referrer package also notes that this query originally came from somebody in Augusta, which appears to be in Georgia, USA, which I hear is part of the “bible belt”. Perhaps I shouldn’t be so surprised after all.
May 21st, 2007 at 7:49 am
Having once been a believer in god’s grace I suspect that this googler was simply searching for evidence to contradict the belief in grace … the belief that once god has been denied, there is nothing good left. This belief, I think, is the reason that so many theists find it difficult to imagine a “caring” atheist.
It seems to me there are few ideas more tragic than that without god people are evil.
May 21st, 2007 at 11:11 am
Given the circumstances under which Mr. Murphy “discovered” he was an atheist (he was hanging out with physicists in Cern, Switzerland, whilst researching his role in the film “Sunshine”), the claim becomes even more ridiculous: So, in Mr. Murphy’s mind, modern physicists have conclusively disproven the existence of God? I’m an atheist myself, yet I’d get no end of a chortle out of seeing that as a headline: SCIENCE PROVES CONCLUSIVELY: GOD DOES NOT EXIST. Newsflash, Mr. Murphy: either you’re an atheist (on your own terms), or you’re not. You shouldn’t need a handful of nerds with a particle accelerator to tell you you are.
May 21st, 2007 at 11:27 am
Doug, for what it’s worth, this wasn’t a discussion concerning Murphy’s alleged “deconversion”, it was regarding the question posed to Google. Any other “atheist” in the search could have served equally well the purposes for which I wrote this; his name just happened to be the one that concerned the originator of the query.
May 21st, 2007 at 7:29 pm
These people need to realize that being a caring person doesn’t require believing in some god that gives you the ability to care in a neatly wrapped package, with a pretty, yellow bow. As demonstrated in the animal kingdom, caring isn’t limited to our species. Other animals that have no concept of anything supernatural have the capacity, as well. It seems that just being a complex organism is enough.