Sadly, some mis-labelled “humanists” of today seem, in many cases, more like inhumanists. They taunt Christians and religion with a rather childish petulance and, in so doing, reveal their hidden motivation: jealousy and bias.
It’s fine to disagree. It’s fine to proclaim a belief in atheism. If atheists view people of faith as The Other, so be it. Let the dialogue ensue! We are brothers, after all.
But because atheism’s numbers dwindle while religions bloom, atheists tend to do what people who are losing an argument always do. They lash out. They hope to get a rise. They set out deliberately to diminish and wound the Other — i.e. Christians, so many of whom are African-American. They denigrate and insult God, knowing full well that 83% of African-Americans believe in Him. In so doing, atheists seem to commit deliberate and thinly-veiled acts of implicit racism against black America.
It is not “humane” to poke fun at thousand year-old beliefs that hundreds of millions of white, black, and brown Americans (including the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.) have held sacred.
That’s not humanism. That’s inhumanism. And it is, of course, a tad sad.
We in the true American humanist community say Give us faith any day. Faith compels us to engage in the very different enterprise of trying to understand the Other — rather than insult him or her. And faith is able to do this because it is working on a foundation of love and charity. Not mockery.
As a result, faith allows us to do something else that is fundamental to humanism: forgive. And that is what we gladly do for the atheists who assault faith and co-opt “humanism”. We forgive them their faults. And love them.
