Submitted by Elaine Lynn, Jan 19, 2007 17:22

It was disturbing to read the misleading and inappropriate comments of the priest you interviewed in this article, Father Richard John Neuhaus. He painted with a broad brush people who are primarily figments of his imagination – or his public relations strategy. "[T]here's this compulsive need to rage against something," he said. One of the things his imaginary atheists are raging against is "believing you're not God". This sounds like an adolescent retort, but clearly these are public talking points.

Having known numerous atheists and agnostics, I have yet to meet one with a compulsive need to rage and, with all due respect, it must be said the closest I have come to people who don't want to face the fact that they're not God are the many clergymen who presume to speak for God, who tell us what God "said," what he "wants," and what he'll do to us if we don't follow his desires as handed down to us by the clergy.

I think the editor you quoted, Suzy Lanza, raised an important fact when she said that atheist groups are not trying to convert believers but to show unaffiliated atheists and those who question their faith traditions that an intellectual and social community exists for them. Belief in gods is common, but not universal. Advances in science and education have diminished those beliefs greatly and, if all atheist groups do is provide an intellectual and social community for atheists and agnostics, they will eventually show the vast extent to which supernatural beliefs are fading and the extent to which remarks like those of Neuhaus are presumptuous beyond what common sense can sustain.

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