Her oupistidophobia comes gift-wrapped, and just in time for the holiday season.

"Atheism is a non-prophet organization"
-- George Carlin

Phobias are perhaps the most fundamental of psychological phenomena, and I feel for anyone who suffers from them.

I have a few phobias, although their effects are relatively mild. There's a periodic fear of heights, and also a wee bit of taphephobia, which is the fear of being buried alive, as in a grave. These bubble up more often during dreams than in everyday life. They lurk in the murky background of my mind, ever vigilant for the opportunity to wreak havoc.

According to a brief search of the Internet, there would appear to be no general agreement as to the proper word to describe the alarming condition whereby a person suffers from an irrational fear of atheists and atheism. It appears nowhere on the Indexed Phobia List, but one source suggests atheophobia as true to the Greek origins of the idea, while another offers oupistidophobia, literally “no-faith-phobia.”

Whatever the best word, Tribune guest columnist Peggy DeKay is afflicted with it. In her column last week, and for the second time in six months, DeKay charts the dimension of an insidious and irreligious conspiracy composed of tiny number of militant atheists intent on prying pure faith from the hearts of vulnerable, pious Christians, who themselves comprise 76% of America’s population.

Her current instance of phobic frothing focuses on that most recurring of seasonal teapot-borne tempests, namely, the one where Christians – quite possibly the beneficiaries of the most pervasive and relentless propaganda machine in the history of mankind – become terrified that even the most miniscule dollops of free thinking grudgingly permitted to seep through somehow pose a mortal threat to the hegemony of their religious edifice.

DeKay points to a sign erected on the capitol grounds in Washington state:

“At this season of THE WINTER SOLSTICE
may reason prevail
There are no gods,
no devils, no angels,
no heaven or hell.
There is only our natural world
Religion is but a myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds”

Placed by the Freedom From Religion Foundation on behalf of its state members.

(It bears noting that from the perspective of a non-believer, the preceding text is largely superfluous past the word “prevail.” A theist believes in something and bears the burden of proving the positive belief, while the atheist is absent such belief. It certainly isn’t the atheist’s job to explain why something doesn’t exist.)

At any rate, read DeKay’s entire piece here: DeKAY: Christmas — for most of us. Her choice of opening quotation is noteworthy.

“Tolerance is the last virtue of a decadent society.”

Muhammad Ali famously eschews the word “tolerance” in preference for “respect,” and I understand his distinction, but given DeKay's overall gist, forgive me for assuming that she intends no such thoughtful examination when she blithely equates “tolerance” with “decadence” in this simplistic a fashion.

To deploy the word tolerance as an epithet in this manner can mean only one thing: The speaker believes she has a monopoly on "truth," and in this context, her “truth” embraces the notion that hereabouts, one’s personal Christian faith somehow cannot be truly validated without recourse to the tired “America as Christian nation” argument, and this in turn leads to DeKay’s most valuable, if unintended, insight.

What non-Christians never get is that Christmas is in our hearts, and there it will always remain.

Precisely. So, how does the argument proceed from the value of Christmas in “our hearts,” the one place that remains impervious to the wickedness of outside world, to the strongly implied compulsion that the remainder of non-Christians toe the ideological religious line in order for them to be acceptably American?

Christianity's beginnings as a shunned and hunted desert sect are enshrined in an institutional sense, and Christians have always found it highly useful in the evangelistic sense to portray themselves as a besieged minority. In some parts of the world, that’s both the lamentable case and one deserving of a discussion of its own, but it decidedly is not the case in the United States, and the persecution complex grows tiresome with passing time.

Christians in Saudi Arabia? My educated guess would be that DeKay supports their freedom from religious persecution and injury at the hands of the monolithic Muslim state, which looks at dissent differently from the United States.

But dissenting atheists in Seattle?

That's simply unspeakable ... and how dare they!

Don’t they know this is a monolithic Christian state?

Logic is taking a beating, but as downtown neighborhood pastor John Manzo observes in a recent blog post, historical facts can be downrighting irritating.

The Puritans did not really celebrate Christmas. It is not that they didn’t believe in the birth of Jesus or that they wanted to eliminate the infancy narratives from the Bible, but they did believe that a huge celebration of Christmas was paramount to missing the point about the coming of the Messiah.

Much of our celebration of Christmas comes from Germany. Gathering around a Christmas tree and singing carols comes from beloved German traditions that have become a part of our lives.

Christmas is not just for Germans any longer.

I'm an atheist, an identification shared by perhaps 4% of my fellow citizens. Roughly 14% claim no religious affiliation, and many of these probably are theists, since more than 80% of Americans still believe in the existence of God in some capacity.

I doubt it would be possible to find more than a few dozen atheists who share a viewpoint about Christmas, about what it means, and whether any of it really matters in the daily life of a non-believer.

But the mere presentation of an opposing viewpoint hardly stands to bring Christianity to its knees, and speaking personally, I've never understood why those of religious orientation (a chosen lifestyle, isn't it?) are so insecure when it comes to the consideration of alternative worldviews. I imagine it has to do with the influence of Satan, the same force for evil who was responsible for the notions of gravity and the sun as center of the galaxy, along with other theories that resulted in those espousing them watching as their heads rolled down bloody streets.

None of it matters to me until the insecurity compels religion to cross the line. Given the global history of persecution and mayhem administered from a religious perspective, I'll say this: There's a much greater chance of an atheist being harmed by religion than the other way around.

DeKay is on safe ground, but how many heretics have been burned? Perhaps she should consider the Inquisition this holiday season.

Making your own dirt: Why not evangelical atheism?

It used to be that you couldn’t switch on an old-fashioned non-digital television set and watch a major sporting event in peace without seeing a man with a crazy rainbow Afro, always seated somewhere squarely within the most prominent camera angle, and holding up a sign touting John 3:16, which for the uninitiated, is a Bible verse that provides a handily terse defense of Christian doctrine so that we, too, can sign on the dotted line.

Accordingly, Wikipedia tells the story of Rollen Stewart.

Rollen Frederick Stewart (born May 20, 1944), also known as Rock 'n' Rollen and Rainbow Man, was a fixture in American sports culture best known for wearing a rainbow-colored afro-style wig and holding up signs reading "John 3:16" at stadium sporting events around the United States in the 1970s and 1980s.

Apparently at first just in it for the publicity stunts, Stewart became a born again Christian obsessed with "getting the message out" via television.

His first major appearance was at the 1977 NBA Finals; by the time of the 1979 MLB All-Star Game, broadcasters actively tried to avoid showing him. He "appeared behind NFL goal posts, near Olympic medal stands, and even at the Augusta National Golf Club" strategically positioned for key shots of plays or athletes. Stewart's fame led to a Budweiser beer commercial and a Saturday Night Live parody sketch, where he was portrayed by Christopher Walken.

Stewart was briefly jailed by Moscow police at the 1980 Olympics. Other legal troubles followed. In the late 1980s, he began a string of stink bomb attacks. Targets included Robert Schuller's Crystal Cathedral, the Orange County Register, the Trinity Broadcasting Network, and a Christian bookstore. The stated intent of an attempted attack at the American Music Awards was to show the public that "God thinks this stinks."

Stewart was arrested in 1992 after a standoff in a California hotel during which he entered a vacant room with two men he was attempting to kidnap and surprised a chambermaid who then locked herself in the bathroom. Reportedly, Stewart believed that the Rapture was due to arrive in six days. During the standoff, he threatened to shoot at airplanes taking off from nearby Los Angeles International Airport, and covered the hotel room windows with "John 3:16" placards.

Rollen is currently serving three consecutive life sentences in jail on kidnapping charges. He became eligible for parole in 2002, but was denied as recently as September of 2005. After this conviction, he was found guilty of four stink bomb attacks.

Rollen Stewart’s career of religious advocacy came back to me in vivid Technicolor after I read a recent guest column in the Tribune.

DeKAY: Latest import — New Atheism, by Peggy DeKay (local Tribune columnist)

What's new about the New Atheism? The New Atheism, and its believers, aren't satisfied to deny the existence of God, or even condemn the belief in God, but they are out to destroy our “respect for our belief in God,” in short, they want to make atheism “cool.”

They paint believers with a broad, harsh brush.

(Richard) Dawkins is an atheist; but he is not content to be an atheist, he wants converts and lots of them. His killing field is comprised of agnostics and non-committed non-believers. He, and his fellow British atheist, Christopher Hitchens represent the New Atheists religion.

DeKay offers the usual tired arguments in favor of theism in general and “intelligent design” in particular, but what seems to annoy her the most is that atheists would have the unmitigated gall to go out in public, write books, and attempt to convince others that there is no supreme being.

That’s breathtakingly hypocritical.

Think of Rollen Stewart. Think of every Jehovah’s Witness or Mormon who has ever come knocking at my door while I’m busy eating, drinking, sleeping or fornicating. Think of the transformational zeal of generations of ravenous Christians, traveling overseas for the peaceful purpose of subduing decadent native culture and spreading Western microbes even as they blame the dying natives for being sick and urging them to find God as a cure.

In short, the entire history of Peggy DeKay’s preferred religion is one of evangelical outreach, to put it mildly, except that it’s seldom anything but intrusive, amounting to incessant interference in the space of non-believers as well as believers in other forms of supernatural fiction. And yet, she’s aghast that an atheist would dare to explain why he or she doesn’t believe, and ask other to consider the evidence?

Most readers know that I’m an atheist. I don’t go door to door, and I don’t show up at the front gate of Christian churches on Sunday mornings to protest the delusion residing therein. I don’t go to the balcony and swing my Oakland A’s pennant or, even worse, wave my portrait of Bertrand Russell at the minister and demand the honcho repent from sin -- or whatever that other columnist, the prison lawyer, wants to call it.

Peggy DeKay needs desperately to get a clue. Until she does, here’s the reprint of a piece I wrote a year or so ago on much the same topic.

---

No better day than Sunday to be a gadfly.

A few weeks back, as Tribune syndicated religion columnist David Yount wrote carefully erected a straw man out of atheism before predictably and delightedly bashing it to bits, he ventured, “It is no more credible that there is no God than that God indeed exists.”

I submit that this statement is at best an example of logical sleight of hand, and at worst, downright nonsensical.

If I were to write, “It is no more credible that there is no Blue Speckled Hungadunga than that a Blue Speckled Hungadunga indeed exists,” it is quite likely that any rational person would demand an immediate definition of a Blue Speckled Hungadunga in order to proceed with the discussion.

Moreover, lacking persuasive proof for the existence of the Blue Speckled Hungadunga, there would be no need for further debate, and subsequently no need for a syndicated religion columnist to utter a statement that is at base invalid, for it assumes the existence of a conjectured entity, then uses this assumed (and as yet unproven) existence to impugn the allegedly faulty perception of those who insist in pointing to the obvious nature of the theist’s logical fallacy.

In fact, atheists don’t “believe” there is no God; rather, they are absent such a belief. As with the Blue Speckled Hungadunga, the responsibility for proving the existence of God lies with the one advancing a positive belief in the conjectured deity, not with the one who has no belief.

Atheists offer no positive claims with respect to knowledge presumed to derive from outside the realm of human experience and perception. As Yount correctly notes, some atheists go a step further and proselytize in the manner of the religionist, but it’s a very safe bet that during the past two thousand years far more people have been asked to convert to religion at the point of a bayonet, and died as a result of their refusal, than have been forcibly converted to atheism.

After all, if religious belief really remains a matter of heart and soul, isn’t it impossible to “convert” anyone to atheism? Outward symbols and pageantry are superfluous with regard to inner feeling, aren’t they?

In my experience, atheists generally just want to be left alone, and prefer that religious belief remain a matter of private conscience and not a public policy stick. We respect a separation of church and state and take such a division at face value precisely because we’ve studied history, and we know against whom that public policy stick inevitably is wielded – against us, to be sure, but far more often against other religionists who believe in their variant of the supernatural entity just as much as the ones shooting at them from a nearby trench.

The result is a sad continuation of the war, violence and strife that has accompanied religion throughout human history.

To summarize, atheism is a negation in the absence of verifiable evidence, and it is the theist who is obliged to prove that God exists – not the other way around.

With apologies to the Tribune’s youthful, periodically published “natural law” guest writer: “It is no more credible that there is a necessary higher power than such a necessary higher power does not exist.”