Atheists can be more narrow-minded than the religious zealots they persecute. No one is narrow-minded for not believing in God, but approaching the concept with childlike cynicism is narrow.Many University students are familiar with the occasional evangelists along Free Speech Alley. The soothsayers shake their Bibles and yell about the end times.Maybe their children are in tow – handing out pamphlets – barely of literate age but with backs strong enough to wear a life-sized sign. Sometimes the kids even swing the sword, trying their hand at preaching to show Dad what they’ve learned. What’s wrong with this picture – besides the obvious? The crowd of students that surrounds them.  Some students, atheists included, simply cannot resist the urge to patronize these holy-rollers with an audience and argument. This is particularly poisonous to the atheist who already suffers from an inability to differentiate between God and religion. So while some atheists get kicks by pointing out the unlikelihood of an old man spending decades building a ship to carry all the world’s creatures, they are limiting their definition of God to religious descriptions.  One might say, “There can’t be a God, I mean have you READ the Bible?” These atheists are basing Godless convictions on only the religious theodicies they reject. Paying any sort of mind to Bible-thumpers only reinforces their stagnant beliefs, promoting complacency.  Despite its rhetorical achievement and comedic value, George Carlin’s rant on “the mysterious man in the sky,” which he says is about “religion,” subtly persuades listeners to single out God instead of religion.  Ghandi was right to suggest many Christians are “unlike” their Christ, but how is that God’s fault? How is that any faith’s scripture’s fault?  If an atheist does not follow the Christian doctrine, can he more easily justify being judgmental? If so, he’s being a hypocrite every time he makes it his personal crusade to gaslight the fire-and-brimstone missionaries.  This concept applies in other contexts, too. If Kanye West’s publicity stunt at the VMAs was so heinous, why did we empower him so much with our Facebook status opinions and polls of him? To be edgy and hip, that’s why – not because we thought he’d actually hear it. West wins. America runs on a simple, binary political system. A cynic may find it a watered-down control mechanism, tailored for 6-year-olds. Does this mean all the thousands of other political parties around the world are wrong? Does it disprove the viability of even having a political system? Absolutely not.  So, not just on campus, but in life: Instead of gravitating toward these irrational bear traps like a baby to jingling car keys, resist the urge to pat yourself on the back.  We get it — people dance like idiots in mega-churches, some ministers squander donations on hookers and just maybe the Earth is older than a few thousand years.  Feel better now? It’s perfectly fine to be atheist, but don’t wait for a burning bush to be satisfied. You’d have better luck teaching trigonometry to your dog. We all operate within a given poetic dimension. An atheist astronomer finds it in the Technicolor cosmos – how perfect the formulas are. A theist like myself – in the purpose-driven pace of my wandering path. That’s my God. For some students, you can see it in the freeze-frame after the toast and before the shot. The point is, there’s a lot of beautiful common ground if we’d just be a little more civil. Because they are only my opinions, you can preface all the above arguments with “I believe” for logical soundness. But as the simple act of living imposes our dogma upon the world, how much progress was ever found without those two words?Jack Johnson is a 23-year-old mass communication junior from Fort Worth, Texas. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_jjohnson.
 
 
 
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