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Atheists vs. The Religious – Who Is Really Imposing Their Values?

October, 2021 Barak Lurie

Today we’re going to be talking a lot about my new book, Atheism Destroys where we talk about the imposition of values. Now normally speaking you think of the atheist, or the non-religious, complaining that the religious are imposing their values on the non-religious. Is that the case?

In fact, I put it to you that the atheist — He has been the one completely imposing his values, his non religious beliefs onto us, the religious. It is almost impossible to think about how the religious has imposed anything in the past say 50 – 60 years. Anything.

It is the atheist however who has told us that we can’t have school prayers. It’s the atheist who has told us you can’t have a cross or any other religious symbols on a courthouse, or on a school, or other public areas. It’s the atheist who has told you as a business that you must provide services for example: A baker of a cake to celebrate a transgender anniversary. Or requiring a photographer to take a photoshoot of a gay wedding despite his religious objections. Or requiring it an order of a nunnery to provide abortion services. These are the things that are being imposed by the non-religious upon the religious. And it’s not just the big issues either. It’s the smaller things too. You can’t have a crèche or a nativity scene in the public area. You have to be careful about saying the words “Merry Christmas”. Even if you say “God bless” it might stir up the ire of the non-religious. They have a very strong notion of what should and shouldn’t be said and you’d better not say.

In truth, the point is that the atheist has been winning for decades now. Far from this mantra that somehow the religious are seeking to impose their values and their beliefs upon the atheist — exactly the opposite is true. In fact, it’s hard to come up with anything since the mid-60s where you can show that the religious have been imposing any sort of structure upon the non-religious. Anything at all.

Did some administrator in a school oppress the atheist by telling them that he the atheist must recite the Lord’s prayer? Did some city say that you couldn’t possibly marry anybody unless you avowed your faith in God or Jesus? Did the state say that you couldn’t have kids unless you got married? Has the state limited you into what kind of sexual forays you can have? Or how many boyfriends or girlfriends you can have? Or anything of that nature? No.

So it’s all a farcical narrative — what we’re hearing: This notion that somehow the religious have been oppressing the atheist or the non-religious. It’s exactly the opposite. They’ve been imposing their non-religion, their atheism, on you — the religious one. It’s as if after colonizing all of North America, the White Man now proclaims that the Native Americans are the ones oppressing the White Man and why can’t the Native Americans leave the White Man alone. That’s exactly what it’s like. You are seeing an inversion of what is reality. This is a truth flipped on its head. It is the atheist that is imposing his will upon the religious. Not the reverse.