The Arrogant Atheists

They are cold. They are cynical. They are godlessly haughty. 

Somewhere between the towering heap of names and connotations, which are associated with us, vanity is the most popular and probably the oldest charge on the dubious. "Why atheists seem so arrogant?" is a query I get hounded with often whenever I try to put my fingers and dither the threads of religious thought and dogma.

Many in the past, had been stamped by similar accusations. The literature is enormous by the free-thinkers and the philosophers who had sought to defend their 'non-arrogance', throughout history. And many, continue to face the same rubric today.

So why are atheists so arrogant?

Well, because..they are not. They 'look' arrogant because our cultural conditioning has taught us that 'disobedience' to God is vanity. Disregard for the sacred is surrounded by taboo and voodoo. Its the same discourse of 'atheists being little nefarious satans', which some of us are already tired of. The whole 'godlessly haughty' wrangle stems from the same mores which maintain that goodness or good morality can only come from religion, of which obedience or submission to the divine is a major chunk. We 'look' arrogant or cold, because of the presupposition deeply rooted in our culture, that 'denying God' implies man taking control of his life, an ideal that is at the heart of religious doctrines. When Iblees was made Satan, when he refused to bow before God, was charged with conceit in the Islamic theology. But, he was 'conceited' not because he denied the existence of God, but because he considered himself God.

This reflects a preposterous misunderstanding which the religious have about atheists. They don't consider themselves God or think that they control everything. They simply think that its highly unlikely that such a being exists.

The problem is not with the atheists. It is with the tenets of our cultural upbringing which 'otherize' them, making them look like horned brutes breathing fire.