Drinking coffee at the local coffee shop a local atheist considers which atheist thought leader he should follow blindly. It’s a tough decision to make since there are so many flavors to choose from. There are the misogynists, the racists, the racist-misogynists, the humorless, the aggressively humorless, etc.
It’s not a minor choice either. At stake is time, money, and by necessity who in the atheist movement (or non-movement) he is going to hate.
It’s easy to think that money has nothing to do with his future skeptical/humanist/godless messiah. But he’s aware enough to know that money is the driver of most things. There are books to buy. There is that Patreon account to toss cash into. And then there are those crazy t-shirts and snazzy coffee mugs.
The local atheist wonders if his favorite coffee shop will allow him to bring in and use whichever thought leader’s mug he’s going to purchase. He’s sure it’s going to have an awesome image and a clever quote on it. It’ll probably be something along the lines of Be like me! Think for yourself!
He has to decide on the right cult of personality to join because he needs to hate the right people. He’s going to be spending a lot of time in YouTube comment sections attacking members of the dreaded other side. It’s a tough job, but the enemy is ruining the atheist movement.
There are probably Facebook friends he will have to defriend because they chose the wrong person to follow blindly. That’s OK. The new atheist blogger/speaker/author he’s going to be buying into already has a tribe of followers waiting to accept him as long as he agrees with them 110% of the time.
What he’s not going to do is mention a 110% agreement rate isn’t a thing.
What he is thankful for, however, is that religion no longer controlling his life. Before he became an atheist, he’d get into poorly constructed arguments on Facebook defending his sect’s spin on Christianity. His church was always sending emails trying to squeeze money out of him with pleas for donations. They actually tried to sell him faith-based merchandise like Jesus coffee mugs.
Back then he lost friends and family over his fervor for Jesus.
Things are soooooo different now.
The local atheist goes back to gathering data for his spreadsheet that will assist him in choosing the right godless messiah.
For some reason, that quote from Groucho Marx keeps coming to mind…
I don’t want to be a member of any club that will accept me as a member.
*If you contribute to my Patreon account you will get a complementary enemy list!
Andrew Hall is the author of Laughing in Disbelief. Besides writing a blog, co-hosting the Naked Diner, he wrote two books, Vampires, Lovers, and Other Strangers and God’s Diary: January 2017
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