It's time to speak out against the "Christophobia" that's rampant on the Web. What is "Christophobia?" It's an irrational hatred of Christians/Christianity. If a Christian says that homosexuality is wrong, they are immediately branded homophobic.

If claiming something is wrong means that person has a phobia, then it seems reasonable to claim that atheist's exhibit a phobia against Christians/Christianity.

In two years of interacting with Web atheists, I have witnessed many things that should make a Christian more than a little frightened. It's time to call all atheists to account for not admonishing their brethren who exhibit irrational amounts of hostility towards Christians, be it in Chat Rooms, Bulletin Boards, Newsgroups, Web Sites, or through Email.

I have NEVER seen one atheist admonish another atheist, no matter how virulent the attacks have become. I know that I will be accused of responding to the lowest common denominator of atheist on the Internet.

If I encountered this type of behavior rarely, I would agree. I have witnessed it in response to Christians who were exceedingly kind, as well as towards Christians who were sarcastic.

I have witnessed it in relatively unsophisticated atheist sites such as the "Man is Man-Made" Board or the alt.atheism newgroup, as well as the much more sophisticated apologetics list that was linked from Miami Christian University or the Secular Web's "Topic Is Open" Board. True, the hostility is much more veiled and discreet on the more sophisticated forums, but it's there nonetheless.

The Solid Rock Ministries Web page is dedicated to one purpose, to show the reasonableness of Christianity as a worldview. The response that even this seemingly benign point of view creates in atheists, is the impetus for this article, and why I use the term "Christophobia". I do not claim, in these interactions, that the Christian Worldview is beyond criticism.

The underlying principal that many of the atheists have is anyone who calls himself/herself a Christian, is worthy of the highest form of contempt and indignation.

They will gladly point out how, in their opinion, Christians/Christianity is a form of mental illness, how we have been responsible for the practical holocaust of the human race, how we impede scientific progress, and are causing the ruination of America, among many other things!

The following are actual quotes spoken to Christians on atheist bulletin boards. Picture these same words being shouted to a person of any ethnic minority group:

The theists goal in posting here is to convince we infidels that their sickness is normal...
I am in the mood to slam dumbass fu**head xtians such as yourself...
You put your faith in mythology, this is either ignorance or stupidity...
Believing in the bible has been the main and direct cause of the majority of mass murders throughout the last 2000 yrs...
I think this book [Bible] served as a primer for the Marquis de Sade...
In fact calling them idiots is actually quite tame considering what I'd like to post...
You are putting your faith in a death cult...
It is very difficult to overcome brainwashing...
She [a Christian] is lucky she didn't have her head chopped off, which IMO she deserved...
The bible is disgusting along with anyone who puts faith in it...
Shall I list all the cultures, races, and people murdered and destroyed by the Christian faith?...
For man to progress and evolve we will have to destroy the yolk that hold's us back (Christianity and religion in general)...
Are your 6 children as moronic as you?...
Have you raised them to drink blood and eat flesh, too?...
I have yet to discuss anything with a brainwashed Christian and have them USE THEIR F***ING BRAIN...
It is quit obvious that the virus of Christianity has completely eaten your tiny brain...
I piss on you a**hole...

I have never seen an atheist condemn another atheist for making remarks like those above. If you think that type of behavior is the exception, it's not. Now I realize that it's common for atheist sites to post Email from supposed Christians which could rival the atheist ones mentioned. Perhaps, some of the people are Christians, and some of the blame lies in the secretive nature of the Internet.

I'll admit that in real life, I have never encountered atheists quite like those found on the Net. But in public forums where individual participants are divided along lines that are more clear cut, I have never witnessed a Christian, neither in frequency nor vehemence, make statements along the line of those above! What is ironic, however, is that I have been admonished from both atheists and Christians for my sometimes abrasive debate style.

The Psychology of Atheism

Professor Paul Vitz makes a number of important points in his article, The Psychology of Atheism. (Noted historian Paul Johnson makes some of the same points in his book, Intellectuals.) As professor Vitz points out, religious believers have been the subject of psychology for many years, principally by Freud, himself an atheist.

As is generally known, the central Freudian criticism of belief in God is that such a belief is untrustworthy because of its psychological origin. That is, God is a projection of our own intense, unconscious desires; He is a wish fulfillment derived from childish needs for protection and security. Since these wishes are largely unconscious, any denial of such an interpretation is to be given little credence (Paul Vitz, The Psychology of Atheism).

J.P. Moreland explains how Paul Vitz turns this standard Freudian interpretation on its head:

Professor Vitz makes the claim that atheism is the is a result of a desire to kill the father figure (in Freudian language) because one wishes to be autonomous. Thus atheism is itself a form of projective denial. If one is going to give an account of religious belief or antibelief in terms of some theory of projection, then it would seem that atheism is a more likely candidate for projection that theism" (Quote from Scaling the Secular City).

It hardly needs stating that atheists denial of this projection is to be given little credence since these wishes are lodged in the unconscious.

Professor Vitz also points out that if these wish fulfillment's for a father figure were as strong as Freud predicted, one would expect this trait to show up in pre-Christian religions, which it doesn't. It is also missing in many contemporary religions, such as Buddhism and Hinduism. Interestingly, it also seems that there are virtually no atheists in India. It's apparent that atheism's prime target is Christianity.

In light of the evidence, and the words of Scripture, it is fair to wonder if those that claim to be wise, have in fact become the fools. Please realize that I'm not claiming that all atheists are fools, or immoral people, or less intelligent than Christians. I think that individual atheists and Christians run the gamut from intelligent to ignorant, from moral to immoral, and from kind to mean.

But it is also fair to point out that the 20th century, the first century to see multiple atheistic governments, has been the most repressive to human freedom the world has ever seen. One of the first things that these governments repress is freedom of religion.

If Christians should feel any sense of shame for the wrongs committed in the name of Christ, and we should, then it's high time atheists felt a sense of shame for the crimes committed by atheistic governments, and I've yet to see one say anything about it.

In Chaos a few ruthless men were able to determine the fate of nations, ushering in a European dark age in mid-century. Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin were able to create a more efficient and crueler autocracy than that of the Romanovs.

The new truths were held to be in the works of Karl Marx as interpreted by the Russian dictators, who imposed their ideas of communism on the people. In Italy disillusionment with parliamentary government led to fascism. In Germany, democracy survived by a narrow margin but was demolished when her people despaired once more in the depression of the early 1930s. Hitler's doctrine of race then found a ready response, and his successes at home and abroad confirmed him in power.

Different though their roots were, what these dictators had in common was the rejection of Judeo-Christian ethics, a contempt for the sanctity of human life, for justice and for equality before the law. They accepted the destruction of millions of people in the belief that it served desirable ends. They were responsible for a revolution in thought and action that undid centuries of progress (A History Of The World In The Twentieth Century, J.A.S.Grenville, Harvard University Press).

A plain reading of history will show that even with all its faults and inconsistencies in the behavior if its adherents, Christianity had been a positive influence, and in fact is the basis of, Western Civilization. In light of the overwhelming evidence, it's amazing that atheist say things like the following:

I think we would all agree that the mythology that the Christians cling to is detrimental, to the individual and to society. The problem is, how to wake up the sheep. The majority of Christians are brainwashed from birth so that when they are old enough to leave the house they will not even question if god exists. One of the largest sin's in Christian mythology is to doubt.

We all know that doubt is the beginning of the unwiring process so to speak. It took me years of doubt and research before I could finally say without hesitation, 'god is a mass delusion, what is going on here.' Then I became mad. Mad, because my entire life up to that point was living a lie.

I used to be like every other good little Christian defending my religion. I did not even consider that what I believed in was false. How could I? My parents believed, and everyone that I new from ages 1-17 believed in this mythological being without question. There was no room to question, because I was taught to never doubt or question, period.

Once you get out from under the virus of Christianity, read a little history, read the bible with an OPEN mind and anyone will see it form what it is, mythological garbage. I will say that there are better war stories in the bible than most mythologies.

As is amply provable from historic evidence, the first sentence from the above atheist is a lie. I have continually challenged atheists to show how the negative impact of Christianity (Crusades, Inquisition, etc.) over nineteen centuries, is worse than the consequences that atheism has had in only one century. Conversely, I have challenged atheists to show how the positive benefits of atheism have outweighed the positive contributions of Christianity.

The usual response is that atheism has nothing to do with anything except the belief that God doesn't exist. It is beyond the scope of this present article to examine this claim, except to state that what one believes at the foundational level has profound implications that affects every fiber of our being.

The next claim that Christians are "brainwashed from birth so that when they are old enough to leave the house they will not even question if god exists" is also a lie, and a mere three sentences into this quote leads one to question the sanity of this individual. As is the case with this person, it is VERY common for Christians to reject Christianity around the age of 18 (statistics show that 80 percent of Christians reject Christianity shortly after the time that they leave home).

As far as doubt being "the beginning of the unwiring process", I can make the same claim for my rejection of atheism, or for that matter, the changing of our minds about anything. If you were to ask an atheist, like the one above, to prove their statement that "God is a mass delusion" or Christianity is a "myth", you're most often greeted with epitaphs, and nothing in the way of proof.

After two years of trying to debate atheists on a purely rational and factual basis, I have come to the conclusion that atheists most often don't relate to theists in this way, but most often on the basis of "emotionalism" thinly veiled with a form of intellectualism. Dr. Robert Morey points out in The New Atheism that;

given this situation, we may logically conclude that the causes of unbelief are a proper subject for study. The historical situation, social context, political pressures, economic factors all have a bearing on why a person chooses to reject God. Various studies have demonstrated this point.

The result of this rejection of God is "Christophobia; an irrational, excessive, and persistent fear of Christ/Christians/Christianity."

Atheists claim that when society finally rejects the "myth" of Christianity, true progress will be the result. Atheists are just as evangelistic and apologetic as the most ardent Christians. The weapon most often wielded by atheists is the tactic of ridicule and ad hominem, yet they claim to be guided by reason and intellectualism. To see where this has gotten us, I end this article with two quotes, one by noted historian Paul Johnson, the other by an editorial in Skeptic.

One of the principal lessons of our tragic century, which has seen so many innocent lives sacrificed in schemes to improve the lot of humanity, is --- beware the intellectuals. Not merely should they be kept well away from the levers of power, they should also be objects of particular suspicion when they seek to offer collective advice.

Beware committees, conferences and leagues of intellectuals. Distrust public statements issued from their serried ranks. Discount their verdicts on political leaders and important events. For intellectuals, far from being highly individualistic and non-conformist people, follow certain regular patterns of behavior. Taken as a group, they are often ultra- conformists within the circles formed by those whose approval they seek and value.

That is what makes them, en masse, so dangerous, for it enables them to create climates of opinion and prevailing orthodoxies, which themselves often generate irrational and destructive courses of action. Above all, we must at all times remember what intellectuals habitually forget: that people matter more than concepts and must come first. The worst of all despotisms is the heartless tyranny of ideas.

Just so we are clear, who are these intellectuals that Mr. Johnson is talking about?

With the decline of clerical power in the eighteenth century, a new kind of mentor emerged to fill the vacuum and capture the ear of society. The secular intellectual might be deist, skeptic or atheist. But he was just as ready as any pontiff or presbyter to tell mankind how to conduct its affairs.

He proclaimed, from the start, a special devotion to the interests of humanity and an evangelical duty to advance them by his teaching. He brought to this self-appointed task a far more radical approach then his clerical predecessors. He felt himself bound by no corpus of revealed religion.

The collective wisdom of the past, the legacy of tradition, the prescriptive codes of ancestral experience existed to be selectively followed or wholly rejected entirely as his own good sense might decide.

For the first time in human history, and with growing confidence and audacity, men arose to assert that they could diagnose the ills of society and cure them with their own unaided intellects: more, that they could devise formulae whereby not merely the structure of society but the fundamental habits of human beings could be transformed for the better.

Unlike their sacerdotal predecessors, they were not servants and interpreters of the gods but substitutes. Their hero was Prometheus [ed. note: Prometheus is also the name of the largest atheist book publisher], who stole the celestial fire and brought it to earth.

One of the most marked characteristics of the new secular intellectuals was the relish with which they subjected religion and its protagonists to critical scrutiny. How far had they benefited or harmed humanity, these great systems of faith? To what extent had these popes and pastors lived up to their precepts, of purity and truthfulness, of charity and benevolence?

The verdicts pronounced on both churches and clergy were harsh. Now, after two centuries during which the influence of religion has continued to decline, and secular intellectuals have played an evergrowing role in shaping our attitudes and institutions, it is time to examine their record, both public and personal (Paul Johnson, Intellectuals).

Paul Johnson's book is a blistering look at the failure of these secular intellectuals, many of whom atheists quote when they try to attack Christians/Christianity.

As this last quote shows, an honest reflection of history is possible when an atheist is willing to set aside their "Christophobia" and honestly look at the facts.

Whatever Happened to Atheism?

Questions about the existence of God, immortality, and the truth of the Christian religion have stirred the emotions and intellects of educated people for centuries. But such questions are rarely heard now, and when they are raised, they are more likely to produce apathy rather than excitement.

The best known contemporary atheist is Madelyn Murray O' Hair, who, far from being a pain to believers and joy to secularists, is at best a curiosity and at worst an embarrassment (and now a missing embarrassment).

And just as one can no longer argue that religion prevents people from adopting the values of the Enlightenment or humanism, so atheists can no longer assert that freedom from religion provides a check against the most brutal aspects of despotism.

For the brutal tyrannies in our century with its violation of all the values of the Enlightenment---what are now called human rights---have been found under nominally atheist regimes as often as under regimes that have supported traditional religions.

Of course, much can be said for the positive values of both secularism and religion, and even though I remain an atheist, I feel that the militant atheist which forged its identity in the quarrel with 18th and 19th century religion is no longer relevant (Lawrence Hyman, The Skeptic).