The Friendly Atheist

is the name of a blog that reprints an essay from the July/August issue of The Humanist by Jeff Nall entitled "Overcoming Antagonistic Atheism to Recast the Image of Humanism." It's worth a read (IMHO) because it argues a case I've been trying to make for a less fundamentalist attitude on the part of atheists, which is a position I suspect one comes to adopt when one begins to mix with theists who are perfectly normal human beings (there are some, trust me). A couple of excerpts:

Many outsiders—both nonbelievers and believers—who might otherwise find a naturalistic, secular perspective or philosophy of life worth exploring, see the fanciful crusade of many atheists to "save" humanity from the "scourge" of religion in the same light they view religious fanatics who zealously seek converts. As scholar and atheist Dylan Evans writes: "There seems to be a widespread tendency among people of all creeds and none to think the world would be a better place if everyone agreed with them." Evans goes on to add that, just as religious fundamentalists do, secular fundamentalists "seem to want to convert the whole world to their own point of view."

. . .

We need to reproach the arrogant atheists for what "New Republic" writer Alan Wolfe describes as "the shrillness of their tone, their thinly disguised contempt for people they can barely understand, and their conviction (you might even call it religious) that they always have been and always will be on the right side of history." In short, we would do well to assail and distance ourselves from any form of fundamentalism, even if it's secular fundamentalism.

The sooner Humanists recognize that spiteful antics and attitudes of superiority sadly mirror the presumptive, all-knowing mentality of the religious right and undermine the efforts of organizations like the American Humanist Association, the sooner we can move to grow a vast, vibrant Humanist movement.