...[snip]...Do the religious right not conflate atheists with Satanists sometimes? I sort of had the impression that some of them think that atheists don't really exist, and therefore must be lying about their stated position. This seems to be predicated on the idea that a "religous urge" is built in, presumably by their god
You would be correct Fiona.
Example 1: This blog claims that Satanists are atheists therefore atheists are Satanists. An individual in the comments section claims there is no distinction between atheism, Satanism, and secular humanism.
Example 2: Rather lengthy thing that I don't expect anyone to completely read. The jist of it is that atheists are liars and heathens who know God really exists but because they are Satanists will never admit; which is contradicted several times in the article when he attempts to make a logical argument that atheists deny the existence of God. He also calls the dictionary
definition of
atheist deceptive.
Example 3: Classic paranoia plus strawman arguments. This link makes the claim that atheism is little more than Satanism plus humanism and that the two are morally linked.
Of course if any of these individuals did an ounce of research they'd probably find that secular humanist atheists are in as much
conflict with LaVeyan and Theistic Satanists as anyone else. About a month or two in my blog I criticized the Theistic Satanic group "Cathedral of the Black Goat" for misrepresenting natural selection to mean something along the lines of a Satanic call for anti-Christian violence.
Numerous other atheists have attempted to discredit, rather well I might add, the
notion that atheism and Satanism (See comment by Geezah) are
inexplicably linked.
So yes Fiona. It’s a sad but true fact that Christian fundamentalists accuse atheists of being Satanists. I think the worst of it comes from the groups who are fringe even by the standards of the larger groups who argue that there is some sort of nefarious atheist conspiracy going on. Usually this involves science, evolution, and accusations that atheists are secretly controlled by a Satanic cabal who is spreading their master’s work of fooling atheists into believing God doesn’t exist. Similar to one of the claims in the Elder Scrolls of Zion about Jews using Communism to spread atheism before reclaiming the world under a Jewish order…but not quite so anti-Semitic. Christian fundamentalists need Jews in Israel and constantly fighting to fulfill their prophecies that would otherwise be left unfulfilled and foil the carefully laid plans of the creator of the entire cosmos.
Of course there are alot of groups who claim that atheists are apart of the Illuminati. Others claim that they're merely pawns in the whole thing as evidenced by some claims in
this website. And video
here. So according to this argument atheists, nihilists, liberals, communists, etc. etc. are all just pawns of a mass banker conspiracy who has sold their souls to the devil and assassinated Lincoln. Too bad with all of their infinite power and influence they weren't able to keep themselves from being essentially purchased by the American government as a result of a disastrous sub prime mortgage fiasco, am I right? There’s no need to debunk these claims as they conspirators present no evidence. Listen to the video, listen to the entire series. An enormous amount of claims are made but during this time no evidence is presented. In fact; no one ever presents evidence. Why don’t I debunk the claims that it was Bush behind 9/11? Because no one ever presents evidence that’s why I, nor any other rational individual I know, bother to debunk those claims. At best what conspiracy theorists do is present hypothetical scenarios using minor factual anomalies and what if scenarios and tout them as being the only possible explanation for x event(s). At worst they attempt to aggregate irrelevant data until they get a conclusion they like.
ETA: Sorry I had to break up the tiff Childlike Empress, stilicho, and Pardalis were having.
