I'd hate to continue the disagreement of the article here. I inducted from reading the article that you can only compare and contrast superficial aspects of any given argument, and so I fear that any caution I could give would be useless unless I somehow worded in a miraculously simply way. I don't believe in miracles, but I do believe in critical honesty, so maybe I can be of some help to you.
My first complaint about the article is that it has two immediate and non-intellectual qualities right from the start: it has an ambiguous and misleading title, and the very first noun you use and proliferate on is 'war'. If you are going to communicate your opinion, why be so sensational about it to label it a war? It is over-used metaphorical hype, you know this. And why have such an ambiguous title? That is the first rule in 'bad journalism'. I get the impression from this opening that I will have to read thoroughly to disentangle your opinion from the facts you present, as well as be very skeptical of how much bias went into your selection of the facts and items in comparison.
"Celebrating the death of somebody you disagreed with pretty much makes you a dick."
While I agree with this statement, I only agree with it if the definiton of 'disagree' is sensible. If I do not agree with their opinions, their death I will probably take on a scale of my intimacy with them. If I do not agree with their actions -- which means if I believe they have committed horrible actions in their life -- I will probably take comfort that there is one less person I despise in the world. My Aunt Kathy is an overly-excited Evangelical Christian who lives a simply life, and while she tries to convert people, her actions are generally not so bad. Now:
that thing I said I said earlier about not celebrating the death of somebody you disagree with... that still counts for a bitter, uncompromising old fart like Falwell, right? We're civilized people. We can celebrate him changing his mind, or even celebrate him being made to look like a fool in public.
But you start cheering his death, you've walked away from the one single baseline every remotely moral person has ever agreed on: the value of human life.
You see, you are conflating the two. We do not cherish his death like we would "cherish my Aunt Kathy's death". We cherish his death like we would "cherish Uri Geller's death". Falwell had differing beliefs than us, but it is actions that we despise. He was a catalyst for making the United States a theocracy. This fact is not negotiable: all evidence about his actions suggest his attention to make our nation a Christian Nation.
As I said, you seem to look only superficially at people reacting to his death, and you entirely miss the point of "why people react."
1. You Can Do Terrible Things in the Name of Either One.
Outspoken atheists are motivated to relinquish dogmatism by education people away from their beliefs. We do not want to change capitalism or our country. Stalin enforced dogmatism. Mao enforced dogmatism. We do not want to 'win' by forcing people to dogmatically become atheist. Our weapon is ARGUMENT. Please understand this. We believe that atheism and agnosticism is more rational than religion, and we are not simply 'having faith' on this. We believe dogmatic religion has caused a lot of suffering, and we are not simply 'having faith' on this. We are very willing to debate people.
I think you are again peering too superficially into the motivation of atheism. To help you think more clearly on our motivation, do not see the atheist movement
as simply as you have been seeing it. If there is an active atheist 'manifesto', it is this:
To replace dogmatism with reason and skepticism. To open religion up to the same sort of critical thinking as everything else. To replace fundamental religious morals with deeper ethical arguments and discussions.
I'd go on, but I'm kind of tired of reading the article. I'm honestly sorry about that. I've got a short attention span when I've been drinking.
