You are just as bad as I am

Religious people keep saying “Atheism is just another religion”. But have you ever heard an atheist respond with “religion is just like Atheism”?

No, right? Do you know why?

Truth is, religion stopped being cool a long time ago. Its role in society has been growing less and less important with each passing century. Its status as a home of antiquated ideas is widely understood now.

But religious people can’t abandon it for emotional reasons despite knowing it makes them look uncool.

So they try to tell everyone that they are as uncool as them. They imply that their being backward is not a condition unique to them and that the condition is actually universal.

This tendency to deal with one’s own inability to change by accusing others of being just as bad as oneself is not limited to religious positions. We also see it in the behaviour of sexually abusive men. Whenever they see another man advocating for the importance of feminism, they say things like, “As if you’re such an angel!”.

Note that they’re not saying they are not wrong. They do see that they are wrong. But they don’t accept change as a way to solve that problem. They try to solve it by claiming that it is not possible for anyone to be better than they are.

Under normal circumstances, the way to respond to any accusation of “you are wrong” would be to demonstrate that you are not wrong and that the accusation is false. Religion has been accused of oppression, abuse, and irrationality for a long time and we are living in a time when it is not possible anymore to deny those allegations.