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Originally Posted by sleepy jack
I think that's more what any passionate Atheist does though. They argue against religious institution from an intellectual stand point. Look at Marx, or Nietzsche, or Freud. They didn't blow up any Churches to my knowledge but rather pointed out what was psychologically wrong with religious people in the case of Freud or pointed out that religious institutions were a means to control sheep or oppress the proletariat, in the case of the formers.
I think Atheists, because there's no religion there, have to form their own morality and in many cases (e.g. Camus, Sartre) they appear to be much more humanistic and moral then most theologians. People who senselessly kill are depraved and sick, but they can be of all religious or non-religious kinds and still be disturbed.
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Nietzsche basically supports slavery, as long as the master is intellectually superior. Camus and Sartre seem like nice enough guys, but they were French intellectuals who were in the right place at the right time, could say what heretics had been saying for ages and finally not get stoned for it. If there's no basis on which to base moral judgments, you probably will just conform to your society since that seems to take the least work. You could flip out and decide to kill as many sleep-walkers as possible, though. You only need one pissed off VT student for every thousand apathetic existentialists for non-belief to show its destructive side.
Still, I think everyone believes in God on a deep enough level, I don't think things could make sense otherwise. As such I believe every destructive act is a futile 'f you' to God.
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Originally Posted by JayJamJah
devout is a poor choice of word. However your presumption of atheists is incorrect. The majority of atheists I;ve been in contact with believe in the idea of "God" as a human construct and only oppose any religious based perception of God. For those Atheists, it's not so much a matter of "we know we're right" as it is "we know you're wrong "
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the word 'God' is just a human construct, but the 'idea of God,' namely, the idea of a creator and intelligent purpose to reality, can't really be something we 'create,' it's something we 'discover,' though this discovery may just be a projection for our self-awareness onto external reality. to say 'i know you are wrong' means 'i know i am right,' because if you didn't have personal beliefs to contrast the incorrect ones to, how could you say they are wrong? atheism is a belief, which is why it's not agnosticism, but it's a belief which relies entirely on the religious system it is thrown at.