I came across this interesting comment by “Freddie” over at “The League of Ordinary Gentlemen” concerning his frustration as an a-theist with anti-theists. He is responding to another interview with Richard Dawkins at Salon.com.
Read, “A-still does not imply Anti-”
I agree with Freddie when we suggests (my take on what he writes) that anti-theists are similar to religious evangelists. I’ve often said that there are anti-religion people that are as fundamentalistic as those they so vociferously oppose.
The following quote from Freddie is very telling, I think.

“But there is an elementary consonance between evangelist religion and evangelist antitheism that I find inarguable, that both insist that their adherents have duties and responsibilities that are a product of their theological stance. I chafed early and often against the social expectations of atheism for a simple reason: I dislike being a foot soldier. I cannot work my mind to the headspace necessary to believe that emptiness insists that we must be conscripted into a grand cultural war. I have said before that the real benefit of being an atheist is that you never have to get up early to go to church or temple. I say that only partly in jest: to me, what makes atheism attractive as a practical matter is that it requires nothing of me. It asks me to observe no sacraments. It imposes no ideology on me. It provokes me to do nothing and leaves me only to live in a way consonant with my conditional and contingent values.”

Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan and the Daily Dish