Self-hating Southerners

Some atheists don’t seem to take Christianity personally. They reject Christianity, but they don’t foam at the mouth when the topic of Christianity crops up.

But many atheists, especially those who write about Christianity, are often very emotional and verbally abusive about Christians and Christianity.

This often goes back to something in their past. For instance, many apostates become missionaries for atheism.

Keith Parsons is a striking example. Although he’s a tenured philosophy prof. with two earned doctorates, when he gets on the topic of Christianity, he’s frequently indistinguishable from Madalyn Murray O’Hair. Why is that? Here’s a clue:

As a Southerner (fifth generation Georgian on one side; sixth generation on the other), I am particularly offended when I see people of the South living down to the lowest, crudest, most invidious stereotypes. The anti-mosque activists in Tennessee probably drive BMW's instead of jalopies. They drink Jack Daniels rather than home brew. They don't live in tarpaper shacks, but in air-conditioned comfort watching the Big Orange play on their flat-screen TV's. Yet their behavior shows that inside they are still dumb peckerwoods and slack-jawed hillbillies, and they deserve to be derided in precisely those terms.

http://secularoutpost.infidels.org/2012/08/new-mosque-opens-in-dogpatch_9079.html#comment-620070137

Here he tips his hand. Parsons is a self-hating Southerner. Just as there are self-hating Jews and self-hating Americans, there are self-hating Southerners. They are embarrassed by their kinfolk. They look down on their kinfolk. They disparately try to disassociate themselves from their Southern roots. It’s so déclassé.

That’s what makes Parsons tick. His atheism is motivated, not by reason, but by shame. A social inferiority complex. Parsons is a social climber who feels stigmatized by his Dixie background.