I infrequently meet anyone as self-congratulatory as an atheist.

This is actually a bit of a misstatement. What I should say is that I infrequently encounter anyone as self-congratulatory as an atheist, regardless of the medium in which I do so.

Let me explain. I have no problem with people who hold a different faith from my own. In fact, I quite like to think that this is one of the properties of my personal religion that those who do not share it can find attractive: that I can disagree with someone, yet respect their opinion (insofar as religion is concerned. If we disagree on politics, then you are just wrong, and there's no helping you). It doesn't come naturally to do so. Tolerance for that which is different, so far as I am concerned, is not part of Man's natural make-up. I suppose this has to do with survival instincts (and all of those other things that just go to show how Man is absolutely identical to every other creature on the planet where metaphysics are concerned), but the point is that tolerance is something you (or, at any rate, I) have to work at. It is a discipline, and for me the payoff is that I can study about many other philosophies and religious ideas without feeling the least bit threatened about my own. So this is not about feeling threatened, this is about the natural emotion of the Internet blogger: feeling irritated.

Now back to my original statement. Atheism as an idea is just fine: Man on his own can be smart enough to do the right thing without being afraid that some fairy-tale figure is going to punish him for all eternity for leaving the bathroom light on. Do what common sense dictates to be right, and don't go around making up silly ideas with no logical basis, etc. I'm familiar with the general gist, though I liked it a bit better when it was called Confucianism, and had a predilection for yellow clothing. This is a glib simplification of course, but the point is that atheism, when you get down to the nuts and bolts (past that whole God doesn't exist thing) is about how humanity in general (and intellectuals in specific) can police themselves just fine, thank you very much, and don't need a nonexistent God to get in the way of their sense of ethics. Great.

My problem comes in specifically with a certain variety of atheist, those through whom a common trend tends to flow: a certain self-celebration that is almost as commonplace as their denigration of other people's ideas. Effectively, it is the point when this "aspiritual awakening" experienced by atheists becomes grounds for a good deal of patting oneself on the back, and looking down one's nose at the unwashed masses who are not, in fact, also atheists. To be sure, plenty of adherents to other faiths look down their own noses at others, but this is what we might call human nature, if we weren't all thoroughly convinced that Rousseau was right.

So fine, let's compare, say, the average religious awakening with the average irreligious awakening. For instance, let's take Lee Strobel, a lawyer and mediocre writer who embarked on a personal journey to disprove the existence of God. He failed to do so, experienced a spiritual awakening, and suddenly realized that he had been wrong all along. Then we wrote a book about it called The Case For Christ. Contrast the late Douglas Adams, by all accounts a much better writer, and a dedicated, radical atheist. He was a young believer who ran afoul of what sounds like the least effective evangelist ever, experienced an aspiritual awakening, and suddenly realized that virtually everyone else throughout recorded history had been wrong the whole time. Everything that millions of people before him (Christians, Muslims, Confucians, Hindus, Judeans, Zoroastrians, polytheists and pagans, etc. many of whom made invaluable strides towards the development of science and philosophy) had not only been wrong, but they had based all of their beliefs off of arguments that were "silly and childish" (The Salmon of Doubt, pg. 98).

That's it. Forget Martin Luther, forget Avicenna, forget Confucius or Jesus or Isaiah. All of these people based all of their beliefs and thoughts off of logic that was silly and childish. No matter that many of them benefited society in immeasurable ways, and despite the fact that some of them (Luther, Avicenna) had access to exactly the same sort of education that Adams himself had (minus the evolution and humanism, of course) it took nothing but a young teenager from Islington who'd had a good bit of the British education system in order to see that not only had they all been wrong for years, but they also all had been acting rather foolish the whole time.

Now, no disrespect to Adams, or to any other atheists out there, particularly not to Richard Dawkins (dear God, not to Richard Dawkins! Please lower your weapons!) but something in all of this manages to sound rather arrogant. I believe that religion is a personal experience. This does not mean that I am against evangelism, I just happen to think that evangelism is about trying to help people attain their own personal religious experience, not about trying to force them to acknowledge that they are wrong and you are right. Evangelism shouldn't be a debate, it should be a lifetime of living the example of what you believe so that others can hopefully understand what you see in it. That said, I feel that any "spiritual awakening" religious or otherwise that results in "I've been wrong the whole time!" is inherently superior to any "spiritual awakening", again religious or otherwise that results in "everyone else has been wrong the whole time, and they're stupid too!"

Which brings me back to my original point (finally). Perhaps it is understandable that suddenly realizing that just about everyone (non-atheist) who came before you has entirely missed the point, despite all of their own education, personal study, convictions and beliefs, (and miles and miles of written study, work and debate, which few atheists seem to have read, that painstakingly outlines why they would adhere to such an idiotic and unfashionable idea as that there might exist something outside of the scope of human inventions like logic and science to describe) could make one rather proud of him(her)self, but it seems to me that the world could do with slightly fewer self-righteous intellectual luminaries who have solved the riddle of life, the universe and everything for themselves, and therefore have no interest in what anyone less intellectually advanced than themselves has to say, and with slightly more people (of any flavor) who try their best to remain tolerant of other people's ideas, even those they disagree with.

Effectively, if you want to convince people that atheist ≠ tool then one way to go about it is to stop behaving as though you belong to an exclusive club that everyone else is too stupid to belong in. This does go for all adherents of all religions, because if there's one thing that all religions or philosophies share, it is that a bunch of tools claim to believe them. As a Christian I try to behave this way, I do not think it is unreasonable to ask for the same of others.