The controversy over the “glam goth” band Aiden being invited to play to a military audience at the atheist Rock Beyond Belief at Fort Bragg has seen comments on a wide variety of websites.\u00a0 In the tradition of “crowd-sourcing” solutions, one commenter came up with a unique idea to ameliorate the scandal:\u00a0 Richard Dawkins should ask that Aiden be removed from the lineup.<\/p>\n
Much of the discussion seems to be centered on whether\u00a0Aiden advocated burning churches, which isn’t at all the point.\u00a0 (As FoxNews and Commentary reported<\/a>, Aiden did use such images in its video, but even Fox didn’t say that’s what they advocated<\/em>.)<\/p>\n Instead, it is Aiden’s prevalent denigration of religion<\/a> (and, in particular, Christianity) that is at issue.\u00a0 For example, Justin Griffith told FoxNews that Aiden wouldn’t be singing Hysteria<\/em>, the song with the line “Love how they burn your synagogues.”\u00a0 He didn’t mention Crusifiction<\/em>, which has the line “Christ died for sh-t and was a f—ing c–t.”<\/p>\n As has been said here repeatedly, atheists should <\/em>be allowed to have their event, so long as they’re held to the same standard as everyone else <\/em>— but that’s very evidently not what their supporters want.\u00a0 For example, Michael Weinstein is still doing a victory dance after General Boykin withdrew from the West Point National Prayer breakfast<\/a>.<\/p>\n The basis for Weinstein’s giddiness is the apparent success of his accusation Boykin is a “vile Islamophobe” for his past criticisms of Islam.\u00a0 Weinstein\u00a0notably ignores the fact performers<\/a> and speakers<\/a> scheduled for the\u00a0atheist event\u00a0have made similarly critical\u00a0statements about religion or Christianity, presumably making them “vile Christophobes,” by his apparent definition.<\/p>\n Weinstein is not only a defender of Rock Beyond Belief, he’s also\u00a0one of the speakers<\/em>.<\/p>\n Weinstein opposes Christians but supports atheists essentially acting under the same principles of different ideologies.\u00a0 His lack of cognitive dissonance is astounding.<\/p>\n