So says “Basil” in a comment I found under a story about a Muslim-turned-atheist who is receiving (surprise!) death threats over disparaging remarks about Islam. The full context:

Atheism is even more absurd than Islam. To suggest everything in the natural world was created from nothing is impossible and irrational. You can quibble over which faith offers the fullest understanding of the true God, Who in His wisdom designed all things, but you cannot deny an intelligent being created everything, or you’re left with nothing. Atheism is intellectual emptiness.

Let’s begin with the first enlightening sentence. Atheism is more absurd that Islam. You know, that religion where God gave yet another “revelation” in secret to one individual living in the Middle East and in a language that only a small portion of the world could understand much less read.

But let’s give Basil a chance to support his statement.

I’m afraid that it only goes down hill from there. That’s a neat trick when you can attribute to a position absurd statements that no holder of that position would actually profess and then feel like you’ve won. What part of a-theism (without belief in gods) demands that one also believe that the universe created itself from pure nothing? This is news to me. Is not a-theism also compatible with a universe that exists eternally – always did and always will be? Did Basil think of that?

Might I suggest to Basil the following modification: To suggest everything in the natural world was created by God from nothing is impossible and irrational.

Interesting how Basil then characterizes the differences between (presumably Western monotheistic) religions as mere “quibbles.” Please don’t tell me that the murder and mayhem occurring in the Middle East and Israel, where the three monotheisms frequently collide, is the result of a small quibble over obscure and inconsequential differences in faith. I don’t recall the hijackers on 9/11 leaving behind a note saying, “Hey, we just wanted to draw your attention to a slight quibble between Muslims and Christians over the fullest understanding of God.”

But on the last point – that Atheism is intellectually empty – perhaps Basil comes closest to a cogent observation. After all, even though atheists have many valid intellectual criticisms of belief in gods and religion, atheism in and of itself has no intellectual content beyond “I don’t believe in god(s)” or “there are no god(s).” It is not a philosophical system any more so than non-astrology or a-unicornism.

However, the intellectual emptiness of atheism sure is preferable to the intellectual bankruptcy of theism – with its myriad absurd claims and beliefs.