"I don't believe in atheists"
About this Quote
"I don't believe in atheists" is less an argument than a gate slam. Coming from Neal Boortz, a combative talk-radio-era journalist who built a brand on provocation, the line works as a cultural shibboleth: it tests whether the listener will accept the speaker's authority to define who counts as real. The phrasing is the tell. He doesn’t say atheists are wrong; he says he doesn’t believe in them, as if atheism were a mythological creature or a self-contradiction. That rhetorical move shifts the debate from evidence to legitimacy.
The subtext is strategic: atheism isn’t treated as a coherent worldview but as a posture people perform when they’re angry, privileged, ungrateful, or secretly religious. In one sentence, Boortz collapses intellectual disagreement into a psychological diagnosis. It’s a classic talk-radio tactic because it preempts rebuttal. If atheists "don’t exist", their reasons don’t have to be engaged; they can be dismissed as denial, rebellion, or attention-seeking. The audience gets the satisfaction of certainty without the labor of inquiry.
Context matters. For much of late-20th and early-21st century American media, especially conservative commentary, faith functioned as a proxy for trustworthiness and national belonging. Denying atheists credibility wasn’t just theology; it was social sorting. The line flatters believers as the default, the norm, the adult in the room, while framing nonbelief as incoherent noise. It’s efficient, polarizing, and built to travel: a one-liner that turns an identity into an impossibility.
The subtext is strategic: atheism isn’t treated as a coherent worldview but as a posture people perform when they’re angry, privileged, ungrateful, or secretly religious. In one sentence, Boortz collapses intellectual disagreement into a psychological diagnosis. It’s a classic talk-radio tactic because it preempts rebuttal. If atheists "don’t exist", their reasons don’t have to be engaged; they can be dismissed as denial, rebellion, or attention-seeking. The audience gets the satisfaction of certainty without the labor of inquiry.
Context matters. For much of late-20th and early-21st century American media, especially conservative commentary, faith functioned as a proxy for trustworthiness and national belonging. Denying atheists credibility wasn’t just theology; it was social sorting. The line flatters believers as the default, the norm, the adult in the room, while framing nonbelief as incoherent noise. It’s efficient, polarizing, and built to travel: a one-liner that turns an identity into an impossibility.
Quote Details
| Topic | Faith |
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