When I heard recently about the latest violent and scandalous imbroglio involving the American Atheists, I wasn't a bit surprised. 

Apparently, multiple women have made accusations against David Silverman, President of “American Atheists, Inc.” — the premier association, as they claim, of non-believers. It was founded by Madelyn O’Hair.

The board of directors of American Atheists also pointed out on their website that Silverman was removed because of “explosive written allegations of sexual assault and undisclosed conflicts of interest.” They never specifically described the crimes of which Silverman had been accused in their April 13 statement. It was the news website Buzzfeed that listed the gory details.

In their own press release, the Catholic League further pointed out that Silverman is being investigated by the very same board for allegedly not disclosing “financial and personal conflicts of interest relating to the promotion of his book, Fighting God: An Atheist Manifesto for a Religious World, and the appointment to a senior position of a woman with whom Silverman was allegedly having a sexual relationship.” 

Years earlier, O'Hair also misappropriated funds from American Atheists, Inc.

None of this should shock anyone. Hypocrisy, lies, theft and violence have been the very definition of atheism ever since its public debut at the Reign of Terror. It’s odd that secularists prefer to call the period as the dawn of the Age of Enlightenment. However, as the term “Reign of Terror” suggests, atheists weren’t throwing a tea party. In fact, they killed 40,000 people, mostly Catholics, for the sake of “rationalism.” 

Apparently, the American Atheists were told of one of the accusations against Silverman, and yet did absolutely nothing. This is odd, as fundamentalist atheists tend to favor that the leaders of the Catholic Church be imprisoned for not acting immediately upon each and every accusation, verified or otherwise, against any Catholic priest, anywhere or at any time.

This hypocrisy is part of a long tradition. As Bill Donohue correctly points out in his press release, Madalyn O'Hair was also a sexual deviant and a nutjob who barely had any control over her emotions or bodily functions. In addition to destroying nearly every other atheist organization in the United States in an attempt at consolidating power, she also stole a tremendous amount of money from her own organization and had made plans to abscond to New Zealand, which I presume didn’t have an extradition treaty at the time. 

Madalyn O'Hair drove more atheists into the arms of the Catholic Church than an entire library of science, history, logic and theology books. Hopefully, the fallout from Silverman’s debacle will continue her fine work.

The current atheist board of directors has refused, thus far, to offer any details about Silverman. But I’m more curious as to why our nation’s media has refused to bring this scandal to the national attention. How many other atheists’ crimes are escaping our notice? 

I know what every atheist is thinking right now: “But what about the priestly sex scandals?”

The facts of the case aside, this fallacious statement takes advantage of the logical error known as Argumentum ad te quoque and no intelligent, logical and sane person would ever make it.

Atheists offer enough of these red herrings to make a Swedish cannery envious.

It’s odd that atheists don’t want to brag about how they threw the president of America’s “premier” atheist organization out on his bum. Aren’t they supposed to be angry at all sexual molesters? Perhaps they are only angry at the small percentage of Catholic priests who turned out to be abusers and were rightly punished for their crimes. 

I do not rejoice in the allegations against David Silverman. But I am glad that the atheist victims of his atheistic hypocrisy may finally find justice, just as I hope for the victims of a long list of other atheist sexual abusers.

In a recent press release about Silverman’s firing, Catholic League president Bill Donohue pointed out that he had debated Silverman several times and had “always found him to be intellectually shallow and mean-spirited.”

Sadly, in a group with a pedigree like American Atheists, Inc., Silverman isn't the first to match this description, and he surely won't be the last.