The Religious Pyramid

It hides within us all: the shimmering image of a saintly figure, one of moral perfection, one who lives and breaths and speaks only the most perfect holy purity. Juxtaposed, we imagine the atheist anarchist; he is leather jacket-clad, tattooed, and by no means modestly pierced. He hasn't a care for morality, nor the poor children whimpering away their hunger at the foster home down his street.

Hazarding an assumption here, I blame you not for holding this stereotype. It has been ingrained into your mind since birth, and by no accident either.

This stereotype of disposition - that religious people tend to be more altruistic than other people - festoons a poisonous fallacy that begets a broader, more unfortunate reality. In the daring words of Christopher Hitchens, "religion poisons everything."