Atheist Zealots

I'm not sure if I've written about this topic before and I'm too lazy today to go looking in my old posts tonight.

For me, most Atheists are a lot like The Silent Majority of Christians, silent and content in their beliefs and don't need to put themselves out there to be validated. However, just like any other belief structure, there are those vocal ones. The ones who talk louder, tell you that you're wrong and that they are right. Or live to convert.
As a Pagan, it is actually against all we are to convert. If you make the choice to come into our belief structure, we welcome you. And we all know those religious types that try to do the opposite and convert you over. Then there are the Atheist versions. They know, without a doubt, that they're right and you're wrong. You're delusional, misguided, childish, wrong. They have the same smugness of any other zealot, that they have to somehow save your from yourself and the errors of your ways.
I work with one of these. He's actually tried to convert me a few times. Even as a Pagan, I'm wrong. There are no Gods, just us. No afterlife, it just all ends. He never gives a chance to allow the possibility of me being right, for me.
See, I look at it all as what we believe and hold dear is what is right for us. For me, it's Wicca. For most of my family, it's Christianity. My dear friend Adam? Judaism. Sabina? Islam. Some of my friends, it's Agnostic views or Atheism. And we need all these varieties! The Atheist give us a healthy dose of doubt and a view point for us to look at ourselves and out beliefs to learn and grow. They are needed to help us be better people and better at Faith.
And Faith is an amazing thing! If you don't have it, it's can't be explained. If you do have it, no explanation is needed. And maybe there is a style of Faith in Atheists that drive them. I'd hope so because I can't begin to imagine a life without Faith. Even for me, as a Pagan, my Faith has made me stronger and better and happier a person. I like it, I love it. I have a Peace that I would hope everyone could one day find in their respective belief structures.
But these zealots, the Atheist ones, need to step back and look at how much they are just like the religious counterparts they seem to be fighting. And it's all over petty shit! Who's right and who's wrong isn't what should be important, it's about how good of a person are you and did you leave the world a better place than what you found it. Nothing more, nothing less. If there is an Almighty Divine of The Universe, then it is truly infinite and unending. And if that is the case, why would It be so worried over the comings and goings of the dominant simian species of a green and blue speck of dust?
We are all we have and it's high time we start acting like it. We determine us and our shared future, not God, The Gods or any other Divine being we create to help us understand the world around us. My Gods may not be real, no more than the God of Abraham or The Gods of Hindu. But they are real to me and They, along with my Faith in Them, have helped me be more than the sum of my parts. And They help me to leave the world, my tiny fraction of this tiny speck of dust, a better place than what I found it.

Zealot Atheists and their religious counterparts could learn a thing or two from that. Hecate willing, everyone could.