The "other" atheism

I've been thinking a little more about the Pope's recent comments during his visit to Britain, as well as some comments by other Christians I've seen. The Pope said that Nazism was the result of atheism - not the result of over a thousand years of Christian-fueled antisemitism, or political issues surrounding the end of the first World War, but "atheism". Other people I've seen blame the problems in American government not on the Christianity* that our politicians hold, but on their "atheism", of all things. Or, they'll look at skyrocketing teen pregnancy, and blame it not on the miseducation they receive, but on teens' supposed "atheism". Or, some good Christian will suddenly go on a gambling spree, or will be caught having an affair, or abusing their children, and the explanation for their behavior will be "atheism".

It's very difficult for an atheist to see the connection there - how is critical thinking or skepticism involved in any of these? Considering that the perpetrators in all these examples believe in one or another god, how can this possibly be pegged on atheism?

The answer I think is that there's another atheism out there, one that isn't a definition of what atheists believe, or even of what atheists do, but is instead controlled and defined by believers. It's the product that occurs when things don't go the way that believers planned, when their supposedly god-given ethical systems or lifestyles fail. It can't be granted - if their ethics really came from an infallible source - that there's an issue with their belief system or practices, so the only alternative explanation is that, therefore, it must be from a lack of godliness - the "other" atheism.

This is what allows Christians to blame Nazism (which was anti-atheism) on atheism, this is what allowed John Milton to label Satan - who obviously believed in the Christian god - an atheist, and it's one of the scapegoats that allows believers of all stripes to preserve their belief in their own infallibility even when it obviously fails.

Unfortunately for atheists, the blame doesn't dissolve. It gets redirected toward skepticism and secularism, and in turn promotes even deeper fundamentalism, since the obvious response to an apparent lack of religiosity is to promote even more of it, and more publicly, and more extreme versions of it - and perversely, the more often it fails, the more often it's promoted.