Narcissism

[Mudhammam]

 noun

1.
inordinate fascination with oneself; excessive self-love; vanity.
. . .
2.
Psychoanalysis. erotic gratification derived from admiration of one's own physical or mental attributes, being a normal condition at the infantile level of personality development.

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I begin with the dictionary, because I a puzzled but what is becoming a more and more frequent accusation against atheists on various forums:  narcissism.   According to many Christians, not believing in god is definitionally narcissistic.  Obviously it is not the second meaning of the word that's meant.  Even the most bent Christian can't mean that not to believe in god is to get off on your physical appearance.  So it must be vanity or self-love of the non-erotic variety that is meant. 

My question is how is atheism related to self love or facination with oneself?   Because it seems to me that one could either love or hate oneself and still not believe in god.  I really see no connection. In fact, self hate is another accusation commonly made of atheists.  Being a self loathing narcissist would be quite a trick.

It seems to me that Christianity can cut both ways on this too.  In the gospels Jesus asks people to be humble.  On the other hand believing that you are made in the image of god, hardly seems modest.  Nor does thinking that god takes the time to communicate with you personally.

The way I see it is that a lot of atheists think that because they've reached the age that religion appears to be bunk, and because they have to some degree grasped the principles of science, they suddenly act as though they have infallible knowledge about the world as it actually is and not only how it appears to human intuition (for which we're only marginally better off than when the ancient Greeks first sought out the very first principles or 'metaphysics'). A lot of atheists also come from religious backgrounds, so the dogmatism isn't necessarily shed when the original dogmas are.