Let’s not forget the selection of a debate question from someone asking the candidates if they take every word of the bible literally – that was really an important point to nail down, in our crisis-ridden world.

I think a lot of religious voters in the USA are just not that bright. They keep voting for candidates who yack about Jesus, but what have they really gotten? Has an amendment to overturn abortion been submitted? Ever? It seemed like the big issues in the 2004 presidential election were Iraq, terrorism, gay marriage and stem cell research, with the last two being major concerns of “values voters”.

Yet what does George W spend months talking about? Social Security “reform”. I think he wanted to implement the conservative goal of killing Social Security. As Randal Balmer pointed out in Thy Kingdom Come, the Bible talks a LOT about helping the poor, yet a lot of evangelicals vote for the party that helps the rich.

The Republican Party and religious voters remind me of Lucy and Charlie Brown with the football.

How come everyone is so nice to those nasty atheists, and they’re so mean to us?! We’re a poor, persecuted minority – see?!

Please. I’d love to count all the religious nonsense that runs on the cable channels this particular week – Holy Week – not to mention all year long. I saw an ad last night for a program about the shroud of Turin, for instance, a hoax that was debunked years and years ago. But all kinds of pro-religion programming gets by scheduled without any concerns about a factual basis.

CMI also seems to forget all the idiotic questions regarding candidates’ favorite Bible verses. And the idiotic answers from Republicans regarding whether or not they accepted evolution. In other words, they would get approval points for proclaiming their literal-Bible-believing Christianity.

Let’s not forget the selection of a debate question from someone asking the candidates if they take every word of the bible literally – that was really an important point to nail down, in our crisis-ridden world.

Atheist books suggesting that we challenge religious claims were bestsellers.

True enough, and they rightly generated much coverage. But the vast majority reviewing those books – even non-religious critics – seemed to me to be highly negative. There was certainly no chorus of unadulterated praise for Dawkins, Harris or Hitchens. Much of the coverage focused on the very critical reaction to the books, and religious books hastily written that tried to counter their viewpoints.

(Though Good Morning America incorrectly thinks that there are atheists, plural, in Congress.)

There are atheists, plural, in Congress. It’s just that we don’t know for certain who most of them are.

What are atheists advocating that merits such “skepticism”?

Obviously, we advocate skepticism itself.

I think the reason that atheists get more sympathetic media coverage (if it’s true) is that we’re the underdog. We’re at that stage where we’re starting to be accepted, and do not yet qualify as the tyrannous majority. A corollary of my reasoning is that LGBT and women’s rights should be receiving more sympathetic coverage than their opponents.

Furthermore, if they only count the 8% atheist figure, they will greatly underestimate the amount of disillusionment with religion. For a more accurate figure, they would need to include agnostics and other freethinkers. Even religious people seem to be disillusioned these days (which is why we get crazy internet people who deny that Christianity is a religion).