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{"id":2267,"date":"2012-12-08T06:30:00","date_gmt":"2012-12-08T06:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2012\/12\/well-done-pope-benedict.html"},"modified":"2012-12-08T06:30:00","modified_gmt":"2012-12-08T06:30:00","slug":"well-done-pope-benedict","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2012\/12\/well-done-pope-benedict.html","title":{"rendered":"Well done Pope Benedict"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Looks like Pope Benedict has called BS what it is<\/a>. \u00a0One of the lamest modern narratives, vigorously endorsed by so many modern atheists, is that religion is the primary cause of evil in history, that most evil can be traced to religion, and that atheists never, ever do bad things in the name of atheism (which some insist doesn\u2019t even really exist as a thing \u2013 but we\u2019ll laugh at that some other time). \u00a0That Bill Maher can use this in his regular bilge is one thing. \u00a0I expect someone like Maher to say that if atheists did something bad in the name of secularism, it must be because they treated their secularism like religion. \u00a0That\u2019s Bill Maher. \u00a0It\u2019s also the bedrock of any bigotry. \u00a0Since Black men are obviously always violent, so the rationale went, the\u00a0absence\u00a0of evidence had no bearing on his obvious guilt. \u00a0It is a time honored way of maintaining\u00a0prejudice\u00a0in the face of ugly realities; realities such as the deplorable track record of post-Christian and secular philosophies over the last hundred years or so.<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s nice to see the Pope step up to the plate and call it what it is. \u00a0I would have liked him to comment on the fact that the acceptance of this in our esteemed institutions of higher learning teaches us 1) that bigotry is alive and well and endorsed by the best and brilliant in our society today, and 2) it may just go to show that all that racism, sexism,\u00a0bigotry\u00a0and discrimination of old wasn\u2019t always at the hands of ignorant religious yokels, but may well have been advocated in the halls of\u00a0academia\u00a0then, just as it is today.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"