{"id":2706,"date":"2012-03-25T11:21:00","date_gmt":"2012-03-25T11:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2012\/03\/an-atheistic-comedy-of-errors.html"},"modified":"2012-03-25T11:21:00","modified_gmt":"2012-03-25T11:21:00","slug":"an-atheistic-comedy-of-errors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2012\/03\/an-atheistic-comedy-of-errors.html","title":{"rendered":"An atheistic comedy of errors"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

So I was getting ready for Mass this morning, and decided to watch MSNBC. Chris Hayes was on. I happened to stumble upon the segment gushing over that massive rally of atheists in Washington that happened yesterday.\u00a0 His guests, during the part I watched, were Harvard Professor Steven Pinker, Susan Jacoby, author of Freethinkers, A History of American Secularism<\/em>, Jamila Bey, host of the Sex, Politics and Religion Hour on the Voice of Russia Radio Network, and Jamie Kiltsein, a comedian\u00a0 and radio host. <\/p>\n

OK.\u00a0 So here\u2019s what I heard, and if I could find a link to the program, I would post it.\u00a0 If for no other reason than to share the laughter and guffawing I was able to enjoy this morning.\u00a0 It began, as soon as I came to the channel, with our brave Chris Hayes admitting that he doesn\u2019t think much about his atheism.\u00a0 It\u2019s not what defines him.\u00a0 He doesn\u2019t give it much thought.\u00a0 The guests all nodded in agreement.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

The rest of the discussion was a series of high-fives as we are informed of the various weaknesses of conservatives, religion, and the religious right.\u00a0 In typical MSNBC style, there was not one shred of evidence that there might be credible opposing viewpoints in the world.\u00a0 Rather much love and adoration was given to the polls that show more Americans are atheist and agnostic, even if those polls rather showed that more Americans don\u2019t identify with a particular belief, and are in fact seeking.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

In the course of the two segments, I learned this:<\/p>\n

Chris Hayes and his guests, representing the intellectually sophisticated freethinkers, are proud of the fact that they don\u2019t give their atheism much thought.<\/p>\n

Susan Jacoby thinks Pope John Paul II should have offed himself rather than suffer\u00a0in the final days of his life. <\/p>\n

Susan Jacoby doesn\u2019t distinguish details, but rather thinks secular conservatives and religious conservatives are\u00a0all more or less fans of Ayn Rand, even though most religious conservatives, if informed of Rand\u2019s radical social Darwinism and atheism, would shockingly disavow such views.<\/p>\n

According to Jamila Bey, African American women are the most religious group in America, even refusing to use contraceptives because their churches say so (which African American churches say this was not mentioned), even though their sexual lifestyles would suggest a need for contraceptives (because apparently this religiously devout segment attends churches that are OK with sexual promiscuity, hence the need for these devout ladies for contraceptives).\u00a0 All of this really being the basis for Jamila Bey explaining that she can\u2019t help but be a zealous evangelist for the atheist cause.\u00a0 Religious (or non-religious) devotion is just in the genes.<\/p>\n

The good Steven Pinker reminds us that our notions of religious freedom and equality are firmly planted in the Western secular traditions, that religion and the Judeo-Christian tradition deserve not one iota of credit for any of this, even though the ideas of universal equality were seen by many European philosophers as being grounded in the existence of One Creator, and the early enlightenment philosophers and thinkers frequently argued from both philosophy and religion for laying the groundwork of religious freedom and human rights.\u00a0 One could even suggest that such phrases as \u2018We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights\u2019<\/em> bespeak a certain tendency of those thinkers to not draw a thick line between secular thought and religious principle like modern atheists. <\/p>\n

Kilstein, for the most part, was there to remind people of faith that they need not buy into the pop culture narrative that atheists are more tolerant or intellectually superior to people of religious faith.\u00a0 Most of his rants, focusing primarily on gay rights, Gay Rights, GAY RIGHTS!, were paraphrases of the post-modern secular left\u2019s principle that says, \u201cLook, as long as you conform to my superior dogmas and absolute infallible truths, I\u2019m completely tolerant of anyone who agrees with me\u201d, while holding hatred of the right kind of people to be one of the highest virtues.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

But there was one moment that caught my attention.\u00a0 Susan Jacoby got down to business about the Obama Administration\u2019s naked assault on Constitutional liberty.\u00a0 She explained that it really isn\u2019t about contraceptives.\u00a0 True.\u00a0 She also added that it isn\u2019t about religious freedom.\u00a0 What it\u2019s really about is religious institutions who think they can accept tax payer support for their missions without being forced by the government to conform the free exercise of their religions to the mandates of the state.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

In other words, religious institutions, and by extension the people who serve those institutions, had better plan on banishing themselves to the ghettos and the caves of Qumran, or they had get used to bowing before the mandates of Caesar.\u00a0 It\u2019s the secular progressive dream.\u00a0 And thus far, nobody has articulated it better than Ms. Jacoby, to the cheers and affirmations of their homogeneous panel of same-thinking freethinkers.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So I was getting ready for Mass this morning, and decided to watch MSNBC. Chris Hayes was on. I happened to stumble upon the segment gushing over that massive rally of atheists in Washington that happened yesterday.\u00a0 His guests, during the part I watched, were Harvard Professor Steven Pinker, Susan Jacoby, author of Freethinkers, A […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2805,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nAn atheistic comedy of errors<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"So I was getting ready for Mass this morning, and decided to watch MSNBC. Chris Hayes was on. 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