A reader writes…

Greetings from the Mid South! I was curious of your take on the attached article. I realize this article is in the WSJ and thus must have some business related themes, but this article seems disjointed to me. Frankly, I don’t want big business to get into the religion “business.” We see the federal government getting into the business of religion currently, and that has been all kinds of bad. Do we really want the ruling class to continue its march against liberty, religious or otherwise? My response: no, thanks.

This guy has been making the rounds lately, trying to figure out what atheists can learn from religion while steadfastly ignoring the main thing they can learn. He’s better than the New Atheists because he’s not a ranting, close-minded, unthinking, unlearning bigot. Indeed, one of the more entertaining phenomena has been watching some of the more utterly unhinged New Atheists grab themselves by both legs and tear themselves in two with rage at this guy, who they hate even more than they hate theists since they regard him as a quisling and a collaborator. P.Z. Myers and his spittle-flecked herd of independent minds are particularly fun to watch as they freak out, so I gotta give the guy points just for putting up with that deranged mob of crazy haters. But he’s still pretty thick it seems to me. The whole attempt to treat “religion” (and what *is* that anyway?) as a sort of corporation is hopelessly wrong-headed it seems to me. You treat religion on its own terms (which means you treat each religion on its own particular terms) and try to understand what it is saying. You don’t tell religions what they are “really saying” and then try to fit them into a business model. Talk about tin-eared.