It seems to me that many nonbelievers have forgotten—or never knew—what it is like to suffer an unhappy collision with scientific rationality. We are open to good evidence and sound argument as a matter of principle, and are generally willing to follow wherever they may lead. Certain of us have made careers out of bemoaning the failure of religious people to adopt this same attitude.

However, I recently stumbled upon an example of secular intransigence that may give readers a sense of how religious people feel when their beliefs are criticized. It’s not a perfect analogy, as you will see, but the rigorous research I’ve conducted at dinner parties suggests that it is worth thinking about. We can call the phenomenon “the fireplace delusion.”

This is a must.

Romney avoids mentioning it, but Smith ran for president in 1844 as an independent commander in chief of an “army of God” advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government in favor of a Mormon-ruled theocracy. Challenging Democrat James Polk and Whig Henry Clay, Smith prophesied that if the U.S. Congress did not accede to his demands that “they shall be broken up as a government and God shall damn them.”  Smith viewed capturing the presidency as part of the mission of the church.  He had predicted the emergence of  “the one Mighty and Strong” — a leader who would “set in order the house of God” — and became the first of many prominent Mormon men to claim the mantle.

Smith’s insertion of religion into politics and his call for a “theodemocracy where God and people hold the power to conduct the affairs of men in righteous matters” created a sensation and drew hostility from the outside world.  But his candidacy was cut short when he was shot to death by an anti-Mormon vigilante mob.

That’s new to me. Every time I read something about Smith I’m stunned that he’s revered by anyone.

Which of the following is the most compelling evidence for the existence of an intelligent and loving Designer?

1. The little girl born in Egypt with two functioning heads
2. The screams of a baby seal as it is torn apart by a shark
3. The superiority of the octopus eyeball to the human
4. A Caribbean sunset

Take the whole test; it’s enlightening.

Christians have always had a strained relationship with Saint Nick. Although his origins are rooted deeply in church lore, his association with the secularization of Christmas has made him a persona non grata in many churches and Christian communities. But many of us forget that Christmas itself is a holiday of dubious origin. For example, the Puritans were stridently opposed to the celebration of Christmas. They could find no biblical support for the holiday, and they believed (correctly) that it was originally a pagan festival now masquerading as Christian one. This view was widely held in America throughout the 19th Century. In 1855, newspapers in New York reported that Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian churches would be closed on Christmas Day because “they do not accept the day as a Holy One.” And by the 1860s only 18 states officially recognized the holiday.

Christmas only gained acceptance among a majority of Protestant Christians when it gained wide acceptance by the American public in general. And that can be attributed to the rise of Santa Claus in the secular pantheon. Old Saint Nick became a marketing juggernaut for retailers who by the 1920s had embraced Christmas as the premier season for shopping. Church leaders no longer objected to Christmas on the grounds that it was a pagan holiday. Instead their concerns shifted to the ungodly materialism and indulgence of desire they saw being promoted in the name of Christ.

The New York Times conducted a survey of Christmas sermons in 1931 and reported a common theme: “the suggestion that Christmas could not survive if Christ were thrust into the background by materialism.” Another popular sermon of the period railed that Advent had become little more than a “profit-seeking period.”

Sermons about the pagan origins of Christmas or the danger of rampant materialism in Christ’s name are unlikely to be heard today. In recent years the dominant message heard from the Christian community during the holiday season has been precisely the opposite. Today, it seems many Christians are offended when unchecked materialism in December is not explicitly associated with Christ. The irony.

We met in Billings, Montana. Hitch had once told me that Montana was the only state he had never been in. I decided to complete his tour of the contiguous United States and arranged for the two of us to meet there. Before the debate, a local television station sent a camera crew over to interview us. When he was asked what he thought of me, a Christian, and an evangelical at that, Hitch replied: “If everyone in the United States had the same qualities of loyalty and care and concern for others that Larry Taunton had, we’d be living in a much better society than we do.” I was moved. Stunned, really. As we left, I told him that I really appreciated the gracious remark. “I meant it and have been waiting for an opportunity to say it.”

I was sent this by an evangelical friend of mine who said that the article reminded him of us. I am deeply touched by this, and it has spawned me to reflect, very close to Christmas no less, upon how much I cherish my many religious friends. Both personally and over the Internet I have been gifted with the friendships and acquaintances of many devout believers.

We disagree on the most important thing there is to disagree on, perhaps, but only on one level. On another level I agree with them so completely it’s as if we are brothers in the same cult. Namely, we’re fully committed to our attempts to try and help others learn the truth so that they will be happier. We share this. It binds us together. And we don’t compromise or expect the other to. We respect each other for this reason, and due to our conviction we remain one small belief away from adopting the other person’s perspective.

Rick, David, Evan, Naum, Jonathan — just to name a few, are all people I respect in this way and feel, um, blessed to have met in my life. As I write this I realize I am staying with another such friend who happens to be Muslim.

To have one such person send me this article (Jonathan) casts a warm light on this Christmas for me, and I want to simply say that I’m truly grateful to know you all. So to all my Religious friends and readers, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, whatever — thank you so much for your friendship and your dialog. Seriously.

(damn onions)

But America’s Constitution is more than just a secular document; it’s literally godless. It doesn’t claim that the ideas it contains were the product of divine revelation. It states that governing power comes from the will of the people, not the commands of a deity. It doesn’t assert that God has specially blessed this nation or shown it special favor — in fact, it never mentions God at all. And it mentions religion in only two places, both of them negative mentions: in Article VI, which forbids any religious test for public office, and in the First Amendment, which forbids Congress from passing any law respecting an establishment of religion.

If America’s founders had meant to establish a Christian nation, this is where they would have said so. But they said no such thing. And this leads into a historical fact that the religious right would dearly love to forget: the godlessness of the Constitution was a point of major controversy in the debate over ratification. When it was drafted, the fact that it made no explicit mention of God or Christianity wasn’t a minor oversight. It was a major, deliberate omission that was obvious to all. Religious language was omnipresent in other legal documents and charters of the day, including the ones that inspired the Constitution in the first place.

Compelling.

Men and women in the South had higher rates of divorce in 2009 than in other regions of the country, 10.2 per 1,000 for men and 11.1 per 1,000 for women, according to a new report from the U.S. Census Bureau. The national divorce rate was 9.2 for men and 9.7 for women.

Yeah, the Bible Belt has the most divorce. That’s pure comedy.

With all the porn use, STDs, gay Republican preachers, and divorce, I’m going to have to say that the South needs some God in their lives.

Just this past Thursday in New Hampshire, in response to a child’s question, Perry described evolution as “a theory that’s out there” and one that’s “got some gaps in it.” His latest statement is remarkably similar to what his office wrote to a Texas voter in 2006 when questioned about intelligent design: “Recognizing that evolution is a theory, and not claimed by anyone to be more than that, the governor believes it would be a disservice to our children to teach them only one theory on the origin of our existence without recognizing other scientific theories worth consideration.”

Don’t believe in evolution? Unfit for office. It’s that simple. A mastery of elementary school science should definitely be a prerequisite.

The fact that this woman is probably in physical danger makes her point for her.

But to understand just how non-capitalistic Christianity is supposed to be we turn to the first chapter after the gospels, Acts, which describes the events of the early church. Chapters 2 and 4 state that all “the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need… No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had…. There were no needy persons among them. From time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need.”

Now folks, that’s outright socialism of the type described millennia later by Marx – who likely got the general idea from the gospels.

The pro-capitalist Christians who are aware of these passages wave them away even though it is the only explicit description of Christian economics in the Bible.

Here is what is peculiar. Many conservative Christians, mostly Protestant but also a number of Catholics, have come to believe and proudly proclaim that the creator of the universe favors free wheeling, deregulated, union busting, minimal taxes especially for wealthy investors, plutocrat-boosting capitalism as the ideal earthly scheme for his human creations. And many of these Christian capitalists are ardent followers of Ayn Rand, who was one of – and many of whose followers are — the most hard-line anti-Christian atheist/s you can get. Meanwhile many Christians who support the capitalist policies associated with social Darwinistic strenuously denounce Darwin’s evolutionary science because it supposedly leads to, well, social Darwinism!

Meanwhile atheists, secularists and evolutionist are denounced as inventing the egalitarian evils of anti-socially Darwinistic socialism and communism. It’s such a weird stew of incongruities that it sets one’s head spinning. Social researchers like myself ask, how did these internal conflict come about? And why are not liberals and progressives doing the logical thing and taking full advantage of the inconsistencies of right wing libertarianism by loudly exposing the contradictions?

This.

Earlier this year, Andrew Zak Williams asked public figures why they believe in God. Now it’s the turn of the atheists – from A C Grayling to P Z Myers – to explain why they don’t.

Click through to the article to read concise explanations for why various notables do not believe. It’s a good read.

Eviscerating.

This is very compelling, but I have a strong counterargument.

Essentially, if people start collecting behind the banner of reason and evidence, it will become inefficient and silently deafening to *not* have a term associated with this approach to finding truth.

Bundles of people who share similar ideas, and who join together to discuss them, seldom do this for long without assigning a name to said approach. Right now that’s called atheism because the main thing being opposed is false belief, and the main place to find that is within religion.

So what Harris is proposing here is that we do something that can’t be done — at least right now. People facing everyone believing in Alchemy will collect together and will become known as anti-alchemy. It’s the same for religion/atheism, and it’s the same for any group that promotes “reason and evidence”.

There will be a name given, and it too will develop the downsides that Harris correctly ascribes to the term “atheism”.

This doesn’t mean this argument hasn’t made sense to me — I may still abandon the label — I’m just saying the argument isn’t as clear and clean as he’s making it out to be.