Exodus 22:21 tells us, “You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” Or, more accurately, “וְגֵר לֹא-תוֹנֶה, וְלֹא תִלְחָצֶנּוּ: כִּי-גֵרִים הֱיִיתֶם, בְּאֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם.” But it is important to remember that this seems to be Exodus 22:20 in the Hebrew Bible. I don’t know; it is hard to get my head around, since it is read right to left. Regardless, we know that the Bible tells us this because during his speech last night, Obama told us, “Scripture tells us that we shall not oppress a stranger, for we know the heart of a stranger — we were strangers once, too.” I just looked it up.

I believe that like all religious books, there is much wisdom in the Bible. But I don’t like it being quoted by our secular politicians. Can you imagine the uproar that would have occurred if our first Catholic president had used the Bible as ostentatiously as every president since Reagan (Not Carter!) has used it? But I don’t blame Obama for using it. It is now what a vocal minority demand. Indeed, as Emily Arrowood reported today, it was only Wednesday that the folks on Fox & Friends complained that Obama wasn’t Christian enough:

As Arrowood noted, Obama throws scripture liberally in his speeches, but conservatives continue to complain. Let’s be honest: Obama can’t win. Conservatives don’t hate him for any real reason. They just hate him because he’s of the wrong party and then they come up with reasons for it. And that was on clear display this morning.

In a rational world, the Fox & Friends folk would be thrilled with Obama for wiping away the dust from his Bible and quoting from everyone’s favorite Red Sea pedestrians. But no. It was a silly idea. What’s the point of even speculating about a rational world? Two days ago they complained that Obama didn’t talk about Christianity and today they thought he talked too much about it. According to Arrowood (no video yet), they were “challenging him to a ‘scripture-showdown’ and claiming it’s ‘repugnant’ for Obama to ‘lecture us on Christian faith.'”

Of course, there is a kind of theological distinction here. This kind of use of the Bible as a moral weapon is generally looked down upon. The only true Christian is one who uses it to push social conservatism and to push Christianity as the One Truth Faith™. This is what is behind the whole War on Christmas™. The war — such as it is — is not about Christians being denied the right to observe the holiday as they see fit. It is rather about Christianity being held up as an earlier passage from Exodus, “You shall have no other gods before me.” That’s the right kind of Christianity — the kind that Chuck Norris practices.

What it is really all about is that conservatives know what Obama was doing: he was rubbing their noses in their favorite book that they never read. He was effectively saying that it is anti-Christian to be against immigration reform. And he’s right! Obama quoted the Old Testament, but he could have as easily quoted Jesus (“I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not” — he meant that as a bad thing!) or even the Statue of Liberty (“Give me your tired, your poor…”).

But that isn’t the conservative way. They aren’t out there grappling with what is a very difficult book. They aren’t reading, What Jesus Meant. They only think that Christianity is right because they assume it tells them that they are right in whatever they want to do. And they don’t want immigration reform. So Obama is a heretic to quote the Bible when it isn’t in the service of what they know the gay-hating, rifle-wielding, free-market-loving Jesus stood for.

What would Jesus do? Deport them all! For when they were hungry, he said, “Get out of the country you moochers!”

Update (22 November 2014 10:02 am)

The Bible is so repetitive! I quoted Exodus 22:21, “You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” But apparently, the president was quoting Exodus 23:9, “You shall not oppress a stranger, since you yourselves know the feelings of a stranger, for you also were strangers in the land of Egypt.” And then there is Exodus 41:53, “You shall not oppress a stranger, do do that voodoo that you do so well, goo goo g’joob!”

I find it constantly fascinating to watch Christians in this 80% Christian country whine about how attacked they are. I know, I know: I talk about this a lot. But it truly is astounding. In the past, Christians were sent to the lions. Now, it turns out that they were not sent to the lions because they were Christians, but it is hard to find a Christian who will admit it. The fact remains, however, that they were Christians, they broke the law and got killed — like many other minority groups. And modern day Christians think that they went to their deaths because the Romans just hated Christians. What’s more, modern Christians think what these early Christians did was noble.

Given that they think this, it is hilarious that they simultaneously think that they are being oppressed when a clerk at Target wishes them “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.” And today, we have another example. It comes to us via Jimmy Swaggart’s son Donnie. According to Right Wing Watch, “Donnie Swaggart… hosted a panel discussion… dedicated to discussing the controversy that had erupted in Houston, Texas, after the mayor’s office subpoenaed sermons and other materials from a handful of pastors as part of a lawsuit anti-gay activists had filed in an effort to overturn a local antidiscrimination ordinance.” During the segment, Swaggart claimed that “They want the Bible gone” — referring to the minority that aren’t Christian and support non-discrimination. And he followed that up by noting that the only difference between ISIS and these people is that “those here cannot chop our heads off.”

This is brilliant. It is true that we have a Christian-centered culture where whining about being told “Happy Holidays” does not get you laughed out of polite society. And it is true that there are no people that I know of running around specifically trying to murder Christians in this country. And it is true that Christians in the United States are in no way oppressed. But Donnie Swaggart knows that Christians are oppressed because the only thing that is keeping me from chopping off the heads of Christians is that I know I can’t get away with it. Or I don’t have a big sword or otherwise am not able to do it.

It doesn’t get any better than this. Christians are being oppressed because unnamed people are only stopped from chopping their heads off by the law. I might note that in Salem, the “witches” were hanged and not burned at the stake. And the reason they weren’t burned at the stake was that England had made it illegal because the Christians were really getting out of hand in that regard. If we should be worried about anyone sinning in their hearts — constrained only by law — it should be Christians.

But the story gets better. Right Wing Watch posted less than one and a half minutes of video from the show on their YouTube channel. Within just a few hours, “Swaggart’s SonlifeTV has filed a copyright complaint.” And, of course, YouTube took it down because YouTube is evil that way. That should give you some idea of just how serious Swaggart and his kin are about the open flow of information. According to him, we non-Christians want the Bible gone. But he doesn’t want to allow his own words to get outside his own cult where everyone agrees.

But we’re like ISIS.

H/T: Ed Kilgore

I love liberalism in its most general sense. The thing about liberalism is that it is fearless. A liberal is not afraid of change. This probably explains why political conservatives are so effected by fear. It also explains their jingoism and the belief that America must spend as much as the rest of the world combined on its military. This isn’t the thinking of the brave; it is the thinking of the coward. So it just makes sense that God would be very liberal. After all, the universe is constantly changing. And we would have to assume that God is brave.

So when Pope Francis beatified the very liberal “Vatican II” Pope Paul VI, he said, “God is not afraid of new things.” (It was Pope John XXIII who started Vatican II, and Pope Paul VI who completed it.) It’s sad that he had to remind believers about this. But then, let’s face it, it isn’t God that is conservative; it is churches. People get those things mixed up. Churches claim that they have their holy documents and they can’t be questioned, because they don’t want the churches’ authority questioned. It has little if anything to do with what the people in those churches actually believe about God.

Right now, there is a big dust-up in the Catholic Church. Pope Francis just sent the conservative Cardinal Raymond Burke packing. Basically, he made him retire. He moved him from the very important and powerful position at the head of the Holy See’s highest court and put him in a ceremonial position that is normally given to retired cardinals. It was expected. Francis is trying to make the church less hostile to everyone and Burke has been running around saying, “There is a strong sense that the church is like a ship without a rudder.” Burke, you may remember, was the American archbishop who was denying communion to pro-choice Catholic politicians. He’s a real charmer. And humble too!

My great concern is that Ross Douthat be on a suicide watch. Over the last year, the conservative Catholic who (in yet another example of conservative affirmative action) writes for The New York Times has gotten more are more shrill in his concern about schism in the church. Two weeks ago, he wrote, The Pope and the Precipice. What I find interesting is that people like Douthat just take their conservative approach to the church as given. And in Douthat’s case, that’s understandable. He was born in 1979 — a year into Pope John Paul II’s reign. So he’s only known conservative popes. But that isn’t all there is to the Catholic Church, or it would still be burning people at the stake.

Tom Gallagher at the Nation Catholic Reporter call this bunk, Contra Douthat: We Are Not on the Edge of a Precipice. He even asked the rhetorical question, “Is Douthat really threatening the pope and calling for both an insurrection against Pope Francis and a schism?” Well, yes; he is. It isn’t the first time, either. Douthat has made it abundantly clear that the dedication of conservative Catholics to the church is dependent upon the church doing what the conservative Cathlics want.

This is entirely typical of American conservatives in a general sense. We see that political conservatives are patriotic only to their conception of “America.” When it comes to the actual America, they are more interested in talking armed insurrection if their fabled “America” is not honored. It is even more bizarre to see this in religion. But I think it really all comes down to this idea that The Truth™ is defined at some point in the conservative’s life — normally in childhood. And they never get past that and to the mature understanding that all things in life are fluid. (And a brief look at history will show that it is for the best!)

What’s sad and funny is that Douthat approves of Vatican II. Yet there were lots of conservative Catholics just like him who left the church because of it. But Douthat noted that Vatican II was approved overwhelmingly. The problem, as usual, is that Douthat has “a little knowledge.” Shortly after his article appeared, John O’Malley schooled Douthat on the matter:

If you are interested in the Catholic Church at all, I recommend reading O’Malley’s article. I also suggest reading it if enjoy seeing an immature upstart thwacked up side the head. O’Malley noted that Douthat was equating “conservative” with “orthodox” and that he was implicitly equating “liberal” with “heterodox.” That’s an excellent point. That is exactly what he is doing. Because as usual with American conservatives, Douthat thinks that he defines The Truth™. O’Malley is a different kind of conservative:

But I’m still worried about Douthat. I thought a lot of stupid things when I was 34. I would hate to lose him. If we are very lucky, he might mature into someone more like Garry Wills.

Update (10 November 2014 11:56 am)

Charlie Pierce has a few choice words for the young Douthat:

As anyone who has been reading me for a while knows, I like Sam Harris and Bill Maher. But they both drive me crazy quite often. I’ve written about this recent brouhaha, Atheism Needs to Police its Extremists. But it does show the difference between a genius and a subgenius.

In this case, I’m talking about depth of thought. Clearly, Maher is a comic genius. I find him extremely funny even when I totally disagree with what he’s talking about. But when it comes to being able to think careful about a subject, Maher is not a genius. This isn’t to say that he isn’t smart. The term “subgenius” is a compliment of sorts. But it implies something that isn’t implied by simply “smart”; it implies that the person isn’t aware of their intellectual limitations.

Harris is a genius. And as a result, he can be extremely frustrating. Listen to him when he is making controversial comments: they are carefully stated with critical caveats. So after the dust-up on Real Time, Harris went on The Young Turks and spent three hours. It is an exercise in hair-splitting. To be honest, I think it is bunk. The truth is that Sam Harris makes an incredibly blunt anti-Muslim argument that could come out of the mouth of any neoconservative. And then he uses his remarkable mind to finesse it after the fact.

To hear Harris tell it, he is always and forever being misinterpreted. But these kinds of discussions are always about what one focuses on. To me, living in the United States, I see the greatest problem being Christian fundamentalism. It has poisoned our political process and is responsible for untold pain, suffering, and death in the form of poverty and limited access to healthcare. I know that Sam Harris agrees with me on this. Just the same, it is Islam outside of our country that he focuses on. And what is the policy prescription for this? From a practical standpoint, it is more American imperialism.

Defining Islam as “the mother lode of bad ideas” puts it on par with communism during the Cold War. And the result of that was that the United States ran all over the world supporting any group that claimed to be against the communism. And this led to us supporting such charming people as Ngo Dinh Diem in Vietnam. Harris’ polemics will lead to exactly this, even though there are good and bad Islamic governments. And I simply do not think lowly enough of Harris to believe that he is not aware of the effect of his arguments — regardless of how he may finesse them later.

Bill Maher, on the other hand, is just an intellectual brute when it comes to this issue. This week on Real Time he brought up the incident and some controversy about him speaking at Berkeley. And he got into an argument with Rula Jebreal about it. I didn’t think she made a very good case against Maher, yet he still managed to lose the argument. He actually made the “some of my best friends” argument, referencing the fact that Reza Aslan likes him. He’s a Muslim, so Bill Maher can’t be a bigot!

It isn’t even clear what Maher’s argument is. It seems that he just has a hate-on for the religion. He repeats the fatwa on Salman Rushdie and the Koran instruction to kill people who leave the faith as though these represent special evils that don’t apply to other religions. And the only way you can think that is if you don’t know about other religions and their histories. I’m reminded of something that Hemant Mehta said. He suggested that atheists stop ragging on “spiritual” people as though it were the same thing as being a fundamentalist Christian. Similarly, painting Islam as a uniquely evil religion only helps to make its followers less reasonable.

All of this makes Sam Harris the more dangerous person. The more that Maher talks, the clearer it is that he’s just confused and ignorant. The more Harris talks, the more his arguments make sense. But it is Maher’s argument and Harris’ “elevator pitch” that are what push public opinion. We would all be a lot better off if both men would stick to things they know more about.

Update (3 November 2014 12:36 pm)

I finally got around to watching most of the Sam Harris interview above. He actually does a much worse job than I was expecting. I also thought it was funny that he simply discounted CJ Werleman, as though plagiarism discounts his arguments. The only substantial thing he said was that Werleman was wrong when he claimed Harris supported torture. Harris’ rebuttal: he only said that torture should be “considered.” But the further on in the interview he gets, the worse he does. I like Cenk Uygur, but I’ve never found him to be incredibly smart. But I thought he destroyed Harris. Of course it doesn’t help that Harris is constantly reduced to, “I didn’t say we should kill all Jews; I said I thought it might be a good idea if we killed all Jews.” It’s pathetic.

Via Steve Benen, I learned the exciting news that Republicans Trent Franks and EW Jackson believe that American Christians are under attack. There is a “profound threat” not just to Christianity but to the mythical “Christian foundations in this country.” What’s more, Jackson asked Franks the important “Woe is me!” question, “What is the level of threat, as you see it, compared to where Christians are in terms of perceiving that threat… with this drumbeat of atheism that attacks everything, ‘get the cross down,’ ‘don’t show a Bible,’ ‘don’t wear a cross,’ ‘don’t say God bless you’? It just seems like every day we’re hearing some new effort to try to shut Christians up and shut us down.” Franks responds that this list of Christian abuse is “so right.”

What’s so pathetic about this is Christian persecution is mostly a myth. While it is true that early Christians were fed to the lions and similarly abused, they were not treated this way because they were Christians. They were treated this way because they broke the law. In some cases, Christians appear to have engaged in terrorism as a way of hastening the second coming. There is no evidence that gentle, law-abiding Christians were being martyred for their beliefs.

But Christians have long believed this myth, so over the years we’ve seen any number Christians force martyrdom on themselves. And usually this was in the cause of one set of Christians versus another. For example, Joan of Arc, was not murdered by some unwashed people; she was murdered by fellow Christians. And that’s generally been the case: Christians persecute each other as well as the unwashed. That’s something that most Christians don’t want to admit: even allowing the myth of persecution, for the vast majority of it’s history, Christianity has been the persecutor, not the persecuted.

But today, persecution comes really cheep. American Christians aren’t being killed. No! They are being forced to hear retail clerks at Target say “Happy holidays!” instead of “Merry Christmas!” Can you imagine? What a horror! And then nativity scene are not allowed on government property, so they can only been seen on every other street corner. How will the Christians ever get their message out? I mean besides big budget films, television shows, radio, books, loons on the street, billboards, churches everywhere, and of course, all the pushy Christians who come to my door out of a misreading of the Bible? Besides all those things and more, how can the Christians practice their religion?

As of 2011, America is 75% Christian. Yet among conservative Christians, there is a constant attack on them. This, I’m afraid, comes from their status as a dominant majority. I discussed this a couple of years ago, Happy Holidays vs Merry Christmas. What’s happened is that Christianity was the default for many years. This wasn’t because Americans were particularly devout. It was just that the Soviet Union was explicitly atheist, so then America had to be a nation of believers. And Christians mistook this for the idea that Christianity is “true” as opposed to all those other religions. So when someone says “Happy Holidays!” it is oppressing Christians because it doesn’t give them special status as believers in The Truth™.

So the next time you hear a Christian whining about how oppressed they are, you know: what they mean is that people aren’t treating them as though they are special. Saint Sebastian had to suffer arrows and then an eventual beating to death. Modern Christians have to suffer a minority not taking their religion as seriously as they do. Oh, the pain!

Every Saturday, Steve Benen writes, This Week in God. He seems to grab snippets from the news during the week and then he features one story and provides a paragraph each for all the rest. What really comes across is just how politic religion is. This is my big problem with religion now, then, and always: it isn’t about God in any theological sense. It is about using a concept as a political tool. And this is why most religious people I run into are “useful idiots.” They are politically conservative because they think that is what God wants, but they are really just doing the work of the power elite.

This week, one of the minor items concerned an article in Religious News, Secularism Grows as More US Christians Turn “Churchless.” It is based upon research by David Kinnaman that finds that roughly four-in-ten Americans (38%) are either atheists, agnostics, or believers who never go to church. He refers to these people as “churchless.” According to the article, “If asked, the ‘churchless’ would likely check the ‘Christian’ box on a survey, even though they may not have darkened the door of a church in years.” Actually, the data only indicate that 32% identify as Christian, but that’s still higher than the 25% who identify as atheists or agnostics.

But a lot of these churchless Christians are real believers. They talk to Jesus all the time and one can only assume that Jesus answers their prayers as readily as he answers the prayers of those who go to church: not at all. But one would think that it wouldn’t matter. I mean, as St Ignatius said: wherever Jesus is, there is the Church. But of course it does matter to the religious elite, just as it matters to Bob Iger that people keep dragging the kids out to the newest Disney film. In fact, I’m sure if they could, religious leaders would copyright Jesus, so that praying along would be a crime.

I know that a lot of people would claim that the problem with people not going to church is that they will get lost in ever mounting heresies. But I’ve always wondered about that. Isn’t it the thought that counts? Wouldn’t God look at someone alone studying the Bible trying to figure out exactly what God wanted them to do and show mercy? Wouldn’t he send them to heaven just for giving it the old college try? But at least the Catholic Church can make the argument that it has made for 2,000 years: the Bible is a difficult book and it is best left to the experts. The protestants are all about going directly to the Bible. What authority do they have to claim that Christians need to go to them to be spoon-fed the meaning of scripture?

This, I think, is why protestant denominations have gone so far off the rails in terms of politics. Their only real appeal is essentially a tribal one: come to church because that is what good people do. It is hardly a step at all from “Good people go to church” to “Good people believe in tax cuts for the rich.” I’m not saying that all leaders of churches are especially interested in the politics; they are most just trying to fill the pews. But there is no doubt that sermons about how we all need to stop the “baby killers” are more exciting than those calling for humility and turning the other cheek.

Back in May, Randall Balmer discussed the history of abortion as an issue with the religion right. The movement didn’t sprout up because they had been reading Thomas Aquinas and had discovered that the soul enters the body at fertilization. No, the movement started with more banal, political reasons:

This is in reference to these protestant churches not wanting to have to let black children enter their schools. Ever wonder why black evangelicals haven’t followed their white brethren down the path of abortion monomania? Now you know. But white, black, or purple, churches are fundamentally about political power. And I think that’s just fine. What I don’t think is fine is their claim that they speak for God. I know that Pope Francis will probably be a disappointment to us liberals. But it is remarkable that he shows humility and says publicly that he is not in the business of judging. This is something we don’t hear from Pat Robertson, who told television viewers last week about raising the dead, “That power is there, we just aren’t using it.” Humility!

Recently, I wrote, The Human Bible Ends Before it Dies. And I was pretty hard on the atheist community. It’s not your average atheist on the street that I have a problem with. But as a movement, it has more and more problems. And certainly the most famous of the atheists do little but annoy me as I discussed in that article and When Atheism Blinds Us to Nuance.

This is not a new thing for me. Over two years ago I discussed the political problems in the atheist community, The Atheist Libertarian Connection. And then last year I wrote, Libertarianism Incompatible With Atheism. There is something about the two philosophies (atheism and libertarianism) that appeal to a certain kind of mind. Of course, it isn’t surprising at all that people who get paid thousands of dollars to talk to atheists would think it is the result of their total awesomeness, which ought to free them of any social obligations.

There is also a path from atheism to libertarianism. In the atheist community, there is an extremely common belief that their opinions are based upon reason. They don’t believe in God because there is no evidence for it. I have to say that I’ve never found this a compelling argument. I know only too well that there are lots of things I take on faith. (For the record, I am an atheist because I find God to be a useless concept — a non-answer to a question I care deeply about.) Libertarianism is usually pitched as a kind of “first principles” theory. It is thought to be rational when the best thing you can say for it is that it is vaguely internally consistent.

But there are famous atheists who don’t fall into this trap. Someone who has yet to annoy me even a little is CJ Werleman. Of course, Werleman is not that big in the atheist community. He’s far more involved in libel political discussions. When he writes about religion, he usually upsets a lot of the atheist community. And I have a great example of that. He was recently on The Young Turks and they were talking about the Bill Maher and Sam Harris dust-up. And he didn’t pull any punches: he compared Harris to Sarah Palin:

The whole video is well worth watching. What I think is important is that atheists need to hit back against Harris’ garbage. I don’t see that happening; I mostly see a circling of the wagons. And that’s, well, very tribal — just like the religious community, which, let’s face it, is really not about religion but about cultural identification.

As many atheists have pointed out, having an atheist community doesn’t make a lot of sense. It is like having a community of people who don’t believe a teapot orbits the Sun somewhere in space between the Earth and Mars. But I get it: religion (especially in the US) is really overbearing and it is nice to be around other people who share your annoyance. Just the same, it is a pretty thin strip of common ground to base a movement on. And it is very easy for the movement to get hijacks by the likes of Sam Harris, who sounds more and more fascist every day.

Atheists: police thyselves!

Afterword

It’s interesting if you look at Sam Harris’ blog, you see a lot of “Nobody understand me!” articles. He’s not an Islamaphobe; people just misunderstand him. He’s not a sexist; people just misunderstand him. He’s not a western imperialist; people just misunderstand him. What’s sad is that he is a pretty smart guy and in many ways very open minded.

According to the website, Robert M Price is shutting down his podcast The Human Bible. It claims that this most recent episode (posted yesterday) is the penultimate one. I’m not a bit surprise. In the early days, Price was a lot of fun. But it’s been clear for a while that he is just going through the motions. But if I had to guess, I’d say the causation is indirect. I’ll bet they are shutting it down because fewer people are listening to it, and that’s because the show has gotten boring.

I have a special interest in listening to the show, however. You see, Price is a conservative — and not a very smart one either. I’ve written about this a number of times, most recently in, More Robert Price Islamophobia. In that one, I noted that a comment I made complaining about Price’s repeating of a ring-wing radio Obamacare canard got ten “thumbs up” from other listeners. So apparently, I’m not the only one to notice these things. But I suspect that I’m alone in looking forward to them. And in the most recent, Episode 35, Price delivered a whopper!

He started talking about economic redistribution. He claimed that in the time of the Bible, economics really was a zero-sum game: that the poor were poor because the rich were rich. Actually, that’s not true. Even Neolithic towns saw booms and busts. They didn’t see their GDP as constant. Some years there was more food, some years there was less. Certainly it is true at that time and much later at the time of the Bible, the economy was less dynamic than it is now. But it was not distinctly different from what it is today.

Price used this fact to argue (or rather state without evidence) that today, since we know that economics is not a zero-sum game, redistribution is wrong. So the argument he is making is that redistribution made sense as long as we thought that the economy was a fixed size. But now that we know it isn’t, redistribution doesn’t make sense. This is an amazingly bad straw man argument. No one makes this argument for redistribution. I don’t know of anyone ever making this argument for redistribution.

Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes both understood economics very well. They both understood the way that money flows and that the economy is not static. Yet both men believed in redistribution. Back in 1797, Thomas Paine laid out the case for redistribution: the government enforcement of property rights means that many people end up living worse lives than they would if they were born into a tribal culture. So the rich, who benefit excessively from the enforcement of property rights, owe something to the poor who lose out.

Since I’m a generalist, who despite my doctorate really doesn’t know a lot about anything but has a reasonable understand of everything, I don’t get people like Robert M Price. How can he be so brilliant in discussing religion (And H P Lovecraft!) but just follow along with lazy political ideas he’s heard? This is, interestingly, what atheists (like Price) always complain about theists: they just believe what they’ve heard without thinking about it. It is part of what I’ve written about before: the link between libertarianism and atheism.

Increasingly, I believe that the atheist community has fallen under the spell of Nietzsche. If God is dead, they make their own gods out of humans. And what humans? Well, the “super men” of course! They can’t be limited. And the “super men” are, of course, the rich. And so we must keep taxes low on the rich. This is Ayn Rand 101. It also is a complete misapplication of evolution theory. Being smart, strong, and hard working are all things that can make a species successful. It says nothing of individuals of the species. The smartest, strongest, and hardest working individual might simply be eaten by a shark through simple bad luck.

The end of The Human Bible comes at a very good time for me. I’m more and more unhappy with the atheist community. It isn’t just that they are often dimwitted and simplistic; it is also that they are so arrogant. I used to think that people were unfair when they said that atheists were just the mirror image of religious fundamentalists, but I really don’t anymore. Both groups make me wish that there were a god who punished people for hubris. But I’m more forgiving of the religious fundamentalists: they have the excuse of generally being stupid and indoctrinated when they were too young to fight against it. Atheists have no such excuses.

So Robert M Price can go on his merry being very rational and exacting in his biblical criticism. But he continues on with his faith-based politics, throwing out straw man arguments that should embarrass him with a second’s reflection. He is just another example of an atheist movement that has nothing to add to society. It’s just another tribe, blinded by its own interests, and convinced that it is superior because on a single issue it thinks slightly more clearly than other tribes.

Afterword

Let me be clear: I’m not talking about all atheists. In fact, I think that most atheists aren’t like this. But the most vocal ones are. Most recently, we had Bill Maher and Sam Harris. But this group will never have a big following, because the politics of these people turn out to be remarkably similar to the politics of the Christian fundamentalists. It is like how the communists and the fascist hated each other, even though both groups ended up creating the same kind of governments. For what does it profit a man to gain the truth about a tiny aspect of life and forfeit the betterment of mankind? What does atheism profit a man when it changes the world not at all?