There is a big difference between Catholicism and Protestantism. And that difference is that Catholics believe that the Church defines the religion while Protestants believe that the Church comes directly from the Bible. It should come as no surprise that I side with the Catholics. The problem with depending upon what the Bible says is that everyone’s opinion about it is going to be different. And indeed, this is why we see Protestantism subdivided into a thousand parts.

Personally, when it comes to spiritual beliefs, I think that everyone who thinks about it seriously will end up with their own ideas. This isn’t good if you want to form a church, but if you want to find spiritual enlightenment, you need to go it alone. That is why I, a spiritual searcher, don’t associate with any organized religion and self-identify as an atheist. And I suppose that if you are a Protestant, you might be able to go your own way. But being a Catholic, you have to accept that the Church, with all its deep thinkers[1], knows what it is doing. That doesn’t mean you have follow them slavishly, but you can’t just accept whatever you find convenient.

That brings us to Paul Ryan. Now we know that Ryan is an a la carte kind of guy. This is, after all, the guy who simultaneously claimed to be a Catholic and a follower of atheist Ayn Rand. But when push came to shove during the 2012 presidential election, he threw Rand under the bus so he could keep his Christian bona fides, because that is still the basis of the Republican Party’s populist appeal. But this morning, he really lost all credibility on that count—at least as far as I’m concerned.

He was on George Stephanopolous saying that all the anti-capitalism talk from the Pope just comes from his naivete about what true capitalism is. Coming from Argentina, the Pope just doesn’t understand how much American style capitalism is the right way to help the poor. At least, that’s the case according to Paul Ryan. He said, “They have crony capitalism in Argentina, where you have exploitation. That is not the free market, that’s crony capitalism. We’re starting to see some crony capitalism here in America.”

(Let’s just take a moment to relish the idea that we are “starting to see some crony capitalism here in America.” As I’ve noted before, Ryan actually has some good rhetoric about exactly that. But now he’s claiming that we are starting to see some? Give me a break! He knows perfectly well that America is little but crony capitalism. So he’s just talking out his ass.)

Now I understand that no one really thinks that the Pope is infallible. But a Catholic treating the Pope as though he were some ignorant provincial? That strikes me as a bridge too far. Basically, he’s saying, “If only I could talk to the Pope, I’d straighten him out.” This is, tellingly, exactly what Chris Christie says about Bruce Springsteen. I understand the instinct. But it shows just how lowly Paul Ryan values his religious faith. It clearly doesn’t matter nearly as much as his faith in “free” markets.

George Stephanopolous pushed Ryan on whether he thought the Pope would endorse with his budget. Ryan was only willing to say that the Pope would not endorse it because popes don’t do that. Of course, that wasn’t what Stephanopolous was asking. It wasn’t a question of whether the Pope would officially endorse his budget. The question was whether the Pope would approve of it. And Ryan knows the Pope wouldn’t approve of it. But rather than go back to the “Pope is an idiot” argument, he went with a diversion. It’s all the same. He believes much more in his “free” market ideology than he does in his Catholicism.

But that’s generally what I find with American Christians, especially in the last few decades as they’ve become more political. They use their religion as a justification for whatever conservative policies they want to believe in. This is why their Christian beliefs lead them to think that a zygote is a citizen, gay people are not, and that the existing economic power elite are God given. As a person who cares about spiritual matters, I find it disgusting. And so should serious Christians.

[1] That is not sarcasm. I have great respect for Catholic thinking and scholarship. I think this is why we don’t get the more bizarre beliefs out of them that we see throughout the Protestant faiths.

I’m about to quote Phil Robertson, but this is not about Duck Dynasty. This is about religious intolerance in a general (but American) sense. I just heard that in Robertson’s GQ interview, he also said something about Shintos. Of course, that in itself is kind of funny because not that many people in the United States know what Shintos are. But I understand. Robertson is a college graduate and started his career as a teacher. He’s also clearly smart. But I had to find out what the old man said about those nasty Shintos!

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the actually interview so I had to settle for a quote from a Dylan Matthews article where he’s being pretty silly, 9 questions you were too embarrassed to ask about Duck Dynasty. It delighted me to read it. Matthews introduces it by saying, “Here’s Robertson on why he thinks Shintoism—much like Communism, Nazism and Islamism—leads to violence.”

Before we get to the Shintos, let’s discuss the Nazis. They were explicitly Christian. Now I know what Christians always say to this, “But they wouldn’t have behaved like that if they were real Christians. If they knew Jesus’ love, they wouldn’t have behaved that way!” This is the same thing they say when a Christian bombs an abortion clinic or does any number of other horrific things in the name of Jesus. But if that’s the case, then Christianity is totally unaccountable. I could say that only people who don’t read Frankly Curious lie. And then when someone who does read it is shown to lie, I could just say, “Yeah, but they weren’t a real reader. If they understood what Frankly Curious is all about, they wouldn’t lie.”

Now, I don’t know about you, but my understanding was always that the start of World War II was a fairly complicated thing. That is to say that bombing Pearl Harbor didn’t happen in a vacuum. But regardless, that was all much more about the emperor. I don’t think it had anything to do with Shinto beliefs. Regardless, we here in the 80% Christian United States decided to not so much fight the Japanese army as the Japanese civilian population, which we laid to waste. I don’t recall where Jesus said, “And if you are attacked, be sure to kill as many enemy civilians as you can because they’re just fucking Shintos who will murder you if they get half a chance.” Note, Wikipedia says, “Shrine Shinto is associated in the popular imagination with summer festivals, good luck charms, making wishes, holding groundbreaking ceremonies, and showing support for the nation of Japan.” I just don’t see the murder part of that, but moving on.

As for the Communists and Islamists, I just don’t see them as any more violent that the 80% Christian United States. But what the quote really says is, “Christianity is better than all the other religions, of which I am ignorant.” That’s usually a big problem when a group of people are overwhelmingly of the same faith. They start thinking that somehow they’ve got hold of the Truth. In this particular quote, we’re to believe that it is the lack of Jesus that makes people violent. But what about Jainism? Certainly that is a far more peaceful religion than Christianity. No one can question that. They don’t even kill animals to eat. What does the Christian say about the non-violence of Jainism despite its complete lack of Jesus?

Well, he was just providing an example! The point point always was that Christianity is it. This is why in America, Christianity and nationalism are so closely linked. When they chant, “We’re number one!” they mean both the United States and Christianity. This kind of intolerance and ignorance of other religions shows a shocking level of insecurity. Because as all good Americans know, there is nothing that need be taught to an American or a Christian. And sadly, there is usually nothing that can be taught, either.

A couple of weeks ago, I read in The Guardian, Mormon Church Addresses Past Racism. It is about how the leaders of the church explained why it forbade blacks from the clergy for 126 years until 1978. According to the document, “The church disavows the theories advanced in the past that black skin is a sign of divine disfavour or curse, or that it reflects actions in a premortal life; that mixed-race marriages are a sin; or that blacks or people of any other race or ethnicity are inferior in any way to anyone else… Church leaders today unequivocally condemn all racism, past and present, in any form.” When I read that, I thought, “Good for them!”

But the thought didn’t stay long. For one thing, their explanation isn’t that great. It was all a kind of funny mix-up. You know, like an episode of Three’s Company where that wacky Brigham Young is influenced by the racial divide in the country. Some people say blacks are humans and others say they’re property. Who could say? It was just a silly historical oddity that the Mormons went along with segregation and slavery crowd!

It’s worse than that. Blacks might be able to be clergy now, but women can’t. In the 35 years since the church leaders had a revelation about blacks, God has revealed nothing about women. The ban on women in the clergy has been longer than the ban on blacks. When the Mormon leaders recently explained why the church had been so wrong about black Mormons for so long, BYU writer Margaret Blair Young called it a miracle. So I guess women like her will just have to keep waiting for another miracle that will affect them directly. I doubt seriously that I will be alive when that miracle occurs.

Of course, the active war on the gay community continues in the Mormon Church. As you’ve probably heard, the Utah high court found that the ban against same sex marriage was unconstitutional. The (mostly Mormon) conservatives in Utah have been going crazy. Understandably, the television news has been covering it. That included lots of yucky video of girls kissing girls and boys kissing boys. This caused the Mormon-owned Salt Lake City station KSL-TV to call a ban on showing such footage in their stories. After all, there are Mormons watching! What would they think?!

So 35 years after the Mormons were already extremely late on the whole Civil Rights bandwagon, they finally got around to blaming church father Brigham Young for that whole racist mix-up. I’m not impressed. Like most Churches, the Mormons use their holy writings to justify their continued intolerance. And I suppose that roughly five decades after even the most unreasonable person could justify such bigotry, the church’s mea culpa is welcome. But they have very, very far to go. And again, like most churches, they will constantly be behind the arc of history as it (hopefully) bends toward justice.

Last night, I got into a small argument with a guy (I think) who goes by the handle moine on Twitter. It was regarding two articles that I’d written: The Atheist Libertarian Connection and Libertarianism Incompatible With Atheism. So he took to something called TwitLonger to explain. But before I get to that, I want to point out a couple of things that I find really annoying!

I really don’t know if I’m talking about a guy or a gal, because when I went to his (used as the neuter from here on) website’s About page, there was no actual information except that he is “retired and grumpy and in need of a nap.” Which is great! I like that style of writing. But everywhere I go on blogs, I run into these too-clever “about pages” that don’t so much as provide a name. I blame it on Digby (Heather Parton), who for years was thought to be a man. I also don’t appreciate the lack of a photo. That is, by the way, one of Jakob Nielsen’s top ten things wrong with blogs. And I see it everywhere. A number of famous bloggers are very cagey about this. But fine, knowing a name would be a start.

Regardless, Moine thinks that I am wrong to think that there is a connection between libertarianism and atheism. He thinks that it is just that some atheist just happen to be libertarian, just like some atheists are into knitting. Well, it depends upon the kinds of atheists you are talking about. I’m an atheist the same way that Terry Eagleton is a Christian. We disagree with everyone and everyone, in turn, hates us. So if we are going to push the atheist envelope wide enough (and I think we should), there are huge numbers of atheists in this country. And they most certainly do not have a tendency toward libertarianism.

But if you look at the public atheists, they roughly fall into two camps: humanists and anarchists (libertarians). I think there are actually more humanists. But the libertarian crowd is very big and it is very much linked. For one thing: Ayn Rand. She was an anarchist who was an atheist and very much linked the two. She is still hugely popular. Go look on Amazon; even great novels of her time sell for 1¢ (The Grapes of Wrath!), but Atlas Shrugged might as well have been released earlier this month. You will not find the book cheap, even though it is, even on the basis of a story, absolutely dreadful. People read it as “philosophy.” These are people who don’t know what philosophy is, but never mind.

The other connection between atheism and libertarianism is a certain way of thinking. I call this group the “first principles” people. They think that they can prove in a deductive (or mostly deductive) way that libertarianism is “natural.” And this feeds into Social Darwinian thinking which feeds into Darwinian thinking which, for idiot atheists, proves that atheism is correct. For more, see: Clueless Atheists.

But above all, I just see it. I hear a lot of libertarian junk thinking coming out of the mouths of atheists. Often, they don’t even know it is libertarianism. The utter ignorance of atheists about just about everything is only eclipsed by the utter ignorance of American Christians. And remember: I used to be a libertarian. I worked for the party. I wrote about it at length for years. I read everything Ayn Rand ever wrote. I know those people. I know how they think. (But don’t be mistaken; most libertarians are not atheists; I could go on about the kooky ways that libertarian Christians justify that mind-blowing cognitive dissonance.)

That’s all I have to say on the matter right now. The truth is, I don’t disagree with Moine about anything but this one point. And his blog is interesting, although he doesn’t write enough to get me too excited. But it is worth checking out if you are interested in issues of faith and atheism.

Last night I discussed Ross Douthat’s commitment to his conservative ideology over his commitment to Christianity and the Catholic Church. And look, I know that I’ve been writing a lot about Pope Francis these days. But it’s important stuff. In a nation that is 80% Christian, it highlights not only our hypocrisy (not that interesting), it highlight the paucity of theological thought on the part of a people who claim that religion is very important to them.

As others have noted, Pope Francis is not the first Pope to talk about the immorality of our economic system. He’s just the first one who the media has paid attention to. Remember the last on, Pope Benedict, who everyone thought was just a mean old curmudgeon? In is encyclical Caritas in Veritate he wrote:

Oh my God, and I do mean that God—that Catholic God who made Pope Benedict infallible! The (infallible) man is talking about the importance of labor unions! Where was Stuart Varney when we needed him?!

But let’s be perfectly honest with no exaggeration: Stuart Varney is an idiot who no one with any sense takes seriously. Ross Douthat, however, is taken seriously. He’s one of the non-ranting conservatives who holds up his Catholic faith as a badge of honor. He even wrote a whole book about how we needed to get back to traditional religion, Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics. But as Michael Sean Winters, a writer for the National Catholic Reporter wrote in his devastating review of Bad Religion:

Ouch! But it goes right along with my argument that Ross Douthat should not be considered a Catholic thinker. Garry Wills he is not. He is first and foremost a conservative and then he uses his religion to justify that. Douthat’s big gripe is that religions are liberalizing to appeal to modern people. He is against such “accomodationism.” Winters calls him out on that issue:

What I’m getting at here is not that Ross Douthat or any of the other conservatives who claim to be Christians are horrible people. And I’m not saying that a righteous Christian cannot be a conservative. But if you are a Christian, your religious should come first. But for most Christians I talk to, their politics come first and they use their religion to justify their politics—mostly with regard to reproductive and same sex marriage rights. And this to me means they are pretenders.

I like to think of myself as an interfaith atheist. I love the best that religion is and I take great joy in talking to peoples of all faiths about their beliefs and what they think of the great questions of life. But I have no tolerance for dogma. We are living through a dark ages of religion. More people than ever claim to have faith and all that, but it means less than it ever did. For most people, God is just the trump card, “I’m right because God says I’m right.” That’s all Ross Douthat does, although admittedly, he does it with much skill and obfuscation.

I may be an atheist, but I do have a creed: inclusion, equality, empathy, compassion. And my politics follow from it. I do not follow the teachings of the power elite and then justify them by cherry picking from a three-quarter million word tome. But I too can point to literature to justify my creed. Here is one by Emma Lazarus that you will perhaps recognize:

That is a real welcome, not a theoretical one. That is a sincere desire for equality, not nice words hiding the granite that separates them from us. That is real empathy because I and mine have struggled too. And that is real compassion and not the tidy platitude that all are equal in America. My creed may be wrong, but it is my creed. Ross Douthat’s creed is that of the American Enterprise Institute covered over with platitudes about peace and good will toward men.

I haven’t read Sarah Palin’s new book, Good Tidings and Great Joy. But I’ve skimmed it. It’s hard to take. Yet another book from a Christer claiming to be oppressed because the clerk at Target says, “Happy holidays!” Oh, if Saint Sebastian were alive today, how could he endure? Arrows are one thing, but this is war. If nativity scenes aren’t allowed in state courthouses, the baby Jesus pees blood. It’s a God damned shame!

Palin’s book is a good companion to a book I actually did read, Candida Moss’ The Myth of Persecution. Moss is a Christian herself and she thinks all of this nonsense of Christian martyrdom is bad for the religion. A professor of New Testament and Early Christianity, she knows what she’s talking about. It turns out that all that business of Christians being fed to the lions is a myth. Well, it’s a myth in the sense that they weren’t fed to these beasts because they were Christians. Lots of people were so abused. When Christians were killed, it was generally because they broke the law. The early Christians were a radical group, many of them would today be called terrorists.

So I love Bruce Cockburn’s excellent song “Wondering Where the Lions Are,” but it’s a crock:

Consider our old friend Saint Sebastian. His story is so filled with clear folklore, that it is hard to take any of it seriously. He made the mute talk and the blind see. Merely hearing about his acts of healing caused people to be healed. But here’s the thing. He was a captain in the Praetorian Guard, serving under Emperor Diocletian. Now the Christians will have you believe that Diocletian got mad at Sebastian because he was converting people to Christianity. But that doesn’t appear to be what was going on at all. For example, he converted Chromatius who then set all of his prisoners free from jail and resigned. That’s the sort of thing that would get a soldier court-martialed today.

So Diocletian basically sentenced Sebastian to death (or perhaps just torture) by having him tied to a tree and having his men shoot arrows at Sebastian. Left for dead, he survived and was nursed back to health. So Sebastian presented himself to Diocletian to rub his nose in the fact that he was still alive. So the emperor had his men beat Sebastian to death and throw his body in the sewer. God did not heal him from this. Of course, we don’t know that any of this is even true. Sebastian was never even discussed until a century after this all supposedly happened. The point is that the story is supposed to show Christians being persecuted for their faith when, if anything, they were persecuted for being dicks and rabble rousers.

This mythology of the early Christians being persecuted did lead to actual martyrdom later on, because myths matter. If people are told that the best thing they can do is martyr themselves for the cause, there’s no surprise when people do just that. We see the same things today with Muslim martyrs. But when it comes to all of these religious people, any religious persecution was at best isolated and idiosyncratic.

And that brings us back to Sarah Palin. Because of this myth of Christian persecution, she and so many others like her, practice their faiths by pretending that they are some oppressed religious minority. They do this at the same time that they want to claim that America is a Christian Nation. They also love to point out that roughly 80% of the country self-identifies as Christian. I wrote about this last year, Happy Holidays vs. Merry Christmas. As I said then:

So that’s what Sarah Palin’s new book is all about. Christmas is not everyone’s holiday. It is the holiday that belongs only to those chosen people who happen to believe in the right God. And the rest of us who are not Christians and who really don’t care are waging a war on Christianity through our indifference. So the myth of the persecution of Christians lives on, but now it has been so debased that cable “news” networks spend whole segments whining about the fact that non-Christians don’t celebrate the winter solstice the “right” way. Proving one’s love to God comes pretty cheap to the modern Christian.