When asked by The Barna Group what words or phrases best describe Christianity, the top response among Americans ages 16-29 was “antihomosexual.” For a staggering 91 percent of non-Christians, this was the first word that came to their mind when asked about the Christian faith. The same was true for 80 percent of young churchgoers. (The next most common negative images? : “judgmental,” “hypocritical,” and “too involved in politics.”)
What makes this all the more fascinating is that the Barna Group is a pro-Christian research firm. They exist to provide data with an eye towards growing and strengthening Christianity. These aren't a bunch of rowdy atheists saying, "So there." Neither are, I would add, Jamelle or Rachel. Both are Christians and both are deeply disturbed this information, and by the results:
Later research, documented in Kinnaman’s You Lost Me, reveals that one of the top reasons 59 percent of young adults with a Christian background have left the church is because they perceive the church to be too exclusive, particularly regarding their LGBT friends. Eight million twenty-somethings have left the church, and this is one reason why.
Close to 60% of teenagers who go to church drop out after they leave the nest. Obviously, as an atheist, I can't see this as a bad thing. I appreciate that liberal Christians like Rachel and Jamelle find spiritual solace in having faith, but by and large, the historical purpose of religion is not to comfort but to control. Religion's primary function is, if you look at the whole of history, about creating rationales for unjust power hierarchies. Kings have used "god" as their excuse for absolute power, and religion is the primary reason that men in a diverse array of cultures over cite as the reason they should be the lords of their wives and daughters. Even liberal Christians are tied to the long history of power-grabbing through religion, using the language of submission and calling believers a "kingdom". When it comes to fighting against gay rights and feminism, the church is functioning as it was designed to do: Support existing power structures, guilt and shame people considered inferior, and demand the right to ultimate control. This fits in neatly with, oh, all of history.
It's also worth noting that situations like this undermine the religion apologist argument that states that morality comes from religion. It clearly doesn't. Instead, what you see is that people have an existing moral system and they evaluate their religion by it, rejecting the faith if it conflicts with their morality or embracing it if it's conducive to their morality. People whose moraly systems are built around establishing strict power hierarchies, and stomping out sex and other forms of pleasure they see as subversive, well, those folks fucking love religion. It's a self-perpetuating system, but one thing it absolutely demonstrates is moral decision-making isn't something granted us by religious power, but something we do for ourselves, based on input from a variety of sources, including internal ones.
Situations like this demonstrate, however, that while the appeal for many to most ardent believers in a faith is that it gives them power and control, that power is not, in fact, absolute. The church needs people in the pews to survive, and while those people are constantly told their role is to submit and obey, if they just decide they don't want to, the church is shown to be an emperor with no clothes. Thus, religion throughout history has had plenty of takebacks. The churches that used to preach segregation and white supremacy don't do so anymore, at least as openly. A lot of churches, especially more mainstream ones, are giving up on the argument that women are just support staff, and many are even letting them be ministers and priests. Either they get with the times on gay marriage, or they find their ability to exert power diminish. Since churches are about power, most of them will adjust over time. That's why they're freaking out now; they know what's coming.
In the meantime, every time a situation like this arises, where progressive change is demanded and churches resist mightily before giving in, a chunk of believers walks away, never to return. I think that's great. Good to see people realizing that in a fight between morality and faith, morality should win.
When the Catholic Church and organizations are trying to exert influence over our laws, making abortion and contraception harder to access, they tend to portray their religious teachings against contraception as if they have nothing to do with misogyny. Instead, it's talked about as if it were one of those harmless religious laws governing behavior that's arbitrary, like eating kosher or praying before meals. In fact, the kosher analogy came up a lot during the debate over health care coverage of contraception, even though under that analogy, the benefit should be offered. After all, Jewish business owners aren't allowed to forbid their employees from using their compensation for non-kosher food.
Digression aside, the reason that this framing of contraception rules in Catholicism misses the point is that the rules are rooted in a very misogynist ideology, one that holds that women exist for no other reason as to be appendages for men. Contraception threatens that ideology, because it suggests women showing overly high levels of independence, that they may feel they have other things to do in life but producing a man's babies. That men themselves often want contraception should disturb this viewpoint, but they kind of get around that problem by embracing the rhythm method*, which gives men a lot of control over reproduction. They're counting, I think correctly, on the fact that men will cajole women for sex---and in the sort of patriarchal relationships where contraception is shunned---women don't have a lot of right to say no. In fact, considering the taboo of women bothering men with their lady stuff, a taboo strongly reinforced by religion, a lot of women will go along with sex just to avoid upsetting their husbands with talk of periods and counting and ovulation and god forbid, mucus thickness.
You can see this ideology about women in the choices that the Catholic hierarchy makes about their female followers, even when it's not about reproduction or sex at all. A couple of examples:
Exhibit #1:Via Feministe, there's been a crackdown on nuns for showing overly high levels of intellectual independence.
A prominent U.S. Catholic nuns group said Thursday that it was “stunned” that the Vatican reprimanded it for spending too much time on poverty and social-justice concerns and not enough on condemning abortion and gay marriage.
In a stinging report on Wednesday, the Vatican said the Leadership Conference of Women Religious had been “silent on the right to life” and had failed to make the “Biblical view of family life and human sexuality” a central plank in its agenda.
Shorter Vatican: The role of ladies is to scold other ladies to know their place. But wait, it gets worse!
It also reprimanded American nuns for expressing positions on political issues that differed, at times, from views held by U.S. bishops. Public disagreement with the bishops — “who are the church’s authentic teachers of faith and morals” — is unacceptable, the report said.
Needless to say, women can't be bishops, precisely because the Church teaches women simply cannot have that kind of moral authority. After all, their job is to obey, and to be appendages. Attempts to rise above their station---even to do something as mild as to work against poverty---will get slapped down. The idea that a handful of women are getting uppity is such a concern that the Vatican itself had to be the ones to make a fuss over this. I hope those nuns quit
Exhibit #2: Via Skepchick, a story of how a high school girl learned that in the eyes of her church, she's nothing without a male presence to define her.
The 17-year-old girl was all set to go to the prom, she was excited, but things took a turn for the worse this week when her date backed out. Then, the girl was shocked to learn that she is not allowed to go the prom by herself due to a rule by the Archdiocese.....
But when Amanda’s date cancelled on her earlier this week, she slammed right into a wall. She says she was told by school officials at Archbishop John Carroll High School she could not go to the junior prom next Friday without a date......
Amanda already paid the $95 for the prom tickets, add that to the cost of the dress, the shoes, flowers and she says it’s close to $1,000.
After the story came out, the girl did in fact get her invite to the prom restored. But not because the archdiocese changed their minds! Nope, it's because she finally got a date. And a very valuable lesson was taught: That without a man to validate you, you're nothing. Especially in the eyes of your god.
To be clear, not all Catholic schools are this adamant about compulsory hetereosexuality. But with the Vatican crackdown, I wouldn't be surprised if you saw more of this sort of thing.
*I don't like the "natural family planning" language, which indulges the naturalistic fallacy and is a non-subtle attempt to imply that it's superior to other methods that aren't described in loaded language. We don't call the pill the "maximum convenience family planning" or condoms the "dual action family planning". We stick to value-neutral terms.
Now that the media has finally figured out that there's no "Catholic vote" and therefore Santorum isn't winning it by virtue of his Catholicism, Santorum himself is being questioned about this supposedly puzzling phenomenon. His response? One of my favorite logical fallacies: No True Scotsman.
I think the bottom line is that we do well among people who take their faith seriously, and as you know just like some Protestants, some Protestants are not church going, they are folks who identify with a particular religion but don’t necessarily practice that from the standpoint of going to church and the like, and I think, you know, with folks who do practice their religion more ardently I tend to do well.
Oh yeah, he went there, basically claiming that Catholics who don't vote for him aren't real Catholics. Implicitly, this is another attack on JFK, because JFK a) wouldn't have voted for him and b) believed in a separation of church and state, which makes Santorum want to throw up. It's also an attack on pretty much all Catholics, honestly. Santorum is creating a high bar for the "real Catholic" test. You not only have to believe the same things he does about women's roles and sexuality to clear it, but you also have to believe those issues are more important than war and poverty. I'm not entirely sure the Pope could clear Santorum's bar for "real Catholic". After all, Santorum differs with the Pope on probably more issues than he agrees with him, though it's up in the air whether or not the Pope really believes the "bitches ain't shit" philosophy trumps the "war is bad" one when determining who to vote for.
Of course, I can't help but have mixed feelings about this. If Santorum gets his way and the test for how Catholic you are is based on how much you hate Teh Sex, that means there aren't very many Catholics indeed. Which would, if taken seriously, basically mean they're a tiny cult with no real political power. Which would probably work out for the best, honestly, because right now their political power is being wielded to destroy women's rights and let people contract HIV and die. But Santorum, with thoughts of theocracy flitting through his head, doesn't really grasp this conundrum.
The only real question that comes to mind for me when Santorum says things like this is, well: stupid or evil? I mean, he's abandoned the pretense of the dog whistle and is basically saying that he's running openly as a theocrat. And that the only true Christians are also theocrats. He bleats constantly about how he wants to bomb Iran, but his philosophy of governance is the same as theirs, especially with regards to corraling people who claim to have the same church as you. Does he know that he sounds like someone who rejects the First Amendment, wants to create a Christian theocracy, and then start a holy war with Muslim theocracies? Or is he just incapable of controlling himself? I have no idea.
The news is all abuzz today over the fact that Santorum "lost" the Catholic vote in the primaries last night. It's a construction that assumes that it was his to lose, and is based in one of the most pernecious myths of the Beltway media, which is that America is a sectarian society where "people of faith" not only vote according to religious guidelines, but according to those set by the loudest sectarians amongst them. Thus, you get claims that Obama is going to lose the "Jewish vote" because, I dunno, something about Israel, even though he really hasn't done a damn thing to hurt Israel. And now there's a growing adherence to the nonsensical belief that Catholics are a voting bloc, and one that votes primarily based on what a bunch of right wing celibates who spend all their time on TV denouncing vaginas think. The only group that doesn't get this treatment is mainline Protestants, because as the mainstream media doesn't tend to think of "white" as a race so much as a baseline, so it thinks of mainline Protestantism as the norm by which you measure others against. (On that basis alone, I enjoyed Santorum saying mainline Protestants aren't real Christians, because it actually jolted the media into realizing that various Protestants are also religious groups, just like Jews, Catholics, evangelicals, and Mormons.)
But really, this nonsense about the "Catholic vote" has got to stop. There's literally no evidence for such a thing. Most Catholics are pro-choice and use birth control, and they do so in roughly the same numbers as non-Catholics. In fact, they're indistinguishable from the public at large in their voting habits. There's perhaps a slim chance that some of them were moved against Santorum by the JFK comment, but honestly, I'm skeptical. The reason is that we're talking about a Repubilcan primary. I guarantee their identity as Republicans was a bigger factor for Catholic Republicans voting in the primary than their loyalty to the only Catholic President.
Ironically, Rick Santorum is a perfect example of why this supposition that Catholics are following Vatican marching orders when they vote is just completely off-base. Santorum's hardline stance on contraception is presumed, incorrectly, to stem from his devotion. In fact, like with other conservative Catholics, the Pope just provides cover for already-existing misogyny. That is to say, they hated women first and used faith to rationalize it second. You can tell this, because the Pope has lots of other opinions on stuff besides contraception, and Santorum ignores all of it. Juan Cole put together a list of ten Catholic teachings that Santorum rejects while pretending to be a hapless warrior for Catholic Jesus. Santorum has gone against the church on the issues of the Iraq War, universal health care, the death penalty, welfare, the minimum wage, union organizing, and immigration. Interestingly, not only does Santorum reject the church when it comes to these political matters, he also is a cafeteria Catholic on issues of religious questions. For instance, the Catholic Church accepts the theory of evolution and teaches that their god guided the process. Santorum rejects church teachings on this. In fact, not only does the Catholic Church accept evolution, but they are like most religions in this. Really, it's only evangelical Christians that hold that one must reject evolution as a part of their faith; Jews, mainline Protestants, Muslims, etc. by and large accept the theory as not in conflict with their religious beliefs.
The point isn't to say that Santorum is more or less Catholic than other Catholics who may agree with church teachings far more than he (while mostly rejecting the contraception nonsense as the medieval misogyny that it is). The point is that Catholics are a diverse group, politically speaking, and their faith has very little bearing on how they lean. Race, class, geography, personality, etc. all have more influence. In fact, as the example of Santorum shows, there's something of a cultural conflict between the markers of wingnuttery and Catholicism, and so Catholics who want to go full wingnut end up looking and sounding more like evangelicals. Which, in turn, means the notion that a Bible thumper like Santorum is going to make cultural appeals to Catholic voters sound even sillier, since he doesn't really come across as the average Catholic, insofar as there even is such a thing. I bet, if you surveyed people, a substantial number would think he's evangelical. Possibly even a majority.
By the way, that is one religious group that does have a predictable vote: evangelical Christians. While a minority are more liberal, by and large, most are fundamentalists. The whole point of being a fundamentalist is that it gives godly rationalizations to your conservative leanings, and so this isn't surprising.
The Bible doesn't mention Rick Santorum's obsession, abortion (though not because ancient people didn't have it; the historical record suggests that as long as women have been getting pregnant, they've looked to abortion to control their fertility), but it does mention that it's really naughty to lie. In fact, lying about important issues, i.e. bearing false witness, is so bad that it's one of the commandments. It's one that Santorum breaks on a daily basis, but it's particularly ironic that Rick Panty Sniffer would lie so flagrantly when it comes to one of his fellow Catholics on the subject of Catholicism.
Santorum's hostility to Kennedy's admirable enthusiasm for First Amendment protections that keep us from sliding into a fundamentalist theocracy have been covered to death, but I particularly like how he lied about what Kennedy clearly meant by "separation of church and state". This is what Santorum claims that separation of church and state means:
To say that people of faith have no role in the public square? You bet that makes you throw up. What kind of country do we live that says only people of non-faith can come into the public square and make their case?
Yep! That's exactly what Catholic President JFK meant, that only atheists should have a role in government. Which is why he ran for President! Perhaps Santorum believes that Kennedy didn't have religion? I realize that Santorum has an allergy to Google, but seriously, it took roughly two seconds to fact check the "Kennedy was an atheist" insinuation.
This is the Republican strategy for imposing theocracy: confusing the issue. They're claiming that "religious liberty" means giving fundamentalists the right to impose their religious views on everyone else, and now the claim is that unless we accede to theocracy, we're preventing religious people (I refuse to use that stupid term "people of faith") from participating in government. The only question now is how many people are stupid enough to buy this?
In Pennsylvania, Halloween happens. In solidarity with their brethren in every other state in this country, some Pennsylvanians are prone to wear offensive costumes.
This is not about the wisdom of offensive costumes, the pitting of nascent libertarianism against the implied need for social responsibility in what we communicate to others, surviving even the implied relief of that responsibility by reliving our childhoods through dressing up in things we bought from thrift stores.
This is about the ability of religion to escape the restriction of generally applicable laws, which seems to be strangely relevant these days.
I hesitate to speak to the unfiltered version of this series of events, as the information available comes from this Opposing Views article, this local ABC news report, and known Islamophobe Andrew C. McCarthy. From what I’m able to tell, though, the Pennsylvania state director of American Atheists, Inc., Ernest Perce V., marched in a Halloween parade as ‘Zombie Muhammed’ alongside a ‘Zombie Pope’. Perce’s costume included a sign bearing phrases insulting to Islam. Talag Elbayomy, a Muslim, confronted Perce and, in some manner, grabbed Perce and/or his sign. Elbayomy was charged with criminal harassment for his actions.
State Magistrate Judge Mark Martin received the case, and ultimately dismissed the charges. Although unclear exactly why he did so, Martin did find it within him to draw on his years as an Army reservist serving in Iraq and lecture Perce (yes, Perce) at length for the offensiveness of his sign (transcript available here).
McCarthy (and many of his fellow travelers on the right) have declared this an unconscionable turn into sharia law, the rise of Islamic domination over American courts. As it turns out, it’s not. As it further turns out, the newly discovered and inviolable right of “freedom of conscience” discovered somewhere between the words “free” and “exercise” in the First Amendment gives Elbayomy a better case for exemption from his harassment charge than it does the Catholic Church for exemption from HHS contraception regulations.
To be clear, I think Judge Martin was likely wrong in his decision – Elbayomy admitted to confronting Perce and attempting to take his sign. The offensiveness of Perce’s language isn’t an excuse for Elbayomy’s actions, and this wasn’t a particularly complex case, barring some evidence or uncertainty not readily apparent here.
That having been said, let’s talk about decades-old Supreme Court cases. In 1942, the court determined that a class of words called “fighting words” lacked First Amendment protection. In Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, the court said:
There are certain well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise any constitutional problem. These include the lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous, and the insulting or "fighting" words — those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace. It has been well observed that such utterances are no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit that may be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interest in order and morality.
The doctrine has been severely narrowed by subsequent decisions, and no private action or public regulation has ever been held to be “fighting words”. Of course, in the new era of “freedom of conscience”, it’s not entirely clear that matters.
The crux of the argument that freedom of conscience is a constitutional right is that the Free Exercise clause protects private religious belief from any law that conflicts with it. Despite the fact that an absolute rule of this type leads to absurd results (like, say, a believer’s exemption from harassment laws because someone offends his faith) and the fact that such a rule is completely ahistorical (religious exemptions have always been a matter of public policy preference rather than guaranteed right), conservatives are sticking with it.
The Catholic Church believes that it should be exempt from an HHS regulation that it already complies with in dozens of states because it offends their faith. The same principle, applied to Talag Elbayomy, provides no reason why a devout Muslim should not be able to grab an offensive sign if his religion calls on him to defend his faith without criminal penalty, particularly when married to another exemption from the First Amendment. Arguably, Elbayomy has a better case, if for no other reason than that he hasn’t repeatedly violated the ironclad religious principles that serve as the basis of his objection.
Elbayomy should have faced criminal penalties for harassing (more accurately, assaulting) Perce. And the Catholic Church should comply with regulations governing the secular services it provides. This isn’t because of hostility to faith. It’s because we live in a society that never intended to make religion an impenetrable shield to law, and to do so necessarily opens up the door to anarchy governed only by faith.
Andy McCarthy has a problem with a lesson from high school civics:
Very clear constitutional commands that, for example, “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech”, or that “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed,” or that “No state shall … deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws”, have not stopped courts from upholding campaign finance reform, prohibitions against gun possession, or racial preferences.
Most of us, sometime around 11th grade or so, learn that there are no absolute rights in the Constitution. This makes sense, because about the time we're seventeen is when we realize that, while saying "penis" at competitively escalating volumes is hilarious, it's not really an appropriate thing to say during class and we deserve to be punished for it. While giggling, obviously.
Under a theory of constitutional absolutism, Andy McCarthy should support the free practice of sharia law. After all, it would almost certainly offend the conscience of Muslims who seek to practice it to have that practice banned. Yet...he doesn't. The First Amendment clearly states that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof[,]" which would seem to indicate that private citizens choosing to govern their affairs by private religious laws should have that choice reaffirmed by the courts, rather than trampled on by intolerant secularist bigotry.
Or something, whatever. I'm not entirely sure what sharia law is, except that the Muslims in my apartment complex have nice curtains, so I assume that's part of it.
Of course, it doesn't, because the Constitution isn't a legal code. It's an outline applied to the world as it exists, within the context of society as it evolves. There are things it protects and things it doesn't, however imperfectly those realms are determined. Constitutional absolutism of the sort that results in a "right of conscience" to be free of laws you find offensive only works so long as you assume the Constitution was meant to protect you and only you, and that there was a mysterious Eleventh Amendment lost from the original Bill of Rights that tells everyone else to kiss your hairy ass.
Of course, if I had a constitutional right to play the penis game in school, I'm totally going to pretend to be the world's oldest high school senior next year.
At XX Factor yesterday, I joked that Gingrich and other anti-choice nuts are going to rethink their opposition to stem cell research in record time if, as hoped, a cure for a certain form of erectile dysfunction is created. Really, it was only half a joke. The ugly truth of the matter is right wingers' utterly different approach to women's reproductive health care and men's access to ED drugs demonstrates that contrary to their claims of simply acting on devotion to Jesus, these folks are using religion as a cover for a deep-set misogyny. From the Catholic Church to most info you can find on religious websites to the anti-choice members of Congress, when asked about Viagra, they are supportive. Republicans like John McCain have routinely voted against bills that would require insurance companies that cover Viagra to cover contraception. The reason for this is simple: plain misogyny. Anti-choicers tend to see contraception as a "party drug" that allows dirty sluts to go slut it up. But they see Viagra as allowing men their god-given erections. That this is a hypocrisy is glossed over with an argument I've seen all over religious websites, but is best voiced by Bill O'Reilly:
The argument is that erectile dysfunction is a condition that needs to be cured, but since pregnancy is "natural" (actually, so is erectile dysfunction, as it's often just part of aging), preventing it is dirty slutdom. It's the thinnest of excuses for naked misogyny, especially if you consider that the worst that will happen physically to a man who doesn't get an erection is that he doesn't get an erection, but a pregnant woman is going to suffer weight gain and severe pain no matter what, and some of the more serious side effects of pregnancy are diabetes, stroke, and even death.
Since anti-choicers by and large present themselves as devout Christians who are only doing god's will, however, that makes this misogynist bullshit even worse. Right now, the Catholic bishops are screeching because the HHS is going to require them to cover birth control prescriptions for organizations they control that hire from and serve the general public. What's nakedly sexist about this is the Biblical justifications for banning abortion and contraception are extremely thin, but the Biblical justification for denying access to Viagra is really sound. Anti-choicers have cast around wildly in the Bible looking for verses that mention abortion or contraception---which have been around in one form or another since roughly forever---and haven't found much. A little poetic language about the womb doesn't mean banning abortion, nor does a strange story about a man defying god's direct orders to impregnate his dead brother's wife say much about contraception so much as the importance of taking direct god-orders seriously.
But Paul's writings in the New Testament are pretty clear on this: he thinks while married sex is better than fornication, no sex at all is the best of all possible worlds. He reluctantly allows that married people, having already gone ahead and been dirty sex-havers, should continue to do that, but it's definitely less than ideal. With this worldview in mind, the Christian seems obligated not to see erectile dysfunction as a tragedy, but as god sending a hint to you that your days of being distracted from your worship by sexual concerns are being called to an end. Paul seems very clear on the point that people have sex for fun and not really for procreation, so the use of birth control strikes me as no more sinful by this measure than simply marrying in the first place. But trying to reverse god-given celibacy with modern medicine seems like directly defying god's obvious will when he struck you with ED. That is, if you read the Bible with an intention to actually doing what it says. Most Christians---even the good ones---come to the Bible with a predetermined belief in what's right and look for rationalizations in the verses. It's clear with anti-choicers that they just don't like women and seek verses that reinforce that, ignoring the fact that Paul is probably just as concerned with how filthy male sexuality is as female.
The good news is I'm not Christian, so I'm free to see all this hostility to sexuality as perverse, and believe instead that sex is up there with chocolate and warm days in reasons to be thankful to be alive, and that medical science should make it their business to make the enjoyment of life safer and less stressful. Thus, Viagra and birth control for all!
On that note, enjoy this story of a legislator in Virginia who has introduced a bill requiring that men who want Viagra undergo a rectal exam in order to do so. For their own health, you know. Just like those mandatory vaginal probes fro women seeking abortion.
Yesterday was the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and while it's good news that you can still get an abortion in all 50 states in this country (sort of), the fact of the matter is that we've lost a lot of ground. Legally, for one thing, but psychologically as well. I examine the problem at RH Reality Check, talking about how people are growing more accustomed to the idea that female sexuality is male property. Depressing stuff, but it's important to realize that this battle is not and has never been just about abortion. It's about women's rights and women's roles, and whether we should be full citizens or be managed and controlled by fathers, husbands, ministers, etc. Which is why I loved the picture that the New York Times chose to illustrate this story about the growing acceptance of anti-contraception views amongst Protestants.
In a single image, we get what anti-choicers believe men have lost, and what they believe stripping reproductive rights will return to them: Woman as pet dog.
We don't even get the dignity that cats get, in their worldview. No wonder they don't care if Gingrich told his second wife she should just put up with the third one. Your dog doesn't get a vote when you get a new dog.
Some feminists tend to dismiss everything anti-choicers say out of hand, but what I think is interesting is that they're often quite right on the facts of what reproductive rights mean for women, but they're just wrong when it comes to their beliefs. For instance, this passage in the Times piece:
As Dr. Paris suggests, much of the new birth-control skepticism comes from the suspicion that contraception is allied with more nefarious practices. In the 1970s, abortion became a central issue for evangelicals; now some worry that the kind of woman who controls her fertility is the kind who would abort an unwanted fetus. Antifeminist Christians worry that secular culture both encourages women to take the pill and leads them into the work force.
There's something a little strange about the distancing language the writer, Mark Oppenheimer, uses here. I would say that it's encroaching on the status of "indisputable fact" that contraception makes it easier for women to enter the work force. I would also argue that they're not wrong to believe that that exceedingly rare women who "doesn't believe" in contraception is probably not going to have an abortion when she gets pregnant. The problem is that they extrapolate incorrectly from there, assuming that taking away women's contraception will somehow magically make them feel more passive and accepting of the idea of constant, forced childbirth. The data shows the opposite, that the more hostility there is to reproductive rights, the more abortions there are, because more women are facing unwanted pregnancies. Simply enshrining one set of values into law doesn't magically make the population agree. Anti-feminists know this very well, since they adamantly resist laws that reflect women's equality. The problem here is their woman-as-dog model doesn't allow for understanding that women have minds of their own, and so they tend to think that simply demanding it will get instant, dog-like compliance. You see this a lot with antis who wave off your questions about the inevitable black market that arises when abortion is illegal; they have convinced themselves women only seek abortion because women are dumbly following orders, and they'll change when they're given a different set of instructions.
What Oppenheimer doesn't talk about. but that picture illustrates so well, is what anti-feminists really feel is lost with what they call "contraceptive culture": men's god-given right to have a woman---perhaps several (though in a row, mostly)---who follow them around, worshipping their every move, submitting completely and joyfully. I suspect this fantasy never was a reality, but I suspect a lot of Christian fundamentalists have convinced themselves that giving women the power to say "no" to men is what made us so maddeningly unwilling to play the supplicant. No to sexual overtures, no to marriage, no to demands that we wait on you, and most importantly, no to letting your magical seed plant itself in our bodies whenever it wants. That's why I believe that modern conservative Christians don't worship Jesus so much as Sperm Magic. The last few paragraphs of this piece makes that clear:
It then occurred to me that a few decades ago, when evangelicals and Catholics were further apart on birth control, they were also pretty far apart on questions of salvation — evangelicals were quite clear that Catholics were going to hell.
So I asked Mr. Surratt if Mr. Santorum would have any trouble getting into heaven. His answer confirmed that for today’s conservative Christians, the differences between Protestant and Catholic have gotten narrow indeed.
“That’s a God deal,” the pastor told me. “That’s his deal to judge. I’m glad I don’t have his job.”
When the differences between fundamentalist Protestants and Catholics were about things like the worship of saints and transubstantiation, well, there were real differences there. Now they're coming together to worship their true god---Sperm Magic---in basically the same way---fighting against women's rights---and so there aren't any theological differences to fight over. The chumminess that follows is predictable enough.
When I put the word out yesterday that I was wanting to hear from atheists what god they choose when believers inevitability claim they secretly pray, I got a bunch of different answers, and all were entertaining. There were few repeats, but one name kept coming up over and over again: Bast, also known as Bastet. I'll leave it to experts in ancient history to explain the signficance of this goddess, who was usually portrayed as simply being a cat (instead of being a person with a cat head). Ancient Egyptians are remembered fondly for many reasons, including the pyramids and Cleopatra, but their affection for cats is near the top of the list of reasons modern people think back on that culture and smile.
But the whole thing made me think: why not just cut out the middleman? Why not just pray directly to cats? Well, once that idea was in my head, I realized that a top ten list was in order.
Ten Reasons to Pray to Cats Instead of Gods
1) Cats are real.
2) Because of this, cats have a marginally better chance of answering your prayers than gods do. For instance, if you pray specifically for purring or for someone to scratch your furniture, your cats can probably get that done for you. Not much else, of course, but something is better than nothing.
3) As my buddy Ross said, "Plus, the cuddling and the purring. They actually deliver on the promise of temporal comfort." Science proves him right!
4) Cats may pee on your bed, but they're not going to send you to hell for all eternity.
5) You'll be able to see with your own eyes that the cats appreciate your prayers, whereas gods tend to be notoriously silent with the gratitude.
7) By praying to cats, you run no chance of praying to the same thing at the same time as that putrid douchebag Ross Douthat, who used Hitchens' death to write this horrible sentence: "My hope — for Hitchens, and for all of us, the living and the dead — is that now he finally knows why." The "why" in this case is why Christians believe---Douthat studiously ignores other religions making competing claims with his. But since Christians like Douthat believe that non-believers are going to hell, he basically just wished Hitchens was in hell. Maybe he's too stupid to grasp that, or maybe he thinks that you can sin against his god, but he'll let you in anyway so long as you showed proper contempt for women and Muslims. Who fucking knows? Either way, by praying to cats, you have nothing to do with that kind of mindlesss cruelty remade into "morality" by public displays of piety.
8) Sure, cats enjoy murdering smaller creatures, but they eventually eat them, making good use of the proteins within. If you pray to gods, you have to believe that they make people suffer for no good reason whatsoever.
9) People who may not like cats or who prefer dogs may argue with you about aiming your prayers at cats, but they're unlikely to start a holy war.
10) Cats have never, as far as I know, been used to rationalize denying women reproductive control of their bodies, trapping women in the domestic sphere, or denying gay people their rights. Unlike many gods conjured by humans, cats have no opinion on what you wear, and certainly won't smite you for going about with your hair or your knees uncovered.
Sigh. The one thing that makes a gleeful, Hitchens-esque pissing on Hitchens' grave less fun is all the god-botherers who are doing it wrong. I mean, I suppose we shouldn't be surprised, as the authoritarian conformists who exploit every opportunity to preen about their imaginary sky friend display very little in the way of imagination or humor, but man, it's still a major bummer seeing "let's pretend the atheist wasn't an atheist". As described by the blogger Cuttlefish:
Inflamed hemorrhoid and commenter “Art Aficionado”, on NPR, on his third comment in the first eight on Barbara Bradley Hagerty’s piece on Hitchens (seriously, NPR, BBH? Were all the interns gone on college break?) writes “I can’t help but wonder if Mr. Hitchens prayed to God in his final moments. It’s very plausible.” He repeats this claim several times across the comments, in response to those who show him how unlikely this would be, and how irrelevant.
You commonly see this assumption with some believers that atheists secretly believe, and we're just "mad" and rebellious, and trying to get under their skin. But that in our quiet moments, we pray.
To which I say: okay. If you believe that, I have one question for you.
What god?
I mean, humans have invented thousands and for all we know, millions of deities. Since you have so many to pick from, and you, being a naughty atheists, aren't beholden to the one you inherited at birth, the field is wide open. Personally, for my secret moments of desperate prayer that I supposedly have, I'm definitely not going to go with the Christian god, who is mainly characterized in the Bible as a patriarchal dick. Seriously, fuck that guy.
Personally, I feel that if I am secretly praying (I'm not), the god I'm going with is Tefnut, the Egyptian goddess of moisture. Some of you might find it strange to have a goddess of moisture, but if you grew up in a desert, like I did, it starts to make a little more sense. If it's really windy out, having Tefnut come through with a little extra saliva generation is quite welcome. Tefnut was created by a solar god masturbating, though it's unclear if he snowballed himself first, or if he just shot her and her twin brother Shu directly out of his penis. Since it's all made-up anyway, I say, whatever you want. Just remember, she's a goddess of body fluids, the moister and stickier, the better. The important thing is that Tefnut is a very moist lady with a head of a lion. By far, she's more interesting that dour old Bible-god, with his commandments and remarkably dry exterior. So should I ever, as some believers claim atheists must, be overwhelmed with a desire to pray, I'm skipping over that Christian stuff and hocking one up for Tefnut.
Since you atheists out there are secretly praying, to what gods are you praying?
PZ has a blog post up about new research showing---no big surprise---that religious people actually believe in all that magic stuff they say they believe in. I wasn't aware that this was controversial, but then again, I've met people who sit around reading religious texts where others can't see them, which I figure is the most relevant measure.
Julian Baggini discovers that believers believe. Baggini is an atheist who has in the past sniped at the New Atheists a fair bit; he’s argued that we’re an uninformed bunch who rail against straw man theism, because, he has argued, most practitioners of religion are followers of practice, not belief — they go to church for ritual and community, and all the dogma is dispensable. Now he has surveyed a few hundred believers, and learned that they actually do think the superstitious stories they have been told are very important.......
I think I’d call this the Atheist Delusion. Many of us find it really hard to believe that Christians actually believe that nonsense about Jesus rising from the dead and insisting that faith is required to pass through the gates of a magical place in the sky after we’re dead; we struggle to find a rational reason why friends and family are clinging to these bizarre ideas, and we say to ourselves, “oh, all of her friends are at church” or “he uses church to make business contacts” or “it’s a comforting tradition from their childhood”, but no, it’s deeper than that: we have to take them at their word, and recognize that most people who go to church actually do so because they genuinely believe in all that stuff laid out in the Nicene Creed.
Since this is a both/and blog, I thought I'd split the baby here. It is both true that believers believe, and that they participate in religion for social reasons. I don't see these things as mutually exclusive. It's one of the unfortunate tricks of human psychology that we believe things in no small part because that's what we're expected to believe, or because we want to believe. Which are kind of the same thing, actually. People want to believe what they're expected to believe, because that makes it easier to get along. You aren't in conflict with others because of your beliefs, and you get all sorts of social rewards. The fear of losing that causes people to banish doubts about their beliefs when they creep into their mind. Some people are outliers, and just habitually question common wisdom, but not most people.
It's not just religion where we see this. It's not a coincidence that conservative ideals are concentrated in some communities and liberal ones in others. It's not just that people seek out like-minded people, though that is part of it. It's also that people tend to go along with the prevailing wisdom.
Let's think of a relatively small example of how this works. Say, you're living in a conservative community and getting married. Your inclination is to keep your name, because it initially seems like the most logical option. It will cause less strife in your professional life, make it easier for people to find you on Facebook, and help you avoid excessive paperwork. But then the pressure starts. It might not be overt; your fiance may just look disappointed and say in a despondent voice, "Well, if it's what you really want." Your friends look startled, as if you're a freak. Your soon-to-be in-laws wonder aloud how you're going to name the children. Your mother calls and says that it would be nice if you weren't rubbing everyone's noses in what a feminist you are. Eventually, the strife gets to be a bit much. You start to think that it would just be easier to change your name. Once you've made the decision, being a human being, you start to rationalize it. You say, "My husband told me it was my decision, and it was! I wanted everyone to have the same last name. I don't like my last name anyway."
The word "rationalize" has unpleasant connotations, but in fact, most people rationalize most decisions most of the time. For instance, I chose to grab the Nation magazine instead of the American Prospect on my way to the gym today. God only knows why. The real reason was probably beyond silly; maybe it was just closer to my hand and I was distracted. But as soon as I picked it up, I said to myself, "Huh, the articles look really interesting today. They are covering something I'm really in the mood to read." I suspect I would have found the Prospect just as interesting if I'd grabbed it instead; I do like both magazines a lot.
The problem with rationalization is that it gets intense when the stakes for abandoning a decision are high. If I read the Prospect tomorrow and find I like it better, nothing is lost. I may even forget that I made a decision at all. But if I changed my name, and someone challenged that, my sense of self-esteem (I like to think of myself as an independent person, as do most), would be threatened. So would the estimation of my husband as a non-selfish spouse who puts my interests ahead of his male entitlement. So I double down with my rationalizations, to avoid cognitive dissonance. With religion, the stakes are really high for a number of people. Their family, marriage, sense of self, and community may be entirely built on it.
So, perversely, New Atheists and the critics of them are both right. We need to understand that people believe because of social pressures. But that doesn't mean we should shut up when criticizing religion. Loud criticisms of religion aren't going to be effective on most people who have a lot invested in religion, but they are incredibly effective on people who have little investment. I use myself as an example. I never went to church as a kid, not really. I was never confirmed. My parents told me to believe whatever I wanted. The few times I went to church, I found the process and people alienating. So when I was presented with atheist arguments, I had no reason to reject them out of hand. Other people I've spoken to were very religious and came around, and it's usually because they had an alienating experience with religion that made them more open to atheist arguments. By making direct, logical arguments against religion and gods, atheists create opportunities for people who have low investment in religion or a crisis in faith to come around. But we'd be mistaken if we didn't think that social pressures played a major role in this, and also sought ways to relieve those pressures on people, so they don't feel they need to believe.
I'm a little disappointed that none of the atheist blogs I read have addressed the controversy over Lowe's pulling their advertising from the show All-American Muslim, after being deluged with mail from a bunch of hateful Christian bigots. Now, there's nothing I hate more than people trying to score points by claiming that since you didn't blog about X, you must not care about X. I'm not doing that by any means; I'm sure a lot of atheist bloggers saw the story and took a pass because they didn't really think it falls in their wheelhouse. I get that. A lot of atheists probably think, "Well, we don't believe in Islam, so it seems a little strange to defend people who do," even if you do think that Lowe's did a really stupid, vile thing. But I would argue that this occasion is a perfect opportunity for atheists to speak out on behalf of the program and against the bigots who are trying to get it off the air. So I put a quick list of three ways that speaking out on this issue is not only the right thing to do, but to the benefit of atheist activists.
1) Hated religious minorities should stick together. Muslims are, after all, the group competing with atheists for the title of Most Hated and Misunderstood Religious Minority. So we have that in common with them. But, more importantly, secularism is something that benefits way more than people who don't believe in a god or gods. The rights to individual conscience and to not have the government favoring Christianity above other beliefs help Muslims out just as much as atheists, and by defending All-American Muslim, we can send the signal that we're open to working for a secular government for the good of all. Religious freedom should be our number one priority, because without it, we're shit out of luck actually getting people to listen to our arguments about why god claims are illogical and should be abandoned.
2) To show that there's a difference between ideas and people. Atheists are often being accused of oppressing Christians when we try to boot religion out of politics or criticize religious ideas.We deny this, repeatedly, by pointing out that there's a difference between ideas and people, and saying, "You are wrong about religion" is not the same thing as saying, "You're a bad person". By vigorously defending Muslims as people, and pointing out that most Muslims are ordinary people just like most Christians, Jews, and atheists, we send a signal that we really do get the difference between criticizing a belief and harboring bigotry against a person.
3) Increased understanding of different religions is good for atheism. I suspect there's two reasons that Christian groups oppose All-American Muslim. One is that they hate Muslims, and fear that their followers might feel their bigotry lessen in face of evidence that Muslims are mostly ordinary and downright boring folks like the rest of us. But the other is that they fear their followers discovering that perfectly nice, normal people believe in Islam in the same way that Christians believe in Christianity. That realization---that different religions make claims that directly contradict each other, so they can't all be true---is the first step on the path to atheism. The next realization is that what someone believes, religion-wise, is rarely due to having weighed various beliefs against each other and choosing the correct one, but basically is a matter of what religion your parents believed in when you were born. Since your average Muslim and average Christian believe what they believe for exactly the same reasons---i.e., that's what they were always told---some Christians exposed to this idea will start to think about their own beliefs and why they hold them. Which, in turn, will cause some to de-convert. Granted, that path isn't the common one, because most people have defenses and rationalizations that keep them from really thinking this through, but it will be true for some. I firmly believe that a major reason non-belief is on the rise in the U.S. is because of our increasing religious diversity. The more you're exposed to competing faith-based claims about the world, the more likely you are to decide that none of them actually has the answers. So, weird as it is to say this, I think that one of the best ways to grow the atheist movement is to educate more Americans about what non-Christian religions actually believe.
Plus, like I said at XX Factor, all of us benefit if non-exploitative reality TV aimed at actually educating people gets produced, instead of the crap that fills the airwaves now.
Notable Christian (and unnotable quarterback) Tim Tebow is everyone's favorite topic of sports conversation, and, more importantly, the topic of this exact conversation over and over again:
GUY: "God, Tim Tebow is shitty."
OTHER GUY: "He keeps winning!"
GUY: "He throw ten passes a game, connects on four of them, and the Broncos' defense does all the work to keep them in the game so that he can 'drive them to victory.' He's such a sanctimonious toolbox."
OTHER GUY: "Oh, so you hate him for being Christian!"
GUY: "No, I hate him for being bad at his job and still having thousands upon thousands of people who cheer for him because he bows down in reflective prayer every time a camera's around. I hate him because he's played awful team after awful team, barely beat them with help from a defense that has to work its ass off every week, and he's still supposed to be a star despite being Mark Sanchez with a Jesus piece."
OTHER GUY: "I think that says more about you than about him."
It's that last line that's utterly infuriating. The NFL is rife with quarterbacks who've won despite not adding much to their teams - they're competent guys who aren't asked to do much and deliver exactly that. Trent Dilfer won Super Bowl XXXV as the 31st-ranked quarterback in the league, because he had a great defense. Terry Bradshaw is a hall of famer whose career QB rating is 70.9 - he was basically just good enough to not screw up his team's amazing defense. Brad Johnson won a championship with the Buccaneers, mainly because of (you guessed it) his team's stellar defense.
The phenomenon of mediocre game managers steering teams to victory is nothing new. But in the case of Tebow, it is. You placing him in that category says more about you than about him...as Jen Floyd Engel is happy to remind us.
What if Tim Tebow were a Muslim?
Imagine for a second, the Denver Broncos quarterback is a devout follower of Islam, sincere and principled in his beliefs and thus bowed toward Mecca to celebrate touchdowns. Now imagine if Detroit Lions players Stephen Tulloch and Tony Scheffler mockingly bowed toward Mecca, too, after tackling him for a loss or scoring a touchdown, just like what happened Sunday.
I know what would happen. All hell would break loose.
Stinging indictments issued by sports columnists. At least a few outraged religious leaders chiming in on his behalf. Depending on what else had happened that day, they might have a chance at becoming Keith Olbermann's Worst Person In The World.
And there would be apologies. Oh, Lord, would there be apologies — by players, by coaches, possibly by ownership with a tiny chance of a statement from NFL commish Roger Goodell.
You cannot mock Muslim faith, not in this country, not anywhere really.
Awww...she has a sad because Muslims don't get mocked for being kind of crappy athletes whose popularity is due entirely to their preening displays of faith. Here's a list of famous Muslim athletes. In case you were wondering, not a one of them followed up scoring a basket or having a good round by pulling out a mat and praying to Mecca, because to do such a thing would have been kind of dickish.
His religious fervor is an easy target for the vitriol spewed from those who dislike him, but the reasons are much deeper than that. From his advocacy of abstinence to his infamous “You will never see another team play this hard” speech at Florida, it is like he is too good to be true. He is too nice, and thereby we want him to trip up so we can feel better. We want him to be revealed as a hypocrite, and when that fails to happen, we settle for gleefully celebrating his failures on the football field. And why? Because he dares to say thanks?
No. It's because he's not that good. And, more importantly, it's because he's built up this cult of personality that tells us we must root for his success because he's such a good person and, by extension, such a better person than us. It's not the negative reaction to Tebow that's an indication of moral weakness or a character flaw; it's the breathless worship and reflexive moral superiority that we're supposed to imbue to the 47.5% of passes he completes.
What this whole repeating cycle of Tebow — rip his game, mock his faith, rise to his defense, repeat — has revealed about religious discourse in America is ugly. We have become so enamored of politically correct dogma that we protect every minority from even the slightest blush of insensitivity while letting the very institutions that the majority holds dear to be ridiculed. And this defense that Tebow invites such scrutiny with his willingness to publicly live as he privately believes calls into question what exactly it is we value.
And herein lies the problem. Tim Tebow's value to people like Engel isn't the charity work he does. It isn't to the teammates he supports, or the fans he sends his love to. Tebow's value is that he lets people like Engel feel like enlightened victims of a society that doesn't see how good and pure she is. Tebow is the newest scapegoat in an old saga: the besiegement of true believers (or those who want to be true believers) by society at large.
If there is a problem with mocking Tim Tebow, it's that he makes it too easy. He wants the slings and arrows of the world trained on him when he does Super Bowl commercials for Focus on the Family; he is the victim whenever someone makes fun of his signature kneel. That victimization feeds into the legend of Tebow and his flock, and makes him all the stronger even as he continues to be a poor man's Donovan McNabb (who is, at this point, his own poor man's Donovan McNabb). It doesn't matter what he does on the field, it just matters that he's morally superior while he does it.
Tim Tebow, as far as I can tell, isn't a bad guy. He's just a sanctimonious pseudo-dick whom a great number of people think can do no wrong because Ephesians is rattling around his head instead of his receiver's route. His sin isn't bowing to God on the field; it's empowering religious and cultural forces who've spent decades mercilessly mocking others to, once again, claim they're the victims in all of this.
Back from Skepticon and still trying to catch up! Fun was had by all, mostly because of the onstage talks and offstage conversations, but there was a very exciting incident that also happened during the conference.
For those who can't read it, it says "Skepticon is NOT welcomed to my Christian Business." This was very exciting for we atheists at Skepticon, since clear-cut proof of overt discrimination is so hard to come by in our era of everyone pretending to be tolerant even while promoting intolerance, and almost every blogger who saw this wrote a post about it, except perhaps myself and Lindsay Beyerstein. The owner has since apologized for his hasty actions, and now there's a raging debate over whether or not he should be forgiven or not. I participated a little, since I generally think that we can't move forward on progressive issues if we don't accept sincere apologies from people who've been overtly prejudiced or bigoted, and allowed that human beings can and do grow. But now I realize that I kind of don't give a shit, on a fundamental level. I just don't see this sort of thing as bigotry in the same way that I would see, say, a sign that says "No Muslims allowed" as bigotry. Before you crap your pants and write angry letters, let me explain.
Thing is, I don't see atheism and especially atheist activism as being primarily about protecting the rights of atheists as a group. I think a lot of people prefer that model, because it's a nice, comfortable one that makes it easy to align it with civil rights, gay rights, and feminism. The problem with it is that unlike with those other situations, is that the argument for mutual tolerance, nay, acceptance, is a lot easier to make when it comes to religious groups, racial groups, sexual orientation, and gender. Gay rights is no real threat to straight people. Women having rights isn't anti-male. Black power doesn't mean white people can't hold jobs or go to school anymore. Accepting Muslims into your community doesn't mean you can't be Christian anymore. That conservatives have to lie and claim these things are true just shows how empty their actual arguments are.
I suppose if atheists were willing as a group to relegate atheism to being just another religious belief, then we could probably limit ourselves to using the oppression/rights model of activism, though it would really seem kind of silly since atheists---unlike women, people of color, or gays---tend to be better-educated and wealthier than the dominant group. But we're not content to allow ourselves to be defined as a religious group. On the contrary, the whole point of atheism is that it's not religious. We tend to argue that there isn't a god or gods. We argue that religion is a hypothesis on how the world works, and we criticize it. While many atheists do in fact get oppressed when they speak out, it's not usually because they're atheists per se, but because of what they're doing, which is criticizing religion. This may seem like a distinction without difference to you, but I really don't think that it is, to myself or to most Americans. I make a similiar distinction between oppression against women and hostility to feminism. They're related in a lot of ways, but that someone on a blog makes rape threats at me because he disagrees with my ideas is different than when some guy sexually harasses me on the street because he can see that I'm a lady. In one case, they're arguing---crudely, unfairly, and pointlessly---with an idea and in the latter they're just hating on me for what I am. These distinctions, by the way, are an excellent way to maintain my sanity.
It's important to understand that atheists scare religious people not because we're different, in other words, but because our beliefs do literally threaten their own. We don't simply present ourselves as another religious group whose beliefs can be kept to ourselves. We openly and unabashedly argue that religion is toxic and we'd like to see it end, just as we believe sexism and racism are toxic and should end. This is an argument over what people believe, not who they are. Religious people frustrate us to no end because they deliberately conflate "what I believe" with "who I am"---this guy with the sign did so---and I think it's a bad idea to do exactly the same thing out of expedience. In order to maintain that narrative, we would pretty much have to shut up about how religion is illogical and stupid, so that we can make this about identity and not arguments. In a narrow sense, this guy was bigoted because he refused to serve the gelato, but as soon as he stopped doing that and apologized, I think "bigotry" is the wrong framework to employ. Now I think it's more valuable to talk about why it is that atheism is such a threat, and the reason is that atheism as an idea is threatening, no matter how much atheists as people can get along with our neighbors in day-to-day interactions.
Sigh. The one thing that makes a gleeful, Hitchens-esque pissing on Hitchens' grave less fun is all the god-botherers who are doing it wrong. I mean, I suppose we shouldn't be surprised, as the authoritarian conformists who exploit every opportunity to preen about their imaginary sky friend display very little in the way of imagination or humor, but man, it's still a major bummer seeing "let's pretend the atheist wasn't an atheist". 
I'm a little disappointed that none of the atheist blogs I read 
Notable Christian (and unnotable quarterback) Tim Tebow is everyone's favorite topic of sports conversation, and, more importantly, the topic of this exact conversation over and over again:
