Atheists know religion

In a recent survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, atheists and agnostics scored highest when asked 32 questions about religion. I’m not surprised. I’ve heard it said that to get into a church you just have to believe but you will be asked to leave if you have knowledge or smarts.

This goes along with what I’ve seen with your ordinary Christian. They tend not to examine their religion too closely for fear of discovering something that might shake their faith. Although many participate in Bible studies I don’t think they study the Bible like a non-believer does. They typically study the Bible to find support for it and discard anything that poses a problem. Many, many books have been written on the problems in the Bible and when you read these books you find them filled with perverted and twisted linguistic logic.

To give an example how Christians can twist the Bible I heard pastor on a Christian radio station (yes, I do listen to them) try to explain Rev. 3:11, “Behold, I come quickly: hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown.” The pastor focused on the word “quickly” saying that the writer used the word “quickly” to mean sudden or explosive versus “quickly” meaning soon. Elsewhere in the Bible “quickly” was used to mean soon as in “get here quickly.”

His point, I guess, was to dispel the notion that Jesus would come back soon. Instead he was building a case for Jesus coming back with a “boom” and some time in the future. In essence he perverted the word to get over a difficulty in the Bible.

But anyways back to the Pew Forum survey, it may not have been fair to ask Christians about other religions as they are focused on their own Christianity. Atheists, on the other hand, tend to examine many religions along with Christianity to see if any of them make sense. In the process Atheists come up to speed on religions more than your average Evangelical in the Bible belt of the US. I wouldn't read too much into this survey but at the same time if you can get an evangelical to really study the Bible, you may end up sowing the seeds of doubt. Whoa, wouldn’t that be a kicker!

Carving up America

Something very disturbing is happening to America. There are two Americas, one is conservative and the other is every thing else.

I tend not to say that the other America is liberal because I don’t really think the liberal bent is that persuasive despite what the right might say. Oh to be sure there are those areas of the country that are liberal like Massachusetts, but I think that the parts of the country that are not conservative are, to some extent, standing on the sidelines watching what is going on. And what is going on is disturbing.

The conservative America is increasingly becoming more hyper biased fueled in part by the right wing extremists. By that I mean that what ever bias the conservative right has, it gets hyped up by far the right nut cases and then the media picks up on it and it goes into hyper drive.

Look at the BS over the Islamic Cultural Center in NYC. Notice I didn’t say Mosque. Some right wing nutters whipped up fellow nutters to make this whole issue a case of Christian America against the Muslims. Normally I would say fine, you Christians go battle it out with the Muslims and let me know when it’s over. But since we are fighting a faction of Islam in Iraq and Afghanistan, does it make sense that we polarize the situation any more than it already is?

Also the dumbness of the stuff the far right puts out is beyond comprehension. Never mind what the facts are, the right has their views and damn anyone else. As in the case of the Islamic Cultural Center, the opposition was whipped up by Pamela Geller, a right wing blogger. One visit to her web site is enough to show you that facts don’t mean anything.

Trying to talk sensibly to them is a waste of time. All they like to do is shout and at the end of the day, nothing is accomplished. Sounds like the GOP to me!