An atheistic comedy of errors

So I was getting ready for Mass this morning, and decided to watch MSNBC. Chris Hayes was on. I happened to stumble upon the segment gushing over that massive rally of atheists in Washington that happened yesterday.  His guests, during the part I watched, were Harvard Professor Steven Pinker, Susan Jacoby, author of Freethinkers, A History of American Secularism, Jamila Bey, host of the Sex, Politics and Religion Hour on the Voice of Russia Radio Network, and Jamie Kiltsein, a comedian  and radio host.

OK.  So here's what I heard, and if I could find a link to the program, I would post it.  If for no other reason than to share the laughter and guffawing I was able to enjoy this morning.  It began, as soon as I came to the channel, with our brave Chris Hayes admitting that he doesn't think much about his atheism.  It's not what defines him.  He doesn't give it much thought.  The guests all nodded in agreement. 

The rest of the discussion was a series of high-fives as we are informed of the various weaknesses of conservatives, religion, and the religious right.  In typical MSNBC style, there was not one shred of evidence that there might be credible opposing viewpoints in the world.  Rather much love and adoration was given to the polls that show more Americans are atheist and agnostic, even if those polls rather showed that more Americans don't identify with a particular belief, and are in fact seeking. 

In the course of the two segments, I learned this:

Chris Hayes and his guests, representing the intellectually sophisticated freethinkers, are proud of the fact that they don't give their atheism much thought.

Susan Jacoby thinks Pope John Paul II should have offed himself rather than suffer in the final days of his life.

Susan Jacoby doesn't distinguish details, but rather thinks secular conservatives and religious conservatives are all more or less fans of Ayn Rand, even though most religious conservatives, if informed of Rand's radical social Darwinism and atheism, would shockingly disavow such views.

According to Jamila Bey, African American women are the most religious group in America, even refusing to use contraceptives because their churches say so (which African American churches say this was not mentioned), even though their sexual lifestyles would suggest a need for contraceptives (because apparently this religiously devout segment attends churches that are OK with sexual promiscuity, hence the need for these devout ladies for contraceptives).  All of this really being the basis for Jamila Bey explaining that she can't help but be a zealous evangelist for the atheist cause.  Religious (or non-religious) devotion is just in the genes.

The good Steven Pinker reminds us that our notions of religious freedom and equality are firmly planted in the Western secular traditions, that religion and the Judeo-Christian tradition deserve not one iota of credit for any of this, even though the ideas of universal equality were seen by many European philosophers as being grounded in the existence of One Creator, and the early enlightenment philosophers and thinkers frequently argued from both philosophy and religion for laying the groundwork of religious freedom and human rights.  One could even suggest that such phrases as 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights' bespeak a certain tendency of those thinkers to not draw a thick line between secular thought and religious principle like modern atheists.

Kilstein, for the most part, was there to remind people of faith that they need not buy into the pop culture narrative that atheists are more tolerant or intellectually superior to people of religious faith.  Most of his rants, focusing primarily on gay rights, Gay Rights, GAY RIGHTS!, were paraphrases of the post-modern secular left's principle that says, "Look, as long as you conform to my superior dogmas and absolute infallible truths, I'm completely tolerant of anyone who agrees with me", while holding hatred of the right kind of people to be one of the highest virtues. 

But there was one moment that caught my attention.  Susan Jacoby got down to business about the Obama Administration's naked assault on Constitutional liberty.  She explained that it really isn't about contraceptives.  True.  She also added that it isn't about religious freedom.  What it's really about is religious institutions who think they can accept tax payer support for their missions without being forced by the government to conform the free exercise of their religions to the mandates of the state. 

In other words, religious institutions, and by extension the people who serve those institutions, had better plan on banishing themselves to the ghettos and the caves of Qumran, or they had get used to bowing before the mandates of Caesar.  It's the secular progressive dream.  And thus far, nobody has articulated it better than Ms. Jacoby, to the cheers and affirmations of their homogeneous panel of same-thinking freethinkers.