Mingle Until Departure

via Matthew Yglesias comes this little gem outta the LA Times circa yesterday. I'm feeling kinda punchy, so we're gonna go blow-for-blow with this asshole:

In secularist doctrine, a fat person isn't merely unhealthy; he is a sinner in need of salvation. To address his situation, one secular gospel preaches the good news of the South Beach Diet, another that of the apostle Atkins.

And what, Dr. Phil Christ? Where does this guy get this stuff? Oh, right. He makes it up.
I'm no demographer, but I do know that in contemporary American society there are general links between income and religiosity (the more, the less) and income and weight (the more, the less) - but, if there's any causal relationship there at all, it would seem to be one that cleaves more along lines of class than anything else. The research that I've skimmed seems to back that up - and that the divide in America is an urban-rural one, with these other things coming as consequences of that, and not having a causal relationship between them.

There is a secular creation account — evolution through random mutation and natural selection, a just-so story increasingly challenged by scientists. A few years ago the Discovery Institute, a Seattle think tank, took out advertisements in the New York Review of Books and the New Republic listing a hundred distinguished Darwin-doubting scholars, at institutions from Berkeley to MIT.

"Increasingly challenged by scientists"? Jeez, this is too easy. Let's take a look at the Discovery Institute's Board and Fellows. Yes, that's the same Edwin Meese. And a cursory look at the credentials of those fellows - again, I'm no evolutionary biologist ("secular priest", I suppose) - doesn't reveal much that would give them any credibility in, say, debunking a universally accepted scientific theory (e.g., gravity, evolution, etc.).

Also - so freakin' what if they took out an ad? Does being able to buy advertising space now equate to being able to buy truth?

Continuing...

There is even a flood story, told in the new movie "The Day After Tomorrow," wherein a modern-day Noah (played by Dennis Quaid) warns of an impending inundation brought on by global warming. As in biblical tradition, his neighbors pay no attention and subsequently perish. At the film's end, a few survivors are picked up by helicopter from the tops of Manhattan skyscrapers, just as Noah and his family survive when their ark is cast up on the peak of Mt. Ararat.

Jesus. Okay, do we have to go over this again? I thought not.

It emerges that, in the controversies surrounding the Pledge of Allegiance and the L.A. County seal, what we're seeing is an unacknowledged interreligious civil war. Centuries ago in Europe and the Middle East, intolerant faiths sought to suppress one another, erasing symbols of their rivals wherever possible. Churches were converted to mosques, their crosses removed. Synagogues were converted into churches, their Jewish symbols effaced. Today the church of secularism agitates against its rival, the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Look, "Centuries ago in Europe and the Middle East..." these religions KILLED EACH OTHER and then converted the temples from those of the conquered to their religion of choice. Oh, and forced conversion of the survivors. Or they would kill them.

THIS IS NOT THE SAME THING. Nobody is going around the United States slaughtering Christians and installing televisions playing MTV in the place of crosses in churches. This is a false analogy.

It is also all the more insulting given that, unless things have changed since I last checked, there are several dozens of bloody religious wars going on in the world RIGHT NOW killing thousands upon thousands of people every day. In America's culture war, the only casualties - ever - have been self-appointed avenging angels of the loony Christian right killing doctors who provided abortions.

I'm not even going to bother starting into how stupid it is for this guy to be using the Abrahamic tradition as his standard and not including Islam - you know, that little religion with a billion or so followers, that also follows the teachings of the Bible, the Prophets, Jesus, and all that?

In the interest of honest debate, at the very least it would be of benefit to recognize secularism for what it is: an aggressive religion competing for converts, a faith lacking the candor to speak openly of its aims.

Doesn't a religion generally have, you know, an organizing set of beliefs and principles? Maybe some texts? Maybe some hierarchy, some leaders?

Oh yeah - and a religion generally decides these things for itself. Even the Scientologists acknowledge L. Ron Hubbard as their, um, whatever he is.

The minute the secular menace gets organized and gets tax-exempt status, I'll let ya know.