Good News for Atheists: We're Worse than Muslims

Is this a milestone for secularism? A new Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life survey asked evangelical leaders what worried them the most. If you guessed Islam, you guessed wrong. It's secularism!

When asked about major threats to Evangelical Christianity, secularism topped the list at 71%, followed by consumerism (67%), and sex and violence in pop culture (59%). Islam came in a distant fourth at 47%.

(I was amused that the "influence of Catholicism" is also on the list at 10%. I guess these evangelical Christians don't count Catholics among their brethren.)

This is really good news. It means secularism and atheism are making genuine progress around the world. You know you're making a difference when the opposition can't ignore you any more. And when you're their top concern worldwide, it means whatever you're doing is working.

The Pew survey had a few other fascinating

Best Christian Quote of the Year: Preacher Fail

This has to be the best Christian quote of the year:

"... [If] God doesn't destroy America pretty soon, He’s gonna have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah."
– John MacArthur, Christian evangelical author and preacher

One of the biggest problems facing America today is that preachers like John MacArthur are diverting us from the real problems.

MacArthur is one of those doom-and-gloom preachers who love to preach darkness and damnation. He must be pretty famous because he's authored or edited something like 150 books. (One has to suspect there's a certain amount of redundancy in his writing after the fortieth or fiftieth book.)

His big show involves the classic Christian recipe:

• Convince his audience that everything pleasurable is actually a vile sin that's damned by God.
• Point out that everyone likes fun stuff, so we're all vile sinners.
• Connect this to confusing prophecies and irrelevant myths that were written by stone-age farmers two to three thousand years ago.
• The sky is falling! God is going to get us, and boy are you sinners going to be sorry!

Here are a couple samples:

“Materialism, drunkard pleasure seeking, arrogant conceit, defiant sinfulness, moral perversion, and corrupt leadership… Do you not see [them] in America?”

"What do we have here? We have here, folks, Anthony Weiner type people…corrupt leaders. Is there ever any end to this corruption... ?"

But the real danger from preachers like MacArthur is that they want to take over America and turn it into a theocracy

"No other nation has literally been born out of a desire to be faithful and obedient to the living and abiding Word of God. America is the first nation that separated Church and State."

It's sad how many people fall for this brand of doom-and-gloom speech. There are certainly problems in America and around the world, but not the ones MacArthur is talking about.

Did you see drug users causing the subprime mortgage crisis? No, it was bankers and

America Hates Gays, but Hates Atheists Even More!

Last week's victory legalizing gay marriage in New York was a huge step forward. Although the pace of the civil rights campaign for gays is far too slow, it's great to see steady progress.

But now there's a new cause for celebration! A new Gallup poll shows that gays have achieved another huge victory: they're far more popular than atheists! When one oppressed minority gains ground on another, isn't that cause for celebration?

No, I'm just kidding (in case anyone misses the humor). I'm really pleased that America is slowly overcoming the religion-inspired discrimination and hatred against the LGBT community. But it's rather alarming that atheists are still so widely reviled. It's a testament to the power of religious discrimination that the Christian dogma machine has managed to instill such fear and loathing of America's most law-abiding group.

For your amusement, here is the Gallup breakdown of the most-reviled minorities in America. We atheists take the prize at

Muslims Lose in Dutch Free Speech Case

There's some good news from Amsterdam: Muslims lost in a bid to censor an obnoxious right-wing politician, Geert Wilders, who is known for his harsh criticism of Islam.

But under this small victory is something much more sinister: a new trick that makes censorship seem OK.

Geert Wilder's case was dismissed on a highly-technical "escape clause" in the law. The judge ruled that Wilders' remarks were directed at Islam (the religion), not at Muslims (the people). That meant his remarks didn't constitute hate speech. Apparently in The Netherlands you can hate a thing but not a person. It's disturbing that the case was thrown out on such a thin technical issue.

This is a small victory for free speech in a modern country where free speech shouldn't even be a question. I'm frankly shocked by this case. Is it really possible that free speech is disappearing in a modern democracy?

Apparently so. Consider this story from Denmark:

Lars Hedegaard, Islamic expert and president of the International Free Press Society, was found guilty of racism today by Denmark’s Eastern High Court. He was fined about $1,000. He will appeal.

The charges stemmed from what Hedegaard says were factual statements made about the higher-than-average incidence of family rape in the Muslim world.

But under Denmark's racism law, Article 266b, it doesn't matter if what you said was true. It only matters that a group was insulted.

Got that? Telling the truth can be illegal.

European Muslims have discovered a very clever Orwellian trick. Instead of being for censorship,

Miss USA 2011: Evolution Answers a Disgrace to Women

The Miss USA competition claims to judge women based on more than just how they look in swimsuits. But the video below is a rather shocking illustration that the competitors are scientifically illiterate. I'll issue the same challenge as my fellow blogger Hemant over at Friendly Atheist: Can you watch the whole thing, or will you turn it off in disgust before it's done?

The young women were asked, "Should evolution be taught in schools?"

I did a quick count. Something like thirty six contestants said or implied "Teach both sides." About a half dozen said that evolution shouldn't be taught at all. Only three (Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Mexico) said "yes" without waffling. But even those three gave weak answers.

But not one gave the right answer. The right answer to this question is, "Yes, evolution should be taught because it's solid, proven science and is the foundation of all biological sciences. If we don't teach evolution, our students will be second-class citizens in the modern scientific world."

This leaves us with two choices. It could be that the Miss USA contest has

How Memes Die: Southern Baptists Confirm Hell is Real

Well, the Southern Baptists have confirmed that they still believe in Hell. And it's still the horrible place where a sadistic God sends most of us to be cruelly tortured forever, merely because we don't fall for that whole strange story about Jesus.

Their declaration was a rebuttal to the immensely popular Pastor Ron Bell's new book, Love Wins, in which Bell questions the traditional view of Hell. Bell, like most thoughtful Christians, rejects the outdated eternal-torture idea of Hell. He sees Hell as grossly immoral and a misinterpretation of gospel.

I love this sort of infighting. It's like watching evolution in real time, something we don't get to do very often in the biological world. When we view religions (and all of human culture) as a vast set of interacting and competing memes, we become detached from the details of the you're-right-I'm-wrong battles. Instead of caring about the fine points of the competing theologies, we can be objective observers who record the outcome of an evolutionary struggle. We actually get to see the survival-of-the-fittest battle of religion memes in their ecology, the collective brains of humanity.

In this case, we get to see the Baptist memeplex losing territory because

Fantastic Bible Quiz

Here's a fun and fascinating Bible quiz. It's long, but if you don't have the patience to take the whole quiz, you can skip to the answer sheet. Just scroll to the bottom and click on "Bible Quiz Answers."

http://ffrf.org/legacy/quiz/bquiz.php

It's from the Freedom from Religion Foundation, the same courageous group that is fighting for the rights of all atheists, agnostics, humanists, and even theists who believe in the wisdom of the Separation Clause of our Constitution.