Faith vs. the Faithless

"When this country was founded, James Madison envisioned a noisy public square with different religious denominations arguing, competing and balancing each other’s passions. But now the landscape of religious life has changed. Now its most prominent feature is the supposed war between the faithful and the faithless. Mitt Romney didn’t start this war, but speeches like his both exploit and solidify this divide in people’s minds. The supposed war between the faithful and the faithless has exacted casualties.
The first casualty is the national community. Romney described a community yesterday. Observant Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, Jews and Muslims are inside that community. The nonobservant are not. There was not even a perfunctory sentence showing respect for the nonreligious. I’m assuming that Romney left that out in order to generate howls of outrage in the liberal press.
The second casualty of the faith war is theology itself. In rallying the armies of faith against their supposed enemies, Romney waved away any theological distinctions among them with the brush of his hand. In this calculus, the faithful become a tribe, marked by ethnic pride, a shared sense of victimization and all the other markers of identity politics."

David Brooks, NY Times, December 7, 2007

This is actually quite scary. It has an uncanny resemblance to how Hitler made the Jews an internal enemy. However, for Romney it's more of an attempt to say: "Look, they're more deviant than me!".

Public Opinion About... Atheists

Yep, it's that time again when they survey what Americans think of various religious groups. This time the Pew Research centre has measured what people think of Mormons, and it's as depressing as always:

Religion beat became a test of faith

"WHEN Times editors assigned me to the religion beat, I believed God had answered my prayers.
As a serious Christian, I had cringed at some of the coverage in the mainstream media. Faith frequently was treated like a circus, even a freak show.
I wanted to report objectively and respectfully about how belief shapes people's lives. Along the way, I believed, my own faith would grow deeper and sturdier.
But during the eight years I covered religion, something very different happened."

William Lobdell, LA Times, July 21, 2007

A quite interesting article on how a reporter on religion lost his faith.

God ’08: Whose, and How Much, Will Voters Accept?

"Polls in recent years have shown a clear shift in religious considerations. The vast majority of Americans at this point, said Mr. Green, care less about sectarian affiliation, at least among members of faiths that are now perceived to be part of the American mainstream — Protestants, Catholics and most recently Jews — and more generally about whether the candidate believes in God and how that lends itself to a moral framework.
A national telephone survey released earlier this year by the Pew Research Center asked which traits, including being black, a woman, a Mormon, a Muslim, or a homosexual, would help or hurt a candidate the most. The worst trait for a candidate to possess? “Doesn’t believe in God.”

The New York Times, July 22, 2007

The article itself doesn't say anything else about atheism, but this graph is appalling enough.

Polygamy fueling Arizonas rate of genetic disorder

“Arizona has about half the world’s population of known fumarase deficiency patients,” said Dr. Theodore Tarby, a pediatric neurologist who has treated many of the children at Arizona clinics under contracts with the state.

[...]

“It exists in a certain percentage of the broader population but once you get a tendency to inbreed you’re inbreeding people who have the gene there, so you markedly increase the risk of developing the condition,” he said.
The community of about 10,000 people, who shun outsiders and are taught to avoid newspapers, television and the Internet, is home to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), a sect that broke from the mainstream Mormon church 72 years ago over polygamy.

[...]

Local historian Benjamin Bistline said 75 to 80 percent of people in the area are blood relatives of two men — John Y. Barlow and Joseph Smith Jessop — who founded the sect on the remote desert plateau in the early 1930s.
“There aren’t any new people coming in. It’s a closed door and that gene just keeps getting passed around,” said Bruce Wisan, a court-appointed accountant overseeing a trust of the sect’s assets.

Msnbc.msn.com, June 14, 2007

We actually see the same thing with Pakistani immigrants in Norway. A lot of them come from the same rural area in Pakistan, and they have been inbreeding between cousins for quite a while. Traditions are to blame.

[Comment] Gingrich's War on 'Secularism'

"All 43 American presidents – even those who doubted religion – associated themselves with the Christian faith. Today, it is still far easier for a politician from a fringe religious sect, such as Mormonism, to be a serious national candidate than it would be for an atheist or an agnostic.
Yet, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is basing his political comeback, in part, on an assertion that the real bias in America is against those who believe in religion and that “radical secularism” is oppressing them.

[...]

There is, of course, a grave danger when a powerful group begins to view itself as the victim, because its real power allows these ersatz oppressed to inflict far greater harm on their imaginary persecutors than could a group with little or no power.

Historically, the world has seen this phenomenon many times, such as when Christians in Europe convinced themselves that they were at the mercy of cunning Jews. Many of the continent’s anti-Jewish pogroms were conducted by Christians convinced that they were simply defending their way of life, that they were the real victims."

Robert Parry, Baltimore Chronicle, May 21, 2007.

[Survey] Is There Disdain For Evangelicals In the Classroom?

"Tobin asked professors at all kinds of colleges -- public and private, secular and religious, two-year and four-year -- to rate their feelings toward various religious groups, from very warm or favorable to very cool or unfavorable. He said he designed the question primarily to gauge anti-Semitism but found that professors expressed positive feelings toward Jews, Buddhists, Roman Catholics and most other religious groups.

The only groups that elicited highly negative responses were evangelical Christians and Mormons.

[...]

Nelson, a professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said the unfavorable feelings toward evangelical Christians probably have two causes: "the particular kind of Republican Party activism that some evangelicals have engaged in over the years, as well as what faculty perceive as the opposition to scientific objectivity among some evangelicals.""

Washington Post, May 5, 2007

A whining article (In the Moonie-owned Washington Post), but interesting nevertheless. It seems being anti-science does not give Evangelicals much credit in classrooms. Probably as little credit as science get in their churches.

[Psychology] Appaling acts in God's name

"The [Catholic] priest who hears confessions encounters a wide range of sexual practices, ranging from adultery to homosexuality, and masturbation to zoophilia. Do we really understand and appreciate the force of this knowledge on a priest whose sexual experience is limited? Isn't this something like the experiment in which people are instructed not to think about a white elephant, and who then find themselves unable to avoid thinking of that elephant? "

Nielsen, M. E. (2003). Appalling acts in god's name. Society, 40(3), 16-19.

[Christopher Hitchens] God Is Not Great (excerpts)

"This week Slate is publishing three excerpts from Christopher Hitchens' new book, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything."

Slate.com April 27, 2007

[Opinion] Atheism, like any other belief, deserves Americans' respect

"According to the 2001 American Religious Identification Survey conducted by the U.S. Census, 15 percent of the adult population is atheistic, agnostic or otherwise non-religious. In comparison, Jews and Mormons each constitute 1.4 percent of the population, 0.6 percent of Americans are Muslims, and 0.05 percent are Buddhists.

Yet in the U.S. Congress and Senate, the religious demographics do not match up with those of the population. Among the 535 members, only one representative - Pete Stark, D-Calif. - is publicly non-religious. This comes to roughly 0.2 percent of the whole membership of Congress, compared to 15 percent of the public."

Linsen Li, The Kentucky Kernel, Apr 2, 2007

(But of course Atheism is not a belief. ;) )