Lake Neuron

The always-funny Joe Bob Briggs, writing in the Wittenburg Door, has a frank, funny and self-deprecating account of attending an atheists’ convention, including speeches from Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens et al. Here are a few choice samples:

Silverman is a smart guy, and if I had to sum up the common characteristics of the people who gathered in Crystal City, that would be it: they’re smart. Atheism is for smart people. That’s both its strength and its weakness. It’s a trait they share with the Libertarian Party, by the way, which probably has a fair number of atheists among its adherents…. There’s no sense of responsibility for making “the least of us” part of the secret.

Most of what the atheists say about religion is absolutely true. We don’t need to look any further than the Catholic sex abuse scandals–11,000 victims of 4,300 priests, and that’s only the ones we’ve been able to count–to find concrete examples of active evil done in the name of God. And it’s certainly not surprising if some of those victims leave the church and become atheists. What is surprising is what the atheists want to replace that with.

Encountering this sort of faith in human intelligence in 2008 is a little like visiting Wall Street and finding a 1920s-style industrialist who’s still investing in giant dam projects. We tried that already!

It’s a great read. I haven’t contributed to the Door in a few years. Last year, I made contact with the editor, and told him I wanted to get back involved, and he sent me a book to read, with the goal of getting an interview with the author. But things got crazy here, and I literally lost the book, and even the name of the author.

But I still subscribe, and I still love the magazine. I love their usual critique of televangelists and other religion-abusers, and I love it when they go after the other side as well.