Megyn Kelly, Bill O’Reilly and Atheists

It’s difficult to argue with people who blur the line between what they want to be true and what is true.  Invariably, these are the same people who would rather feel than think, or be passionate rather than analytical.  You can’t find a better example on TV than Bill O’Reilly.  In dealing with this contentious atheist sign in the Washington State capitol building, O’Reilly seems to think that crossing his fingers, raising his voice, and wishing wth all his heart will change the law that allowing one religious display opens the door for every other one.

Further, as his frequent guest Megyn Kelly has pointed out, O’Reilly believes that Christine Gregiore or the government (or if all else fails, himself) should be the arbiter of what is appropriate and inappropriate to display.  Yes, apparently he can’t seem to understand that sort of the the whole point of America is that the government can never, ever make decisions like that.

But back to the original point: O’Reilly is someone who can’t separate the passionate from the analytical, and Megyn Kelly can.  Watching her shred O’Reilly’s “arguments” to pieces with just a few stated facts is like watching an instructional video on how to defeat logical fallacies.

O’Reilly: “It just isn’t decent behavior around Christmas.”  Kelly: “So what?  It’s the law.”

O’Reilly: “Governor Gregiore could have denied the atheist sign because it’s inappropriate.” Kelly: “No, the government is strictly forbidden from doing that.”

O’Reilly: “Atheism isn’t the same as a religion.”  Kelly: “The Supreme Court says otherwise.”

To be clear, I’m an atheist myself, and I also agree with O’Reilly’s point that the sign was a childish and inappropriate gesture.  But my personal opinion about the matter doesn’t change reality, it doesn’t change the law, and it doesn’t make Ms. Kelly any less correct.

Why can’t we see more discerning people like Megyn Kelly on TV?  It’s difficult to express how much I think we need more people like her, people who can cut through all the anti-intellectualism and populism of the talking heads.  The tragedy is that those like her are so rare – although I suppose that makes it more likely that we stop and listen when she speaks.

If I can try to make a larger point, it seems that most people, most of the time, would rather feel than think.  They’d rather be passionate than analytical.  And they distrust those who are more of the latter, because they equate having a soul with being passionate.  Being passionate is just as important as being analytical, but one should not be at the expense of the other.  The two don’t have to be mutually exclusive, as so many people seem to think.  There’s a time and a place for both.

Wishing and hoping are intrinsic and wonderful parts of being human.  But they don’t change reality.  Those like O’Reilly out there – the majority, as far as I can tell – should understand that shouting, emoting and being morally outraged doesn’t lend any weight to their position.  As rational beings, we should always attempt to explain objective reality, not futilely hope to change it.  Just listen to Megyn Kelly to get the hang of it.

Atheist Nonsense in Washington State, Part Two

As an atheist, there’s something I find troubling about the way the Freedom From Religion Foundation is presenting their case with this “Winter Solstice” sign placed next to a nativity scent.  I’ve heard reps from the organization saying that Christians “stole” the celebration of Winter Solstice and added their tale of a resurrected carpenter to it, so now the atheists are just trying to get their rightful holiday back.

I don’t really care about the genesis of Christmas or Winter Solstice, and I don’t care that Christmas has pagan roots and rituals.  Nor do I give a damn about the legality in the case of these displays in the capitol building (other than the fact that the government should not be making decisions about what is decent or indecent).  The point here is that I’m starting to feel ashamed to be lumped in with these quasi-faithful atheists who seem to suffer from the political-correctness rot that is infecting this country.  I agree with everything their display says, but to pit it against Christmas is worthy of the anti-intellectualism rampant in the arguments of the very people they’re trying to refute.

It’s no wonder that Christians view atheism as merely some comepting ideology.  They see atheists pointlessly trumpeting a pretend holiday to replace Christmas and using their display to attack them.  But atheism is not supposed to be about combating Christianity or trying to find a non-religious analogue for Christmas; it’s supposed to be about using reason instead of faith.  We’re supposed to be rejecting the existence of a god for one reason only:  There’s no evidence for it.  If you’re an atheist solely because you don’t like Christianity, you’re not using reason, so you might as well go choose a faith.

Some of these atheists are actually bitching that a nativity scene is “offensive” because it injects the holiday with the idea that everyone besides Christians will go to hell.  Seriously?  Are you really offended by that?  This is what the faithful do, not the reasonable.  Do you really want to demote yourself to a group demanding special concessions for your “sacred belief?”  Honestly, are we next going to see atheists bringing lawsuits against evangelical churches for emotional damage?  I remember when a bunch of Muslim taxi drivers refused to pick up passengers with alcohol.  If I see something similar, such as atheist clerks refusing to sell Easter baskets, I swear to the “Winter Solstice” that I’m becoming a Catholic.

Needless to say, most Americans (whether they’re religious or not) don’t view Christmas as some reminder that the heathens will burn in hell.  It’s a time for being nice, stuffing your face, visiting your family, and making kids happy.  Why not have the debate about reason and faith in the proper format?  By using these puerile tactics to get attention, all you’re doing is reinforcing the notion to every faithful person our there that atheism is not based on reason or evidence, but on sacred beliefs that compete with their own.  In other words, you’re hurting the cause of reason.

Atheist Nonsense in Washington State

In the Washington State capitol building, a group has put up a display celebrating “Winter Solstice” next to a Christmas nativity scene.  On this display is a line about there being no gods, about reason being paramount, and then the kicker: It says something to the effect that religion “hardens hearts and enslaves men.”  The atheist group just had to put that up next to the Christmas display – I’m sure they’ll say something about how they have a right to display their beliefs on public property.

In other words, these atheists are a bunch of douchebags.

Let’s be clear: I’m a pretty hardcore skeptic.  I repeatedly put up posts attacking creationist and Christian arguments and the notion of so-called biblical morality.  I mock Christians who excuse their deity for genocide, rape, and infanticide.  I think that there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to factually treat Christianity any different from a common fairy tale.  I think most of the “evidence” many Christians present is idiotic and their attacks on science and evolution are misguided and pathetic.

But this is just stupid.  This is nothing but feckless animosity.  Putting up that idiotic display doesn’t serve any purpose except pissing people off – people who just want to celebrate their freaking holiday how they want.  Christmas is a holiday that has roots in both Christianity and paganism, but really, who cares?  It’s an American tradition, and Americans have the right to celebrate it without being trampled on.  There’s no religious agenda being pushed here; there’s no danger of a theocracy being set up because of a nativity scene.

Did this atheist group really need to do this?  Can’t they find something better to do, some cause that actually has merit perhaps?  Winter Solstice?  You have to be freaking joking.  These types of atheists seem to revel in pointing out that they don’t need gods and the comfort of an afterlife, and they just love shoving it in Christians’ faces.  But statements like this smack of them finding “divine” comfort in their own faith-based ideology.  If they truly hold reason in high esteem, perhaps they would see the contradiction.

And this isn’t just about Christians, anyway.  Celebrating Christmas doesn’t mean you have to worship a carpenter or believe in talking snakes.  If nothing else, Christmas is a good reason to be nice and see your family.  Now, is anyone opposed to that?

You can make it whatever you want, you can put on an air of superiority and call it “Winter Solstice” or whatever the fuck.  But why do you feel the need to ruin it for others?  What purpose does it serve to intentionally antagonize others when they just want to celebrate a family holiday?

To the atheists out there who support this crap: Pick your battles.  And grow up.

Humanists Spoiling Christmas

The other night on The O’Reilly Factor, he had the president of a humanist organization that had paid for a Washington DC billboard ad.  It said: “Why Believe in a god?  Just Be Good for Goodness Sake” and displayed a picture of Santa Claus.  Though O’Reilly had no problem with the second part of the message, he accused the guy of being provocative on purpose to try to insult Christians “just in time for Christmas.”

Okay, fine: The ad is definitely provocative, and I’m sure the humanist organization knew that it would be.  So what?  It’s hardly insulting to ask a profound question like, “Why believe in a god?”  The whole point of the humanist view is that you don’t need a deity (and definitely not organized religion) to be a good moral person.  How can they express that point without asking a tough question like that?

People, this is without a doubt one of the most important questions in existence, one of the fundamental aspects of our lives.  A question like this has so many different layers and cuts across so many lines.  It’s central to what it means to be a human being.  And we’re not supposed to ask it for fear of insulting someone who believes?

What a joke.  I’m so tired of hearing this position that “my faith deserves special respect.”  I’m sorry, but it doesn’t.  This is America.  Your faith gets no special treatment whatsoever.  All you get is the right to worship however you wan – but that means you have to live alongside others who disagree, and even others who think your faith is wrong, ridiculous, or even immoral.

The point of the ad’s “provocative” question was that being moral because God wants you to is kind of an oxymoron.  Morality is not obedience.  You should be moral because it’s the right thing to do, not because God tells you it’s the right thing to do.  Me, I’m a bit callous.  I would put it another way that I’m sure would be incredibly insulting to some, but that I think is completely valid: “Why should I worship a god who kills babies and sanctions rape?”

I’m not trying to insult Christians with a question like that; it’s the truth.  It’s right there in the Old Testament.  I’d like an answer.  The old standby of “those things are okay if God does them” is – in my view – pathetically inadequate.

In my experience, most religious people are quite proud to admit why they believe in their god.  If you can’t even answer a basic question like that about your faith, perhaps the problem is yours.  Maybe Christians should stop being insulted by a provocative question like “Why believe in a god?” and instead try to answer it.

The Left-Wing Propaganda Machine

A couple weeks ago when Rick Warren asked John McCain how he would define “rich” (for the purpose of tax policy), the senator replied with a joke: “I don’t know, how about $5 million?”  It elicited a laugh from the audience, and McCain went on to say that people would surely take such a statement out of context.

Last night I got the new issue of Rolling Stone in the mail, and they mocked John McCain.  Next to a picture of him holding fistfuls of cash was this: “John McCain, when asked to define what makes someone rich: ‘How about $5 million?’”

Now I’m pretty sure the Rolling Stone editors knew exactly the context of that quote.  Jesus Christ, McCain even said that people like this would take it out of context, and Rolling Stone did it anyway!  I can just imagine all the kids who read this magazine that might not ever know what McCain really said.  I know Rolling Stone is an admitted left-wing publication, but this is dishonest and unfair.  That representation was a flat-out lie.

How about Rolling Stone print how John McCain actually responded to that question: “I don’t want to take anyone’s money; I want everyone to be rich.”

Jon Stewart is another example.  He created a cute little montage that showed Bill O’Reilly taking it easy on the Palin family about Bristol’s pregnancy and saying that it should be private business, then played a clip of O’Reilly calling the Spears family pinheads (when news of Jaime Lynn Spears’s pregnancy came out).  Stewart’s audience laughed and cheered at this display, thinking it evidence of O’Reilly’s hypocrisy and right-wing bias.  But this was completely disingenuous.  As O’Reilly himself pointed out, Stewart took him out of context eight times.

O’Reilly was calling the Spears family pinheads because of a general lack of parental supervision in the household, not just because of the teenage pregnancy.  Lynn Spears sold pictures of her teenage daughter’s baby for cash and press.  We should all be calling her a freaking pinhead.  I think everyone can agree Sarah Palin is not Lynn Spears.  And unless Stewart wants to claim that the level of responsibility and supervision in the Palin household and Spears household are equal, then O’Reilly wasn’t guilty of hypocrisy or bias.

The left always whines about right-wing propaganda, but here are clear examples of the opposite.  I’m as socially liberal as anyone; I can’t believe that I have to take the position of defending John McCain, Sarah Palin, and Bill O’Reilly.  No, I take that back – I’m not defending them.  I like to think that I’m defending rationality.  Reason.  Honesty.  The truth has intrinsic value, regardless of political partisanship.

Spike Lee and Fox News

At the Democratic National Convention, I saw one of Bill O’Reilly’s cameras get turned away by Spike Lee.  Apparently the director doesn’t “do Fox News.”  I’d ask him to explain why, but I’m sure he’d run off the same old sniveling spiel about Fox News being full of biased, far-right, propaganda-merchants.  Translation:  Spike Lee and his intellectual peers are mewling infants who can’t take the heat.

It was ironic that not twenty minutes later, I was listening to the radio, and the station I tune into is a Canadian station based out of Victoria.  The DJ was talking about the DNC, and he was earnestly explaining to a caller about how Fox News was an “ultra-far-right organization” that spent the whole time “crapping all over the Democrats” at the convention.

Really?  I was watching The O’Reilly Factor on the convention, and O’Reilly didn’t say one single thing that could even come close to be considered “crapping on” a Democrat.  He also had on just as many Democrats and Obama supporters as he did Republicans and McCain supporters as analysts.

The Hannity & Colmes.  Sure, Hannity spends all his time trying to make sure a Democrat doesn’t make it to the White House.  So what?  Colmes does the exact same thing on the other side of the coin.  And again, their guests consist of Democrats as well as Republicans.

It’s so sickening to hear people constantly whine about Fox News.  And that’s what it is: whining.  That’s all it is.  In almost every instance of cries about “right-wing propaganda” on Fox News, what the whiner really means is that Fox News gives conservatives a voice.  And they can’t handle that.  For a short foray into pop psychology, I’d say they have a sense of self-entitlement.  That is, they think the world revolves around them and that they’re always right.  Therefore, anyone who would dare disagree with them must be doing something wrong.

I don’t agree with conservatives on a lot of things, especially social issues.  I even think they’re on the wrong side of morality sometimes.  But they have every right to their positions, and Fox News has every right to give them a voice.  It is the whining babies like Spike Lee who “don’t do Fox News” who are the propagandists.  They’re the ones who won’t give conservatives a voice, won’t meet them in debate, won’t put their ideas into the free market to be challenged.  This is more than rank cowardice; it approaches a fascist viewpoint.

So Fox News leans to the right.  So what?  CNN and NBC lean to the left.  The BBC topples over into the left.  Here’s a shocker for the Fox-News-haters out there:  No institution operated by human beings will ever be unbiased.  It’ sup to you – a supposed intelligent, discerning, rational observer – to take in the information and process it.

Lesbians on The O’Reilly Factor

On The O’Reilly Factor the other night, I heard about a lesbian couple being kicked out of Safeco Field in Seattle for kissing.  In an interview, one of the women claimed that it was nothing inappropriate – apparently the two of them had been eating onion rings, so she said “the last thing we wanted to do was make out.”  But a woman who was nearby complained because she didn’t want her child to witness to horror of a same-sex kiss.

What country does this woman thinks she lives in?  From what I heard, it was simply a little smooching, like you might see between couples a dozen times a day in public.  Of course there are reasonable lines to be drawn about public displays of affection, but should it be drawn at kissing?  This has to be a joke.  We’re not living under the freaking Taliban.

Too often I hear these kinds of cases degenerate into the argument that “gay couples have the same right to show affection as heterosexual couples.”  This is obvious.  We all know it, and we all know that it’s an entirely moral position to hold.  Anyone who thinks a person should be afforded less rights because of their sexual orientation is a bigot and no longer worthy of the effort required to respond to them.  The real question is: Why should anyone care whether gay couples are kissing in public?

I have no gripe about how O’Reilly dealt with this story, other than how he pointed out that the gay woman had been “defiant” about her right to kiss her partner.  Good for her.  I’m glad she was defiant.  Who wouldn’t be?  Imagine if someone came up to you and told you to stop kissing your girlfriend or boyfriend in public.

I want to focus on the woman who complained.  It gets really tiresome to hear parents asking us to respect this position of theirs by using their kids as the excuse.  “My child shouldn’t have to see this, how can I explain this to my child, my child is too young to deal with this issue.”  These parents are starting to sound more like children themselves with their incessant whining.  In today’s culture, two human beings showing affection with a kiss is about the last thing we should be concerned about as a bad influence.

Hey, parents: Your kids aren’t morons.  They’ve seen people kiss before.  They’re going to see gay people kiss no matter what you do.  They’re capable of learning age-appropriate lessons about love, relationships, and sexuality.  And check this out:  They don’t care one bit about gay couples until someone else impresses upon them that it’s wrong.

That’s right – there would be no problem here whatsoever if parents would just try something “radical” like treating everyone the same.  Forget the bigots for a moment.  I say that even some tolerant parents need a wake-up call.  Stop telling your kids that gay people are “different but still have the same rights.”  Stop saying they need special treatment.  Stop making this an issue at all.  Why give homosexuals a special distinction?  Include them in the general lesson that all people deserve respect based on their character.  Impress upon your child the truth: that two women or two men kissing is no more wrong – and no more your business – than a man and a woman kissing.

If your kid sees two women kissing and asks why, try this.  Instead of ignoring the issue, instead of complaining, instead of getting into a discussion about gay rights, pretend that you’re confused.  Pretend that the question is no more relevant than asking why their aunt and uncle kiss, or why the sky is blue.  Simply say: “I don’t know, I guess because they feel like kissing each other.”  Stating the obvious can sometimes speak volumes.