I don’t wish to insult Oriana Fallaci, Schopenhauer and Ayn Rand by grouping a bargain-basement mind like this with them, so I won’t dignify him by calling him an atheist. Richard Dawkins claims that the honorable word “atheist” has negative connotations and that we need a new word for them. Therefore, on the suggestion of a friend of mine, I shall refer to this man as a “snorklewhaker”.

The snorklewhaker says: Despite a full century of scientific insights attesting to the antiquity of life and the greater antiquity of the Earth, more than half the American population believes that the entire cosmos was created 6,000 years ago. This is, incidentally, about a thousand years after the Sumerians invented glue. Those with the power to elect presidents and congressmen—and many who themselves get elected—believe that dinosaurs lived two by two upon Noah’s Ark, that light from distant galaxies was created en route to the Earth and that the first members of our species were fashioned out of dirt and divine breath, in a garden with a talking snake, by the hand of an invisible God.

He doesn’t reveal where he got these statistics. And guess what? I know plenty of creationists and none of them believe any of this stuff. Except maybe for the part about the talking snake. But what does one expect of Newsweek?

This also reminds me of something that always amused me about the Reagan campaign. The MSM thought it had safely brainwashed everyone, so when Reagan stated publicly, as he ran for the first time, that he believed that God created the universe, they pounced gleefully.

MSM: “Hear that? This bozo believes that God created the universe! Ha, ha!”

Millions of Americans: “So do I. *vote overwhelmingly for Reagan*”

MSM: “…Whah hoppen?”

But add to this comedy of false certainties the fact that 44 percent of Americans are confident that Jesus will return to Earth sometime in the next 50 years, and you will glimpse the terrible liability of this sort of thinking. Given the most common interpretation of Biblical prophecy, it is not an exaggeration to say that nearly half the American population is eagerly anticipating the end of the world. It should be clear that this faith-based nihilism provides its adherents with absolutely no incentive to build a sustainable civilization—economically, environmentally or geopolitically.

Again, he doesn’t give his source for these startling statistics. Every Christian I know personally has accepted what the Gospels say: “But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.” (Matthew 24:36) Plus, a Christian friend of mine was recently telling me that she and other Christians were opposing some proposal… I think it was about forcing everyone to get their Social Security numbers tattooed on their bodies or something along those lines… because it sounds like a prophecy in Revelations about the end times. Got that? Christians are opposing this measure because allowing it could help bring about the end of the world. They’re not eagerly awaiting it as this snorklewhaker claims.

Now let’s see how much respect for science this snorklewhaker actually has:

A case in point: embryonic-stem-cell research is one of the most promising developments in the last century of medicine. It could offer therapeutic breakthroughs for every human ailment (for the simple reason that stem cells can become any tissue in the human body), including diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, severe burns, etc. In July, President George W. Bush used his first veto to deny federal funding to this research.

“Promising”. “It could”. A Marine I used to know liked to answer such pie-in-the-sky speculations with, “Yeah, and monkeys could fly out of my —.” Thus far, embryonic stem-cell research has not uncovered even one discovery of any use whatsoever. Research based on adult stem cells, which doesn’t require killing anybody, has already reaped tremendous gains. Private companies are pouring money into this research. They won’t bother with embryonic stem-cell research because there’s been no indication that it will ever be in any way useful. Notice that embryonic stem-cell research is still legal. What its proponents are whining about is that now those who practice it must find the money on their own, instead of getting the government to steal it from all those suckers who work. Also note the snorklewhaker’s insinuations that fetuses are not people. It is an essential ingredient of totalitarianism to define some people as “less than human”; Jews, blacks, homosexuals, the unborn, women - whoever’s the most powerless in that society.

According to a religious worldview, if a 3-day-old embryo is killed, its soul will go to Heaven. According to an atheistic worldview, its soul will go down the toilet, never to be allowed to live. Why is it that people who don’t believe in an afterlife usually have so much less respect for human life?

In short, embryonic stem-cell research is justified by the premise that killing some people is okay if it might conceivably benefit others who have been deemed to have a greater right to life, even though the chances are astronomically remote. But the snorklewhaker puts it differently:

The truth is that President Bush’s unjustified religious beliefs about the human soul are, at this very moment, prolonging the scarcely endurable misery of tens of millions of human beings.

What a sweeping statement. Too bad that anyone who knows the facts can see it for the bald-faced lie that it is.

Religion is the one area of our discourse in which people are systematically protected from the demand to give good evidence and valid arguments in defense of their strongly held beliefs.

For someone who holds a lot of beliefs with no evidence or valid arguments, that’s an awfully ironic statement.

Consequently, we are living in a world in which millions of grown men and women can rationalize the violent sacrifice of their own children by recourse to fairy tales.

Fairy tales such as “Embryos are not human beings”?