Richard Dawkins, Making My Day

A link from the Richard Dawkins Foundation for “Reason” and Science showed up on my Facebook wall this week.  A lot of my friends like his page, so I get to giggle at his stuff often.

This week, he showed the seven US states that, as he put it, “ban atheists from holding public office.”  They included Texas, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, Maryland and Pennsylvania.  I went “perk” because I live in Pennsylvania.  I know our insane governor has many problems with gays which we have yet to cure him of, although we will when we throw his ass out of office.   I never knew we had issues with atheists.

Good old Richard Dawkins went so far as to put the number of the statute in PA’s state law that shows where atheists are banned.

It took me seven seconds to find it and realize it was a lie.  The law states: “No person who acknowledges the being of a God and a future state of rewards and punishments shall, on account of his religious sentiments, be disqualified to hold any office or place of trust or profit under this Commonwealth.”

How can any slightly educated person read that and translate it into atheists are banned from holding office?

It’s just like Fox “News.”  They make shit up and their sycophants eat it up and believe it to be true.  Dawkins probably decided to lie because the story works better if at least one state isn’t a crazy southern state.

I would think a site that uses the word reason in its title would have some.

Atheists are welcome to run for office in PA, as long as they’re not gay and want to get married.

Richard Dawkins believes in reason and science but has a bit of trouble with the truth

I love The Belle Jar blog, and she wrote a brilliant comeback to Richard Dawkins’ insulting and factually inaccurate story on Ishtar/Easter.  I wish I knew how to link that here but I’ll figure that out someday.

I’ve had my share of discussions with atheists, both in real life and on social media, and the one thing they trumpet over and over is what great critical thinkers they are.

Yet when Richard Dawkins publishes pabulum like that, they accept it hook, line and sinker and instantly go on the offensive against Christians.  They accept it with the same blind faith that they mock people of faith for believing what their parents taught them.  At least when my parents taught me, I was four.  What is their excuse for being the least critical thinkers imaginable?

I am a faithful follower of The Huffington Post, because they lean the same way I lean, yet I am smart enough to know sometimes their agenda leads them to ridiculous postings, and their conclusions can be as over-the-top insane as anything Fox News comes up with.  I either ignore their story or find it on a less liberal site.  And *that’s* what critical thinking is.

Not all atheists are this or all people of faith that.  We need to disabuse ourselves of the notion that all people in one group are exactly the same and share the same skill sets and ideas.  That’s the very definition of bigotry.  Except, of course, that all Cubs’ fans are losers.  But that’s another story for another day.