{"id":1561,"date":"2010-03-03T07:31:42","date_gmt":"2010-03-03T12:31:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nicholsclan.com\/tinblog\/?p=1561"},"modified":"2010-02-28T10:54:20","modified_gmt":"2010-02-28T15:54:20","slug":"the-scourge-of-atheism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/2010\/03\/the-scourge-of-atheism.html","title":{"rendered":"The Scourge of Atheism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Recent AP news headline: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/hostednews\/ap\/article\/ALeqM5hJU5AjfcneV6vrwDOcvgOfvNbKPgD9E2QCO01\"><strong>Atheism book found in home linked to fire suspect<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The article goes on to explain the arrest of an arsonist and his accomplice who torched a church in Texas that they attended as children.\u00a0 Further, they are using DNA evidence to try and link the criminals to several other fires.\u00a0 Yet the core theme of this story is the existence of a book on atheism in the guy&#8217;s house.<\/p>\n<p>They don&#8217;t even try to explicitly claim the guy is or became an atheist, or that his unalleged atheism was responsible for his actions.\u00a0 But the title clearly leads the reader to make that link.\u00a0 They mention in passing the finding of another book titled &#8220;Demon Possession,&#8221; but there isn&#8217;t even the remote hint that the Devil made him do the crime.\u00a0 I&#8217;m guessing there were probably more than two books in the house, but the others (whatever they were) didn&#8217;t make the article.\u00a0 Although I have a feeling that even if a copy of &#8220;Arson for Dummies&#8221; was found, it wouldn&#8217;t have made the headline.<\/p>\n<p>What&#8217;s more, the book in question is &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Atheists-Way-Living-Well-Without\/dp\/1577316428\/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1267371004&amp;sr=1-1\">The Atheist&#8217;s Way: Living Well Without Gods<\/a>.&#8221;\u00a0 Book reviewer Dan Barker says of the book, &#8220;Millions of people lead happy, moral, loving, meaningful lives without  believing in a god, and Eric Maisel explains in exquisite rational and  compassionate detail how we do it.\u201d\u00a0 Sounds like pretty subversive stuff, doesn&#8217;t it?\u00a0 The kind of radical godless hedonism that would lead you to burn down a church.<\/p>\n<p>Atheists are not evil and amoral any more than Mexicans are lazy, women are frail, or Jews are good with money.\u00a0 It&#8217;s bad enough that atheist stereotypes exist in society.\u00a0 We don&#8217;t need to tolerate them in the press.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Recent AP news headline: Atheism book found in home linked to fire suspect The article goes on to explain the<\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\"><a href=\"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/2010\/03\/the-scourge-of-atheism.html\" title=\"Read The Scourge of Atheism\">Read more &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1561"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1563,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1561\/revisions\/1563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}