If you paint God in broad enough strokes, you can make a believers out of a surprising number of atheists. To claim that only those that are incapable of wonder are true atheists is to simultaneously claim a large swath of atheists for religion and load the word 'atheist' with connotations of dull, unimaginative men and myopic egomaniacal certainty.

As an atheist, this is like being told that I don't really believe what I think I do. God, as I understand the concept, is by definition supernatural and transcendent, is almost always sentient and agentive, and often takes a personal interest in the mortal world. 'Mystery' and 'wonder' are very broad terms that often have religious overtones but which that are not exclusively religious in their application. No atheist would ever claim that we have unlocked the universe's last secrets, even if he believed that we might do so in the future. Similarly, a man would have to be unusually incurious or solipsistic not be at least a little impressed or, dare I say, awed by his physical and perhaps existential insignificance in the face of the universe's vastness. Perhaps Mr. Carse is arguing that many so-called atheists (the ones capable of wonder, that is) are really just pantheists, but I would respond that being impressed by nature and believing that it has an organizing principle (and, moreover, referring to the principle as God) are two different things.

In short, Mr. Carse may be a scholar of religion, but he is as poorly versed in the nature of atheism as he claims Richard Dawkins is in the nature of 'true' religion. (As an aside, I wish we could move past using Mr. Dawkins as a shorthand for atheism. When his name comes up in every discussion of religion vs. atheism, we're approaching the point of cliché.) He thinks of atheists as supremely arrogant and intellectually sterile, and anyone who deviates from that stereotype isn't really an atheist, regardless of whether or not he believes in God.

Yeah, screw those people who don't think like you do! And make sure you tell everyone about your beliefs whenever possible, no matter how inappropriate or off topic it might be!

I like 'Jack's Heroes' by the Pogues, which is about the Rep. of Ireland's Italia '90 football squad.

'You'll Never Walk Alone' isn't a sports song per se, but I'd be remiss if I didn't mention it.

Now, I'm a just slightly too young to remember the 1984 election, so could someone please explain to me why people keep using the Bush-Ferraro debate being used to illustrate why Biden has to avoid looking like a 'dick'? Because the electoral map that year makes it look like no-one gave a shit. So why the belaboring of a historical analogy in which the perceived danger (dickishness) is correlated with an event (the 1984 election) in which the offender (Bush and the Bush-Reagan ticket) went absolutely unpunished for their transgression (winning the popular vote by 18% and the electoral vote by 512).

I'm not saying that Biden [i]should[/i] be dickish, or that it's even a good idea for him to be. All I am saying is that the conclusion (don't be a dick) doesn't seem to follow from your example (again, '84 election).

I should be more careful when I proofread. The 'being used' in the first sentence is an artifact from an earlier construction of that sentence, and I used the wrong kind of brackets to format my text. Sorry.

Comparing Obama to Mussolini is silly; comparing Obama to Mussolini and then vaguely alluding to Mussolini's execution (shot, and then strung up by his heels so people could pelt his corpse with stones) is a slightly darker matter. Probably I'm reading to much into it. One shouldn't attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by historical ignorance, after all. If they're seriously suggesting that Obama is going to wind up like Mussolini (interpret that how you will), then they're even more unhinged that I had thought.

Why is it that no-one on Salon ever seems able to tell when they're being trolled? Ignore the little prick.