The idea that Christianity and politics are a dangerous mix now passes for common wisdom. When a Liberal hack waved a stuff dinosaur during Stockwell Day’s campaign a few years ago, everyone knew what he was getting at: Day, a Christian, was superstitious and not rational. That idea still has legs, especially in the big city. Last night on SNL Tina Fey’s Sarah Palin said “We don’t know if this climate change hoozie-whatzit is man-made, or if it’s just a natural part of the end of days.” The audience — surely smart, witty urbane paragons of virtue and rationality compared to Palin’s upright, small-town Christian — hooted and applauded with a positive fervor of self-regard. They understood: Palin goes to church, so her beliefs are irrational.
As a lifelong non-churchgoer, I’ve never been able put my finger on why, exactly, such urbane, asserted superiority over Christians seems so mistaken, or why I get the unshakable feeling that such attitudes portend a rumbling, unpleasant cultural consequence-to-come. It might have something to do with the way noisier atheists believe they are rational because they are not Christian. Or it might be because their assumption that their views are the end product of rational examination flies so aggressively in the face of what is often so obvious, that their beliefs in many cases have been assembled piecemeal from a series of worldly, time-bound political fads.
Atheists believe they are free from the shackles of superstition, but are their beliefs actually more rational than those of Christians? Why, funny you should ask:

“(A) comprehensive new study released by Baylor University…shows that traditional Christian religion greatly decreases belief in everything from the efficacy of palm readers to the usefulness of astrology. It also shows that the irreligious and the members of more liberal Protestant denominations, far from being resistant to superstition, tend to be much more likely to believe in the paranormal and in pseudoscience than evangelical Christians.

Well yes, you might say, but “pseudoscience” could mean anythi…

The Gallup Organization…asked American adults a series of questions to gauge credulity. Do dreams foretell the future? Did ancient advanced civilizations such as Atlantis exist? Can places be haunted? Is it possible to communicate with the dead? Will creatures like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster someday be discovered by science?

The answers were added up to create an index of belief in occult and the paranormal. While 31% of people who never worship expressed strong belief in these things, only 8% of people who attend a house of worship more than once a week did.

Okay, but maybe that’s because a lot of atheists are not educa…

Surprisingly, while increased church attendance and membership in a conservative denomination has a powerful negative effect on paranormal beliefs, higher education doesn’t. Two years ago two professors published another study in Skeptical Inquirer showing that, while less than one-quarter of college freshmen surveyed expressed a general belief in such superstitions as ghosts, psychic healing, haunted houses, demonic possession, clairvoyance and witches, the figure jumped to 31% of college seniors and 34% of graduate students.

If the idea that prominent individuals in public life might have superstitious beliefs is “scary,” then perhaps the statist/left has been barking up the wrong tree.

Goes to CNEWS: “Halton race turns nasty “

A note from Captain Capitalism – “I’m going to be on the radio if you guys are bored”.
Tentatively scheduled for between 4 – 5 pm Central.

I recall having a teacher whom I didn’t like because she was always unloading us … for no good reason. But, I’ve got to admit, that when she unloaded on people I didn’t like … it felt kind’a good.

3:46 of delicious high dudgeon.
And for dessert, Jiminy Glick has a hissy: