Enough, already, from the evangelical atheists

I don't mean that I'm losing my belief in a random universe. I mean it's getting harder to remain in a congregation in which the membership -- at least that part that grabs the headlines -- skews toward the sullen, cantankerous and litigious.

Last week's court ruling that the Pledge of Allegiance violates the Constitution for its use of the phrase "under God" has no doubt many true believers crying, there "they" go again. The "they" is, of course, me, in that I'd be a card-carrying atheist if "they" bothered to issue one. But also not me in the sense that many of us of no faith have the same reaction as most with faith to cases like these: Lighten up; we live in a country in which a large majority identifies itself as Christian.

Contrary to the God-fearing public's view of us as a monolith, atheists belong to many denominations. The branch that has been lawsuit-happy now for decades is from what I call the evangelical atheists.

They are intolerant, pushy and self-righteous. If it didn't interfere with their busy schedule of dark moods and constant brooding, they'd probably be handing out pamphlets and ringing doorbells. In short, they embody all the qualities that sparked this country's movement for religious tolerance and freedom in the first place.

Tolerance is something the lawsuit's plaintiff, Michael A. Newdow, could use a mighty dose of. He told reporters he doesn't believe in God for the same reason he doesn't believe in Santa Claus.

Evangelical atheists like Newdow delight in the Santa Claus analogy. It's memorable, sounds clever and is incredibly insulting. I've even heard the same assertion made with the Easter Bunny. In part, the evangelicals make such callous remarks because they see themselves as bringers of "Truth." And if a few feelings get hurt along the way, they reason, that's the price for the liberating light they bring.

But I would never make such a comparison, nor would many atheists I know. We wouldn't because it not only is bad manners and shows a lack of intellectual humility, it's also grossly unfair. It's empirically verifiable that there is no Santa Claus. The same cannot be said of God.

If you stuck a gun to my head (and, thankfully, I live in a country where that would happen only to rid me of my wallet rather than my religious beliefs), I would classify myself as an atheist. It was not a decision I made quickly or lightly. My reasons can probably be best summed up by paraphrasing the old Woody Allen joke: If there is a God, he's a tremendous underachiever.

But I cannot say with 100 percent certainty there is no God, and neither can anyone else. The proposition that the world just spontaneously came into being is preposterous. But so is the idea that a deity created the universe and now sits in judgment of what we humans do all day. Of course, if I'm wrong, I'm going to hell, as many evangelical Christians have told me. But I believe what I believe. Even we atheists must have faith.

The other problem with evangelicals like Newdow is that while he's so disrespectful about the beliefs of others, he insists his own be treated with the utmost reverence. Don't even mention the word "God" around him or he'll go to pieces. Society must accommodate him, not the other way around.

One of the many magnificent things about this country is that it does strive to accommodate the individual, but in this case, it's gone too far. There are no absolute rights, even with free speech. (Try shouting "fire" in a crowded movie theater.)

Thus, the question becomes what is reasonable. Is it reasonable in a nation where the dominant culture believes in God to recite the words "under God" in a classroom for a nonmandatory morning pledge?

I think so. I grew up in the Bible Belt and said the pledge every morning of elementary school and don't recall my delicate sensibilities being trampled upon or my belief system altered by the ritual. It's a harmless nod to the majority.

Now with the Justice Department seeking a rehearing by the full 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, it seems likely Newdow's lawsuit will be overturned, as it should be. But, in the meantime, guys like him will continue to shape public perceptions of atheists.

I'm a newspaperman and I know how the business works, but one headline I'd love to see out of this affair is: "Well-Adjusted Atheist Doesn't Object to `God.' "

[Newdow] told reporters he doesn't believe in God for the same reason he doesn't believe in Santa Claus. ...But I would never make such a comparison, nor would many atheists I know. We wouldn't because it not only is bad manners and shows a lack of intellectual humility...

When Nathaniel Branden started the Nathaniel Brandon Institute in the '60s meetings were sometimes attended by a few hundred people, often with Ayn Rand up on stage behind Branden. Ludwig von Mises once came with his wife, and she later related the experience. She told of serious, nervous looking people who smoked incessantly (I always imagine them as a prototypical pocket protector crowd with Brill Creamed hair and a band-aid holding their black-rimmed glasses together at the bridge of the nose). She said the only time any levity entered the room was when the word "God" was mentioned. Then everybody snickered in unison.

"Intellectual humility" is not a strong suit among atheists, having been replaced by a knowing snicker. These poor souls have come to the wholly unwarranted conviction that our meager advances in understanding the natural world somehow solve the unfathomable mystery of existence. It is a pitiable position, in my opinion, the there of no there there fame.

"I don't see how you can empirically verify that there is no Santa Claus."

This reminds me of an old email that I dug up out of my Humor box:

There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in the world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist (except maybe in Japan)religions, this reduces the workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million (according to the population reference bureau). At an average census rate of 3.5 children per household, that comes to 108 million homes, presuming there is at least one good child in each.

Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 967.7 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with a good child, Santa has around 1/1000 th of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stocking, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney, jump into the sleigh and get onto the next house.

Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but will accept for the purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household; a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom stops or breaks. This means Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second--3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour.

The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized LEGO set(two pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousands tons, not counting Santa himself. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that the "flying" reindeer can pull 10 times the normal amount, the job can't be done with eight or even nine of them---Santa would need 360,000 of them. This increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh, another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the monarch).

600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance - this would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft reentering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each.

In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reached the fifth house on his trip. Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop to 650 m.p.s. in .001 seconds,would be subjected to acceleration forces of 17,000 g's.

A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to a quivering blob of pink goo.

Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now. Merry Christmas

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