A Papal Question

In a new encyclical, the Pope declares atheism has led to the "greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice" as clerics incite mobs in Khartoum demanding death for a teacher who named a teddy bear Mohammed, the faithful in Iraq behead children of the wrong religious sect and eight Americans who want the most powerful position in the world express their faith in the Bible and their passion to punish people who were born in the wrong place or make them feel uncomfortable.

"How," asks Benedict XVI, "did we arrive at this interpretation of the 'salvation of the soul' as a flight from responsibility for the whole, and how did we come to conceive the Christian project as a selfish search for salvation which rejects the idea of serving others?"

Not in a world where heretics burn believers at the stake.

Organized Disbelief

The bad news for devout individualists is that even the forces of Atheism are getting organized.

Today’s Washington Post has two reports on the trend: “In America, Nonbelievers Find Strength in Numbers” and “In Europe and U.S., Nonbelievers Are Increasingly Vocal.”

Understandably, jihadists and George W. Bush have alarmed multitudes with the consequences of religious fervor, but “a legion of the godless rising up against the forces of religiosity in American society,” as the Post puts it, may not be much comfort to those who believe literally in the First Amendment.

With Christopher Hitchens’ best-selling screed and Bill Maher’s rants against the Ten Commandments, it’s getting harder to hold onto some public space against irrationality of all kinds.

Atheists of the world, unite? And do what?