By CASEY LUSKIN - EVOLUTION NEWS AND VIEWS
Added: Sat, 14 Jan 2012 23:48:37 UTC

On Christmas I had to run into the office briefly and discovered two new atheist books I'd ordered had arrived: Sean Faircloth's Attack of the Theocrats and Penn Jillette's God, No!. Nice Christmas present to myself! I've since read enough to report that they provide quite a contrast: The former suggests that religious people everywhere are trying to create "theocracy" and encourages atheists to hide their anti-religious goals, while the latter unashamedly shows that the real threat to religious freedom comes from new atheists themselves.

There's not a whole lot to say about Faircloth's book. Faircloth, formerly a member of the State Legislature in Maine who now serves as Director of Strategy and Policy for the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, operates under the paranoid assumption that most religious people (and certainly all religious leaders) are hell-bent on establishing theocracy in the United States. If you respect faith, then you're part of the dangerous "religious right."

While I'm sure that Faircloth's tried-and-tested brand of fear-mongering is great for fundraising appeals to his fellow atheists, whether it conforms to reality is a different question.

The book's cover (see image at right), just below the words Attack of the Theocrats, portrays a three-headed monster -- with Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, and Mitt Romney represented. A nice-looking family is depicted running away from them in terror. Whatever you may think of these politicians, the ultra-moderate Mitt Romney (who formerly served as governor of the left-leaning state Massachusetts) isn't exactly a poster-child for those in the "religious right" wishing to impose theocracy. In Fairchild's world, any hint of a publicly espoused faith apparently means you're unfit for government. So I suppose Fairchild wants us all to run in fear when he quotes Mitt Romney stating, "Our greatness would not long endure without judges who respect the foundation of faith upon which our Constitution rests." (p. 42) Respecting faith? The horror!

The foreword to Fairchild's book was written by, of course, Richard Dawkins. Dawkins take the occasion to argue that the real intent of the Founders was that "the United States was to be kept free of religion's suffocating foot" and to say he hopes to "return America to its secular roots." (p. 13) Fairchild follows Dawkins by claiming he wants to establish a "Secular Decade" as they implement the "Secular Decade strategic plan." (p. 131)

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TAGGED: ATHEISM, BOOKS, CREATIONISM