At a time when The Panda's Thumb, as well as a few commenters here, are disparaging those awful militant and ideological atheists who want to crush the dreams of sweet little old Christian ladies, we turn to the History News Network to hear the voice of reason.

Uh-oh. Screwed again. They've published a piece of hackwork from some conservative religious looney working in one of those right-wing think-tanks.

It is commonplace these days for some journalists and many intellectuals to blame religion for much of the worlds ills. Look at foreign affairs, they say. The Muslim fanatics blowing themselves and others to bits really think they’re going to rewarded in heaven with 40 virgins. Those cowboys and Zionists who are running American foreign policy and endangering the world think they are doing the will of the God. At home, Catholics and others are at work to prevent the research necessary to cure many diseases. Right-wing evangelicals constantly plot to impose their moral restrictions on others. It is only the sober, educated rationalists, we are told, who can see realities beyond the superstitions and bring justice and truth to a world hungering for peace and prosperity. Rid the globe of religion and you free the human mind, at last, to create the wonders of which it is capable.

He's off to a good start; those first bits about religious fanatics, anti-science ignoramuses, and sanctimonious bluenoses are definitely true, but he succumbs to some hyperbole at the end. Getting rid of religion isn't a panacea—it means we will have disposed of just one shackle.

This is the dogma of the 18th century Enlightenment, of course, later embraced by Marxists who murdered clergy and destroyed churches whenever the opportunity arose. This secular dogma lives still, especially among leftist intellectuals and media moguls who often see themselves as the high priests of knowledge and learning. Woven into their arguments are almost always appeals to end definitions of right and wrong, a move that has the advantage of destroying all moral inhibitions and sanctions. Free sex for a free people.

Oh, those Marxists. The religious sure are glad to have them to kick around, but let me return to that later.

Personally, I'm a little bit miffed about this frequent assertion that atheists are just that way because they want free sex. I'm an atheist, and I never got to take advantage of all that free lovin' hedonism; all of the atheists I know seem to live rather ordinary, conventional lives. I got married, have been faithful ever since, have had three atheist children who haven't bothered to shoot up their school or muck up their lives with drugs, and as far as I know, my freethinker wife hasn't been participating in any Black Masses behind my back. Is it all the other atheists who have wild and degenerate private lives?

Since the Second World War, Western Europe has become increasingly secular. After 1960, Easter services in the Church of England attracted only two percent of the British people. By the 1990s, only 40 percent of marriages in England and Wales were solemnized in a church. Mass attendance in France has fallen to six percent on a given Sunday. Spain has endorsed homosexual marriage. The Dutch are almost wholly secular people. And so on. Now that Christianity is disappearing, European peoples should be awaiting the dawn of reason and happiness. If it only weren’t for those religious crazies and Texas loonies who keep believing they are doing the will of God.

I don't quite get his point. OK, so Europeans aren't going to church much, they are dispensing with priestly sanctioning of their marriages, and they're tolerant of homosexuals…is this something bad? Have hideous things been happening over there as a consequence? It looks to me like they are mostly at peace, working out old difficulties to form a European Union.

Several things are wrong with this hoary and naive approach to truth. In the first place, there is no such thing as a purely secular person. The innate passion for religion can never be wholly suppressed. Although it wasn’t G. K. Chesterton who said it, this venerable thought rings true: "When men stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing. They believe in anything.”

The objects of human worship know no limit. On the crudest level, there are the millions who revere athletes,

Texas small towns: hotbeds of atheism.

movie and television stars,

Damn you, Oprah!

rock stars,

Oh, yeah. Creed.

automobiles,

All those NASCAR fans? Unrepentant atheists, every one.

pornography,

Uh, OK. Guilty. I do like my squid. And of course, no Christian has ever looked at pornography.

drugs,

Rush Limbaugh is one of us? Who knew?

and gambling.

Paging Bill Bennett…

On a slightly higher level, millions bow to race, the nation, status, wealth, political parties, art forms, clubs, cities, and colleges. Millions put their faith in horoscopes, cults, gurus, fads, and diets.

Christians and Moslems and Jews, however, are uninterested in all of these things.

On its most intellectual level, the most common form of worship by the avowed secularist is found in the mirror, and many a professor has been able to smile throughout life by pondering its reflection.

He's never seen me, or he'd know mirrors aren't something I relish.

None of this makes any sense. He seems to be trying to argue that atheists all have this huge void in their life that they fill with his laundry list of fads and fashions, but there is no linkage. Those are all things that the religious favor, and some at least perhaps more than we atheists do.

Secondly, there is no such single, objective thing as "reason."That we have rational powers cannot be denied, of course, but the sad truth is that in many areas of life, especially the ethical and moral, "reason"tends to tell us what we want to hear. This is the huge flaw in the historical works of Herbert J. Muller, beginning with the impressive Uses of the Past. Muller thought that all "reasonable"people, throughout history, would naturally see things in the same way, and that superstition and ignorance were responsible for blocking the consensus. Education is vital, of course, as is reason. But human beings and history aren’t as simply understood as Muller thought.

OK, hold it. Mr Reeves, sober up before you write. This is just incoherent nonsense. I know relativism is all the rage among conservatives, but applying it to reason is going too far. I think you're just saying that because it's what you want to hear.

Although your disavowal of reason does help explain how you could write this piece.

Thirdly, a life without divine inspiration, consolation, and hope often leads to rage and despair rather than happiness. I have experienced this myself and know that many others have also. Paul Johnson and Malcom Muggeridge have written on this theme at length. The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis examined the issue carefully centuries ago. St. Paul understood the matter fully.

Oh, yes, the personal anecdotes of Christians about the unhappiness of atheists are very convincing. I am quite happy and satisfied with my atheism, and certainly don't want to start believing a set of lies because some bland theologian likes his delusions.

Although it is true that Paul Hill and Eric Rudolph seem to have derived some significant satisfaction from their faith, which excused their own rather fluid morality.

Fourthly, what are the fruits of militant secularism? Are the lives of Robespierre, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao not instructive? And have we no personal knowledge of the utter misery that has plagued friends who mistakenly thought they could live happy and completely secular lives? As for wholly secular states, Oz Guinness, writing in the Wilson Quarterly (Spring 2005) observed, "It’s a simple fact…that, contrary to the current scapegoating of religion, more people were slaughtered during the 20th century under secularist regimes, led by secularist intellectuals, and in the name of secularist ideologies, than in all the religious persecutions in Western history."Read that again, slowly.

Yes, very slowly. And it's OK if you move your lips.

Those were totalitarian states. Yeah, those kinds of regimes do ghastly things to their people, whether they are avowedly atheist or fervently religious.

Reeves is ignoring the real lesson of history: religion is not a moral force, nor is the absence of religion. The Inquisition tortured and killed people, not because they were Catholic, but because they were absolutely certain they were right (something that their Catholicism contributed to) and were willing to dehumanize those they thought were not sufficiently orthodox. North Korea is suffering under a cult of personality where the state has put absolute trust in a madman. Neither one shows that religion or atheism have the moral high ground, but instead simply demonstrate that bad people will do bad things if you give them the power to do so.

Remember at the beginning of his little essay, where he was telling us how damnably secular modern Europe was becoming? I don't see the Dutch gearing up to butcher their neighbors. It looks to me that he has demonstrated no necessary connection between atheism and brutality.

And then…and then…what's this I see? No, it couldn't possibly be. He wouldn't, would he?

One last point: Suppose the claims of Christianity are true, and there are eternal verities leading to a peaceful and productive life, and eternal consequences stemming from our faith and related activities?

Golly gee, he did. It's a version of Pascal's Wager. What a clueless nitwit.

Suppose I had a million dollars. Then I would be rich! Therefore, I have a million dollars.

Suppose our Green Bay Packer shirts, porn sites, expensive homes, stock portfolios, advanced degrees, and mirrors are inadequate guides to the good life and death? Let us open our minds and think further about the possibilities and joys of a wholly secular existence.

What is it with this guy and his irrelevant lists? Does he think that those are all attributes of atheists or something? It's as if he has this vision of atheists as a bunch of rich people lounging about and wallowing in porn…it sounds like a good life for some, I suppose, but it's nothing like that in reality. But then, it's clear from the ignorant crap Reeves is scribbling that reality doesn't trouble him much.