Medium Low

Ken Jennings, the Jeopardy! guy, maintains a one-post-a-day blog over at ken-jennings.com. His posts are almost always good for an ironic chuckle. Occasionally they are downright cute (as a parent with kids the same age I share that guilty pleasure).

In today's post, "Mormon guy to Internet: shut up and think a minute," Mr. Jennings takes a serious turn to protest the treatment of his religion in the media: in particular, the liberty pundits feel they have to treat Mormonism with less respect than other religions and to use it as the butt of jokes. I think his points are well made. Especially his advice to substitute other religions (including one's own) into one's jokes to test whether they are still funny.

Mr. Jennings seems to assume, however, that the maligners of Mormonism are religious (perhaps rightly, see studies quoted below). But we here at MeLo are mostly avowed atheists, so we reserve the right to make fun of all religions. We'll try to do it equitably.

Current MeLo contributors all live in a very liberal city, so we are not exposed daily to "average" Americans. We are shocked disgusted dismayed whenever a survey of U.S. religious beliefs is released indicating that we are in a small minority. For example the American Religious Identification Survey (most recent available: ARIS 2001 - age of the survey doesn't matter much as these things change very slowly) indicated that we atheists represent approximately 13% of the adult population. Given that we live in a country that still manages to lead the world in most scientific domains, how can we also be one of the most religious industrialized countries? Despite the right's mantra regarding the Christian foundations of the U.S., the country was actually founded on the assumption that reason should always trump religion in civic affairs. How can Americans purportedly be committed to governing our public lives by secular principles and still gather weekly in animist temples?

Our dismay is tempered by our certainty that eventually rational though will win out. It seems inevitable to us that humanity will eventually shed its remaining superstitions. In the meantime, we'll feel free to use ridicule to try to speed things along.