Conservative Christians buck PBS for series on atheism

On May 4th, PBS will be showing a three part documentary on atheism that has raised the hackles of some within the Christian Right. Describing it as "demagogic and propagandistic" (sounds awfully familiar, doesn't it--browse the comment section of this blog's article Who is afraid of the Big, Bad Dawkins? if you don't know what I mean), it is amazing how threatening a documentary like this can apparently be to those of the firmly Right. Curiously, that seems to be the cue as to how they generate their own reaction, such as Janice Crouse who is quoted in a CBSNews.com article about the atheism series, and less than subtly threatens what is purportedly at stake by saying,"...airing the program gives credibility and cohesiveness to individuals who seek to undermine the beliefs and values on which democracy and the American dream are founded."

Right. That's the collective atheist goal. Not to mention, we're lacking credibility and so-called cohesiveness, even as Crouse is commenting on a documentary which details the long history of atheism and its pronounced intellectual and rational personalities. As though we just sprouted out of the ground with tin foil hats and all sort of wild and crazy ideas, bent on a (likely communist...can't you hear it under her breath?) goal of bringing down the American democracy.

I swear, Christians can be such simple-minded brutes who reflexively reject any sort of rational inspection or intellectual contemplation of anything that can be seen as threatening to their own world view and philosophy. Real open-minded folk, eh? I suppose, at least for those less-than-moderate Christians such as Crouse, the simple-minded sort of 'good vs. evil' and 'with us or against us' mentality is a powerful draw toward the conservative forms of Christianity they incessantly buzz about.