Can we fully trust our eyes and minds to inform us about reality? You conclude perhaps not, but then you left two dots unconnected, because although the gaudy megachurch you wrote about is also in service to that idea, so is the entire career of "New Atheist" Penn Jillette.
It would have been fascinating to put all of these so-called New Atheists in a room and have them interview each other. Because when somebody like Dawkins says he believes in democracy, he's lying. The book of Genesis idea that man is created in the image of God - now that sounds like a great basis for democracy. But these leading edge non-believers all betray an attitude that, for the good of humanity, political power needs to be wrestled from the hands of the weak and stupid and placed in the hands of the enlightened few. That sounds suspiciously like the philosophies - call them Old Atheism if you will - that democracies rightly fought to destroy throughout the 20th century.
Properly understood, science describes what the universe is like, while philosophy and theology describe what it should be like. There is no reason why the disciplines should not complement each other. But when we see one of these New Atheists denouncing anything that is nonscientific while simultaneously attempting to appropriate it for his own use, we know we're just being shown one of Jillette's parlor tricks.
Paul DernavichNeedham, Maasachusetts
