>Can America Survive? The Rage of the Left, the Truth, and What to Do About It by Ben Stein and Phil DeMuth (Hardcover - Jul 15, 2004)

what to do about it?? …VOTE FOR THE DEMS!

and my fav:

>How to Ruin Your Love Life by Ben Stein (Hardcover - Aug 1, 2003)

date a republican!

>How to Ruin Your Life by Ben Stein (Paperback - Dec 1, 2005)

VOTE REPUBLICAN!

>How to Ruin the United States of America by Ben Stein and Phil

VOTE REPUBLICAN!

Imagine a bunch of atheist decide to make a documentary about how they got fired from churches just because they said, “Hey! Maybe this God stuff isn’t true! There’s a lot of holes in this theory. There’s no evidence at all!”

It’s complete nonsense. Same damn thing.

Heaven forbid a child grows up to have an intelligent, independent thought on religion! They might just reject it!

You’ve just nailed one of my biggest problems with all these cult-like fundies (esp. the Duggars). They don’t have enough faith in their own religion to trust that their children will still choose it if offered an alternative — they do their damndest to make certain there are no other alternatives. The real world is evil and good fundie Christians don’t talk about it, unless they’re trying to convert it.

Religion has this effect on people, regardless of their level of education. True, the better schooled one is, the virus of religion is less likely to infect that person as it might some backwoods redneck hillbilly, but they’re not guaranteed immunity. People like Ben Stein have decided that they are so terrified of their own mortality a belief in a god is a necessity. Their own greedy narcissism drives them to turn a blind eye to all that reason has to offer because any offensive thought might jeopardize the theological fantasy world they inhabit. They embrace the god of their choice for emotional reasons, not rational ones. With eternal bliss their overriding priority, all other matters become moot. The mountain of evidence supporting evolution is meaningless to someone hiding out in his religious fallout shelter. They pick this fight over evolution not because the science supporting it is questionable, but because their own beliefs cannot be questionable for any reason, and a direct refutation of the beginning of the goddamned bible is a pretty big turkey-slap in the face of god himself.

What is so galling about this intellectual dishonesty is that so many fundies know, at least subconsciously, that their delusions can easily come crashing down around them if they were ever exposed to reason, or, as they like to think of it, Satan. This also explains why they insist on brainwashing their helpless, defenseless children into this mental prison. Heaven forbid a child grows up to have an intelligent, independent thought on religion! They might just reject it! Such thinking betrays the feeble arguments in favor of Christianity, or any other blight on human civilization you care to mention.

I don’t mean that in the “haha isn’t he stupid” way, it’s an actual question. His claims and behaviour seem to have taken a wild turn towards “completely insane” recently, and it’s just completely at odds with my previous impressions of the man.