I generally like Penn & Teller and I think they’re more right than wrong on most public issues. But I found Penn Jillette’s “This I Believe Essay” on NPR this morning to be particularly grating and representative of a strand of atheistic libertarianism I loathe (Note to other, needlessly offended libertarians: I’m probably not talking about you).

It’s the brand which actively enjoys mocking and condescending to people who believe in God. It’s a smirking, smug, dismissive pose that pretends to be free of bias and resentment but which cannot hide the stench of arrogance. It appears even in otherwise wonderful and decent people and it has always struck me as a kind of preemptive dismissiveness of an idea you don’t want to deal with. It’s also a form of bullying I find particularly ugly.

Jillette says:

I don’t travel in circles where people say, “I have faith, I believe this in my heart and nothing you can say or do can shake my faith.” That’s just a long-winded religious way to say, “shut up,” or another two words that the FCC likes less. But all obscenity is less insulting than, “How I was brought up and my imaginary friend means more to me than anything you can ever say or do. So, believing there is no God lets me be proven wrong and that’s always fun. It means I’m learning something.

Perhaps Jillette is right that what religious people are trying to tell him is “shut up” or “F you.” What appears not to have dawned on him is that his smug jokes about imaginary friends and his sanctimonious preening about how he — unlike those silly God-believers — is not closed-minded warrant a “shut up” or “F-you,” but the people he’s mocking are too polite to say such things.