Why do we have to listen to these boorish atheists criticizing religion and mocking our holidays and falsely characterizing what a specific religion must mean in a believer’s life. Why don’t we characterize the results of what their atheism implies in their lives. A person who believes that all life evolved through random processes and natural selection has no basis for a belief in consciousness, morality, freedom, and will, and no basis for holding anyone responsible for his deeds. As Clarence Darrow said in the Leopold and Loeb case, how can you blame these boys for committing murder once they had been taught Nietzsche at the University of Chicago. Since atheists believe that human life is no different from animal life, how can they be trusted to respect the surpassing dignity of each individual human being? (One scientific manifesto declares, pompously, that “as far as the scientific enterprise can determine … [h]uman capabilities appear to differ in degree, not in kind, from those found among the higher animals.”) And coasting off of traditional morality or pretending that they have arrived at a humanistic ethics, which is actually derived from traditional morality, doesn’t count. Neither does it count that individual atheists are upright or benign. We’re talking about a basis for all mankind. And we should ask them, since you believe all life derived from a big bang, followed by a series of accidents, totally purposely and directionlessly, how do you arrive at purpose and meaning in your own life? Don’t say I make it up myself, because Jack the Ripper can do that. I think it was Cardinal Newman who said that if the atheist were a gentleman he would not mock religious belief.