Jon Stewart Joins Fox News in Attacking Atheists
By Eric Jayne
The clever, satirical, and silly Jon Stewart has made a successful career out of lambasting the hyperbolic, hyper-partisan media. While he has poked fun at MSNBC and CNN, it’s Fox News that receives most of his unrelenting, albeit justified, acerbic wit. Who else but ATHEISTS could possibly bring these two diametrically opposed parties together?
During Thursday’s Daily Show broadcast on Comedy Central Jon Stewart sided with Fox and Friends co-host Gretchen Carlson by accusing the American Atheists of needlessly forcing their worldview on the nation. He went on to ridicule the American Atheists lawsuit to remove the cross as petty and mean-spirited instead of discussing how secularists see the lawsuit as a worthy and legitimate cause since our nation–backed by a godless Constitution drafted by men of science and reason–has become dangerously conflated with religion today.
Proving to be more of a miracle worker than Jesus, American Atheists President David Silverman brought Gretchen Carlson and Jon Stewart together in sharing contempt for his position. Stewart called Silverman a “dick” after showing a clip of Carlson disparagingly quoting Silverman: “The WTC cross has become a Christian icon. It has been blessed by so-called holy men and presented as a reminder that their god, who couldn’t be bothered to stop the Muslim terrorists or prevent 3,000 people from being killed in his name, cared only enough to bestow upon us some rubble that resembles a cross.”
Stewart must find Epicurus to be a dick as well for his observation made 300 years before the birth of Christ: “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”
I don’t know how familiar Stewart is with the New Testament, but I’m confident that if he compared the words of Jesus to those of Silverman, he would apply the label of “dick” squarely on cross-carrying shoulders of Jesus who threatened non-believers with eternal suffering in hell (Mark 16:16 ; John 15:6), celebrated a looming bloody apocalypse (Matthew 24:34-44), and said many inhumane, frightening things like this: “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household” (Matthew 10:34-36).
I’m not saying that Jesus is a dick but who really comes across as the unreasonable, callous, bully? The secular, humanistic atheist who is fighting to uphold Jeffersonian democracy by keeping religion and government separate or the delusional cult leader who kept his followers in line (even their thoughts) by threatening eternal torture if they re-examine their beliefs.