Michael Novak, whom you should despise for his politics alone, has a Xmas linked anti-atheist screed in the National Review (which you should despise for its politics alone) that exemplifies the bullshit of the right-wing pseudo-intellectual Xian. From his State of the Faith, we get things like this (in reference to uber-atheist Richard Dawkins):

A nice irony is this: Whereas Christianity (and Judaism) can give atheists a dignified place within their own theory of religious liberty, it seems quite difficult for atheists such as Dawkins to assign religious people any place in their own theory other than the loony bin. For Jews and Christians, freedom is so dear to the Creator that He allows free human beings to turn away from him, to reject the granting even of His existence, and to scorn Him and His works. In their refusal of His friendship, He vindicates His love of liberty. Thus, atheists too give witness to His glory.

Of course, he calls on his follows to kill them for their blasphemy, and tortures them for enternity after death for this turning away. That’s the “dignified place” we get. Again, the theme recurs: We’re the bad guys because we say they’re wrong and use arguments — and a little ridicule, sometimes — to get them to see it (even though most of us support strongly their right to be wrong as long as they don’t inflict their dogma on us or our children); they’re the good guys because they love God, support our right to turn away from God (at the cost of death at the hands of the pious and eternal torture at the hand of God), and don’t make fun of our views (OK, maybe some of them do make fun.) We inflict on them: Argument and a little making fun. They on us: Death and torture. You keep score.

Also, he does one of your standard “bad faith” attacks on rationalists.

Time and again in history, reason has proved to be inadequate to its own defense. Most people most of the time live by passion, sentiment, custom, emotion — many such guides influence them — but few live purely by reason. Even famous philosophers of very high scientific standards have insisted that they did not choose their wives or guide their loves by scientific reason. Reason is but a thin sliver to build a civilization upon.

Well, OK then. Because “pure reason” is not the sole embraced motivation for my actions, my holding reason as the standard of belief is obviously in bad faith. Kind of like “You have no objective reason for preferring chocolate over vanilla; therefore, you cannot hold to rationality as your reason for believing that 5 x 7 is 35 rather than 36.5″.

And another, before I stop ranting:

And the situation is far worse than that. The scientist qua scientist typically writes that the universe was formed by chance. At this starting point, then, there is a fundamental irrationality at the heart of science. There is a superstructure of towering reasonings, but based upon an absurdity — in the strict sense, an utter absence of discernible reason, a surd at the root of the matter. The thorough cultivation of science alone as a philosophy of life, therefore, normally ends as Nietzsche sadly announced, that, in our civilization, it already had: in nihilism.

So, the implicit inference here would seem to be “Science recognizes that there are no anthropomorphic “reasons” for some aspects of the world (like, say, the exact expansion rate of the big bang, or the exact distribution of cosmic ray bombardment of the young Earth); therefore, science leads to nihilism — i.e., the denial of all value.” Now how exactly is it that the randomness of some features of the world leads, by itself, to the conclusion that (for example) it’s not better to love and care for my son than it is to poke his eyes out with a hot fireplace poker, just to hear them sizzle? Why isn’t this just some stupid inference of the form “If the origins of X are partially random, none of X’s properties can be more valuable than others”?

And one more, for the road: Why does anybody think this shit is intellectually respectable?