I’ve learned that Atlantic correspondent Jeffrey Tayler is writing an anti-theist piece every Sunday in Salon. Perhaps this is their way of making amends for all the rump-osculation that they’ve done towards faith, and all the animus they’ve shown towards New Atheists. (His pieces are a great substitute for that church sermon.) For Tayler is, if anything, firmly in the New Atheist camp: evidence-oriented, “strident,” and as full of mockery as was H. L. Mencken.

In this week’s installment, Tayler’s invective increases: you can tell that from the title: “Marco Rubio’s deranged religion, Ted Cruz’s faith: Our would-be Presidents are God-fearing clowns.” (Subtitle: “Rand Paul, Jeb Bush, and Hillary Clinton all spout pious religious lies. We must grill them on what they really mean.”) And someone is paying attention: as of a few minutes ago, the piece, only a day old, had 2011 comments.

It’s a long piece, assessing (and excoriating) the religiosity of Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Mark Everson (the least noxious in Tayler’s view), Mike Huckagee, Jeb Bush, and Hillary Clinton, but I’ll summarize Tayler’s three key points:

1. Religion is a character flaw.  Tayler mentiones this explicitly several times, and implies it a lot more. He even equates extreme religiosity with “derangement”. Do you agree? I tend to agree with at least the “character flaw” bit, for I see it as a deficit of the intellect to profess belief in a being and code of conduct based on neither rational consideration nor evidence. Here’s two quotes from Tayler (my emphasis):

Professing belief in a fictitious celestial deity says a lot about the content of a person’s character, and what sort of policies he or she would likely favor. So, we should take a look at those who have announced so far, and what sort of religious views they hold. Let’s start with the Republicans. Rand Paul, the eye-surgeon senator from Kentucky, is officially a “devout” Christian, but he has subtly hinted that he really does not believe. He finds it tough to see “God’s hand” in the suffering he encounters as a doctor, citing an example any New Atheist could have chosen to dispel the notion that a benevolent deity watches over humanity: “small children dying from brain tumors.” This gives Paul to wonder if one needs to be “saved more than once,” which implies his faith has failed him at times.

and this:

With the dapper Florida Sen. Marco Rubio we move into the more disturbing category of Republicans we might charitably diagnose as “faith-deranged” – in other words, as likely to do fine among the unwashed “crazies” in the red-state primaries, but whose religious beliefs would (or should) render them unfit for civilized company anywhere else.

Among the faith-deranged, Rubio stands out. He briefly dumped one magic book for another, converting from Roman Catholicism to Mormonism and then back again. (Reporters take note: This is faith-fueled flip-flopping, which surely indicates a damning character flaw to be investigated.

2. Hillary Clinton is as bad as some of these Republicans. Tayler argues this:

Yet Hillary does believe. Not only that, she claims to have grown up in a family elbow-to-elbow with none other than the Almighty: “We talked with God, ate, studied, and argued with God.”

Reporters, to verify her truthfulness, might ask her to be more specific: what type of cuisine did God prefer? Did God use Cliff Notes while hitting the books with you? How was God in a debate? Did he, being God, simply smite with thunderbolts those he disagreed with? If she replies that she didn’t mean to be taken so literally, then what exactly constituted evidence of the Almighty’s presence in her home? Did she actually hear a voice respond as she prayed? Did she have visions? If so, did she consult a psychiatrist? Which was more likely – that she was rooming with God or that she was suffering some sort of protracted, especially vivid mental disturbance? There are meds for that.

The virtual corollary to Hillary’s belief: her “Faith Voters for Hillary” website, which axiomatically tells us her “faith is deeply personal and real.” Sadly, we have no evidence to the contrary.

While what Tayler quotes is true, and she does indeed have a “Faith Voter” website, I think this is a bit over the top. Yes, she’s consistently mentioned her faith, but for some reason—maybe my own Democratic biases—I tend to think that it’s more a ploy to get elected than a genuine immersion in goddiness. And Tayler’s snarky questions seem beside the point. After all, it’s impossible to be elected U.S. President without pandering to faith, and of course Hillary wants to be President really, really badly. That would still indicate a character flaw—dissimulation and pandering for ambition—but at least her religiosity wouldn’t be as much an impediment to her Presidency than it would for most of the Republicans.

3. Religious professions are beliefs about what’s true, and it’s fair game to ask the candidates about them. I agree absolutely, although we’re not going to see that kind of grilling during the Presidential campaign. When it comes to elections, the behavior of the press resembles that at a polite dinner party: religion is simply off the table. Tayler:

Reporters should do their job and not allow any of these potential commanders-in-chief to get away with God talk without making them answer for it, as impolite as that might be. Religious convictions deserve the same scrutiny any other convictions get, or more. After all, they are essentially wide-ranging assertions about the nature of reality and supernatural phenomena. As always, the burden of proof lies on the one making extraordinary claims. And if the man or woman carrying the nuclear briefcase happens to be eagerly desiring the End of Days, we need to know.

Here are some questions journalists might ask the candidates. . . . So, if you accept the Bible in its totality, do you think sex workers should be burned alive (Leviticus 21:9) or that gays should be put to death (Leviticus 20:13)? Should women submit to their husbands, per Colossians 3:18? Should women also, as commands 1 Timothy 2:11, study “in silence with full submission?” Would you adhere to Deuteronomy 20:10-14 and ask Congress to pass a law punishing rapists by fining them 50 shekels and making them marry their victims and forbidding them to divorce forever?

It goes on like that, but you get the idea.

I would dearly love to see a reporter ask those questions. The problem is that the public would be outraged—not at the candidate, but at the reporter and her network. Anyone grilling candidates along these lines, which I consider perfectly fair, would herself be branded a nonbeliever and possibly lose her job. The network would get thousands of angry letters. But imagine someone actually asking a candidate this stuff. Those candidates wouldn’t be prepared for it, as they all know that questioning faith is a no-no, and so they’d waffle and stammer in response, giving all of us heathens a grand time.

I do wonder, though, how effective Tayler’s snark has been.  I myself see it as one prong of a multi-pronged attack on faith, but some of the comments are like the one below:

SMontgomery42 minutes ago

h/t: dano1843