More from Steve Cornell:

The atheist must also live with the arrogance of his position. Although he realizes that he does not possess total knowledge, his assertion that there is no God requires that he pretend such knowledge. Although he has limited experience, he must convince himself that he has total experience so that he can eliminate the possibility of God. It is not easy to hold the arrogant assertions required by atheism in a society that requires blind tolerance of every ideology.

Pot.  Kettle. Black.  Know what Sparky?  Any definitive statements of knowledge about an unknowable thing is a little arrogant.

But you know what’s REALLY arrogant?  Taking your feelings and ideas about the unknowable thing, and demanding that we base public policy decisions for millions of people on your special revealed knowledge.

And it takes a special kind of arrogance, indeed, it requires you to be the Grand Poobah of the kingdom of the arrogants to do so in the face of facts, measurable results, and scientific consensus that contradict you.

It takes Olympic-grade arrogance to say that God exempts you from zoning laws because you are a church, that a church is so holy that it can operate for-profit businesses and not have to pay a dime in taxes on the profit, to think that you have the right to deny millions of school children important and accurate information about how their bodies work, that you can tell doctors what information to give their patients, to say you know better than close family and loved ones if an injured person should live or die, to look at the shrinkage of polar ice caps that is measured in MILES and deny that the earth is heating up.

I’m just saying, check yourself before you start messing around with other people.  Oh wait, the Bible says that too. 

Oh and hey, NICE double shot at atheists and the “tolerant” society.  Just one problem, I’ve read a substantial portion of the writings of the founding fathers, and I’ve paid attention to social and cultural norms for most of my life,.  I’ve never encountered anything to indicate that our society requires “blind tolerance to every ideology.”  Indeed, though we are called to tolerance by our founders and our history and culture, there are many tests that have been used to decide what we must “tolerate”, and what we must not.  The Mormons have had to moderate their beliefs and practices because they found that our society would not tolerate bigamy.  The ideology of the KKK and the ideology of the Red Scare were entertained, and duly rejected.  Communism is an ideology that is soundly and roundly not tolerated by our society.  Also, NAMBLA is finding it very difficult to find any traction for their ideology that children should have the burden of consent before they have the skills to properly exercise it.

I realize that your target audience believes that rejecting Intelligent Design is blind intolerance of Christianity.  Not so.  It is carefully considered and well-thought-out repudiation.  See, while there are ideologies that we reject as a society, we do so through a mechanism that allows the issue to be explored and considered.  When an ideology is finally vetted or rejected by society, we still find that there are ideological disciples of that ideology in our midst.  They still work to promote and advance that ideology, and we generally allow them to continue as long as they don’t violate the laws and norms of our society in very important ways that damage our society.  If it neither “breaks my leg nor picks my pocket”, as old Thomas Jefferson said, we are supposed to leave them alone unless they try to mess with us.

This is a good thing, and a benefit to our society.  You show great arrogance (and no understanding of it’s importance to your own self-interest) to mock it.