Maybe it’s just my impression, but there seem to have been a few articles suggesting that religious hypocrisy is acceptable. I’ve even noticed an implicit assumption that people who wouldn’t fake a religion to get their kids into a “good” faith school aren’t trying hard enough for their kids.

It is “brave and principled” to refuse the prayer, rather than deny the scholarship. While praying conflicts with the atheist’s position, accepting money from a theist does not. If it were so, then the only way to be a “brave and principled” atheist would be to reject ALL services and courtesies on the part of any theist, which would be (and is) an absurd notion for Purves to suggest.

Libby’s position is one which, in a cowardly fashion, wishes to segregate believers from non-believers, but lacks the will to do so (or admit so). It is upon the college to reject atheists from its programs if they dislike their lack of theistic behavior. However, to do such a thing might result in great public backlash, or make them appear as fanatical as they really are. They compromise by requesting that their atheist students pretend to be theists.

Nice post!

“As the first way out there was religion, which is implanted into every child by way of the traditional education-machine. Thus I came — though the child of entirely irreligious (Jewish) parents — to a deep religiousness, which, however, reached …