Trevor Noah, the soon-to-be host of The Daily Show, has been called out for
his promotion of negative views of atheists. While his
comments about overweight women and Jews, among others, are being
dismissed/excused as jokes that "didn't land" (um, yeah - hilarious!),
his tweets about how he views atheists aren't at all jokes - he wants the world to know he holds atheists in contempt, no kidding.
He's in good company:
Oprah and
Stephen King feel the same way, unfortunately, and atheists.
If Noah, a South African, is going to be the host of one of the most popular television shows in the USA, a country that is
incredibly diverse not just in terms of ethnicities, but also in terms of values, education, economics, etc., where everyone belongs to a different community of faith OR NONE AT ALL, he's got a lot of catching up to do to learn about our not-at-all-unified culture. I hope he starts his education about the USA with learning about atheism in our country, and learning about it from atheists themselves.
He could take an hour and read through the following 20 essays about atheism and, perhaps, understand why his tweets - and his publicly-stated view of atheists - are so off-the-mark, and why such make us reluctant to watch The Daily Show:
Penn Jillette's excellent essay, "There Is No God" NPR's "This I Believe" series
What Religious People Have Dead Wrong About Atheists (from
Your Atheist Muse)
Contrary to what the Catholic League says, I believe in so much... (from
Your Atheist Muse)
Does Secularism Make People More Ethical? From
Der Spiegel
Not a Christian (from
Your Atheist Muse)
The joy and truth I feel (from
Your Atheist Muse)
Do Atheists have faith? (from
Your Atheist Muse) (from
Your Atheist Muse)
The Atheist Response to Tragedy (from
Your Atheist Muse)
Quit trying to convert me! (from
Your Atheist Muse)
Why Are Believers Willfully Ignorant About Atheists?
Rethinking His Religion (from
The New York Times)
Remembering Butterfly McQueen (from
Your Atheist Muse)
the arrogance of religion (from
Your Atheist Muse)
Satanic Suffering (from
Your Atheist Muse)
Why I "do good"; Why I try to be kind (from
Your Atheist Muse)
The power & the glory of hope, WITHOUT a God (from
Your Atheist Muse)
Love is logical. Love makes sense. (from
Your Atheist Muse)
Lovely things that feel magical in the natural world (from
Your Atheist Muse)
If "God is good all the time", then God is really lousy (from
Your Atheist Muse)
Why I love being an atheist (from
Your Atheist Muse)
Maybe Trevor Noah could read these and, instead of deriding atheists, he could either apologize or just not talk about us at all - the latter of which will be quite hard to do on the Daily Show... at least as it currently exists.
