Glen Beck ties gang fight to atheism

Interesting video, and a good lead-in to our upcoming show in which religion will be discussed.

In the video, Beck is right about one thing: atheism is on the rise. In 1990, those in the United States identifying as non-religious was 7.5%. In 2001, it was 13.2%. Now it's 16.1%. These come from the Pew Forum on Religious and Public life.

However, he is wrong about quite a bit. Religion is not necessary for a healthy society. In fact, irrationality is required for a society to not reach its potential, and irrationality is the heartbeat of religion. Beck flies off the handle about the ten commandments not being posted in a courthouse, scoffing as though atheists are opposed to the notion that murder is a bad thing. It's just that to hang the commandments up would be a violation of the Constitution and downright idiotic. Here are the 10 commandments:

Count how many of them are represented in our laws. Two, maybe three if you count perjury as lying. Moreover, some of the behaviors prohibited by the commandments are necessary. It is not wrong to covet, for instance. You could hardly maintain a job if you didn't want a house or other niceties. Coveting pushes us to achieve. It is wrong to steal something of someone else's, but it is not wrong to wish you had it. Also, don't work on Saturday (the historical Sabbath)? Who gives a shit?

God, that's who. Because if you catch your best friend making a graven image, working on Saturday, or committing adultery, by edict of god in the old testament, you're supposed to kill them. And, if you are unwilling to kill them, your neighbors are supposed to kill you. When we read the bible, it is we who decide that such commands could only be, at best, the demands of a monster. We make the moral judgments when reading the bible, which is why our laws reflect an algorithm for societal happiness acquired through many millenia of human ingenuity. We are moral despite religion, not because of it.

Statistics would indicate that many of the violent people in Beck's video were believers in Jesus. Did it stay their hand? Yet how sure of himself is Glen Beck, and every other pious goon like him?