A You Tube clip from a BBC talk show called The Big Questions caught my attention recently. Kate Smurthwaite, a comedian, actress, and member of the National Secular Society, found herself among a panel of religious leaders when asked about her concept of heaven:
Kate Smurthwaite: We’ve got people here from different faiths, and they all believe, in some kind of heaven in a different sense, and every single one of them believes in this heaven on the basis of faith, and faith, by definition, is believing in things without evidence. And personally, I don’t do that because I’m not an idiot.
Upon hearing the word “idiot” the crowd reacted with gasps, boos, and some cheers. Part of me loved it—the part that enjoys venting my spleen by proxy, the part that enjoys seeing blood on the sand. Such a comment makes quite an implication, though—that because of their religious faith, which requires the suspension of logic and the willful ignorance of evidence, theists are by definition “idiots.” I find such a statement simply can’t be true without fundamentally redefining the word “idiot” into a way we never naturally use it.
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