I am not a religious person, a fact I’ve never hidden from anyone. However, I’ve also made it clear that I am impatient with “lazy atheism” – cheap shot forms of willful ignorance that make no effort to grasp the differences between religious, theological, and philosophical concepts of “god,” or the many nuanced ways in which such a being might creatively interact with the world. Just because you watched five minutes of Pat Robertson on the television does not mean you are an expert on the subject – not even on the subjects of religions as these are practiced, in fact, by people, much less the full range of concepts, both actual and possible, relating to “god.”

But if lazy atheists are tedious, lazy theists are downright disgusting. I’ve never invested the effort to actually study the Bible, but I did read large portions of it when I was a child. So when my knowledge of this collection of texts exceeds that of persons who publicly posture themselves as devout Christians, I am disinclined to treat such people charitably.

It is my unscientific impression that these persons – willfully ignorant yet declared devout Christians – are invariably conservatives of an extreme variety.

The liberal Christians I have met (and, again, this is not a representative sample) have not only been less inclined to make public displays of their religious beliefs, they have been much more interested in learning and discovering new and different aspects of religious beliefs in others. The difference here may well be due to the fact that conservatives are much more inclined toward adopting authoritarian mind frames, to the extent that not only are they less interested in learning new things, but they are often positively opposed to permitting others to do so.

So it is that I cannot tell if it is ironic, or merely pathetic, that the noisiest opposition to the admission of a handful of Syrian refugees (a “handful” in comparison to the staggering numbers of them) to the United States, seems universally to be coming from conservative “Christians.”

44″Then they themselves also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not take care of You?’ 45″Then He will answer them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’

Mathew 25: 44 – 45