Atheist philanthropist Todd Stiefel recently appeared on the Jesse Peterson Radio Show. Peterson is a black, religious, Tea Party advocate who doesn’t think very highly of atheists.

So this interview was bound to be interesting…

The whole episode was crazy, but two parts stood out in particular. The first occured at the 3:23 mark, after Todd talked about how Gallup polls have shown that people would not vote for atheists even if they were qualified members of their own political party:

Peterson: In the good old days, when boys were boys and men were men, atheists were not allowed to run for public office because they could not swear to God to uphold and enforce the law… or protect the Constitution. So that’s not new that… people wouldn’t support atheists in office and they shouldn’t because you can’t make a promise to God to do the right thing. You don’t believe in God. Stiefel: So you’re saying we shouldn’t be able to hold office… Peterson: Yes. Absolutely. Because you can’t make a promise to God to do the right thing. Stiefel: … So you think other groups should be prohibited from holding office? You think, for example, African-Americans should be forbidden from holding office? Or Muslims…? Peterson: Well, I don’t know why you bring up black people. And one thing that is disturbing about you people is that whenever you want to present your perverted ideas, you always bring blacks into it as though you care about black people…

I’m pretty sure that’s when Todd went like this:

One more highlight, at the 18:08 mark:

Peterson: Why don’t you love Christians? You are trying to create suffering for them. Stiefel: I do love Christians. My wife is a Christian. Peterson: Oh… poor wife.

And back to what I imagine was going through Todd’s head:

By the way, that last bit happened as Tina Turner‘s “What’s Love Got To Do with It” played in the background.

I’m resisting the urge to unleash a barrage of profanities against Peterson… partially because I don’t believe he has as much influence as his website might suggest. At least I hope he doesn’t.

But bravo to Todd for calmly talking to someone that agitating and out of touch with reality. Peterson tried as hard as he could to get Todd to respond to him with anger and malice… and Todd never took the bait. That is not easy to do, especially when you hear that much nonsense being thrown your way.

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If you’d like to listen to the entire, unedited episode, you can subscribe on iTunes (Episode: “Americans Are Snapping by the Millions”) or just click here (MP3). The timestamps for the bits above are 4:45 and 20:34, respectively.



