PHOTO: newsreview.com/reno

In the September 2012 issue of Reno Tahoe Tonight (RTT) magazine, Sean Savoy uses his monthly editorial column to mildly take to task the author of a pro-atheist opinion piece that appeared as the feature article in the popular free weekly magazine Reno News & Review (RN&R).

That critical and judgmental piece, titled “Are You There, God? It’s Me, Jake,” by longtime University of Nevada-Reno professor of journalism Jake Highton, addresses the pretenses and hypocrisy of modern-day religion and at the same time wags a finger at the moral foibles of famous professed believers whose behaviors, he believes, prove to him their moral hypocrisy. Professor Highton’s article begins with the childhood trauma that convinced him that God did not exist, then hops from eighteenth-century deistic points to ancient and modern atheistic points to contemporary scientific points, and ends with the arguments that all religion and all concepts of God defy reason, that modern empirical science alone is reasonable, and that the most morally decent nations are the most secular.

Bishop Savoy, in his article, recognizes the correctness of Professor Highton’s stance when the professor makes solid arguments and promotes an intelligent and more reasonable spiritual perspective when the professor does not.