He who does not believe in God will often find very strange ways of occupying his time. Perhaps some of you will recall my statement that from a societal perspective, atheism is but a halfway point en route to paganism. NRO’s Corner was waxing lightheartedly apocalyptic about an upcoming Furry convention in Atlanta yesterday and the first thought that struck me was that the fetish sounded like the sort of thing that would harbor inordinate appeal for the socially autistic:
Religion:
33% Agnostic/Undecided
20% NeoPagan
18% Christian
10% Atheist
05% Non-denominational Theist
05% Jewish
01% Eastern Philosophy
Unsurprisingly, that appears to be the case. In case you don’t recall the general statistics, that’s 20x overrepresentation for High Church atheists and 2.4x overrepresentation of Low Church atheists. Pagans were by far the most overrepresented with 133x, which contrasts greatly with the Christian underrepresentation by 4x. The survey also showed 3x overrepresentation of the most highly educated. Obviously, one can only conclude from this that attending church is crazy, but dressing up like animals and engaging in homoerotic frolics is simply a rational, scientific way to spend an afternoon.
And here I thought the one sci-fi con I attended was a bit of a freak show.
Now, I fully support your right to dress up like a dragon-squirrel and molest the nearest stuffed panda if that’s what you want to do, but please do not expect me not to laugh or view it as a positive sign of societal health.