My news tweeting service @anatheistnews tweeted the following story today which a follower thought was probably not newsworthy. I don’t think so either, but it does offer a small amount of grist for my mill over here:

Calvinist-turned-Catholic touts interfaith respect

Author Peter Kreeft packed the house at Newman’s Bookshoppe on a recent Friday night, offering his views on interfaith harmony in a lively talk.

…

One woman in the predominantly Catholic audience wanted to know how she should comfort Protestant friends after they lose loved ones without “toning down” her Catholic beliefs, including her belief in praying to patron saints. Another asked how to approach non-believers in discussions of faith.

“God has given us a very powerful tool — death,” he responded to the second question. “And every atheist — unless he is an idiot — is really agnostic. No one really knows if there is a God, so ask that person, ‘What do you think happens to you after you die?”

If, as you say, no one really knows if there is a God, shouldn’t every theist also really be an agnostic? And if we really don’t know if there is a God, why would we know if there was an after life? What then is the point of asking such a question?

I mean, in one sentence Peter Kreeft proclaims that God has given the evangelist death as a powerful tool of persuasion (fear?) and then two sentences later he empathetically says that no one, not even Peter Kreeft, really knows if God exists.

Who is the idiot here?