Are crazy Christians crazier than crazy atheists?

Hutton Gibson, with his son Mel (inset)

Hutton Gibson, father of poor Mel, has just given an interview to the Political Cesspool Radio Program – yes, there is such a thing, here – in which he says that the Pope is a homosexual – like “half the people” in the Vatican – and is trying to destroy the Church from within. Go here.

In common with many militant atheists and secular humanists, Hutton Gibson believes that the Pope’s alleged sexual “preference” explains why he did nothing about sex abuse in the Church. “Why else would he put up with this thing? He was in charge of stamping it out. He did nothing, he just kept quiet.” Now that the Church is sunk in scandal, says Hutton, the Pope is covering his tracks by, for example, bringing back the old Mass. It’s not that he values the old Mass, see, just that he doesn’t want anyone to catch on that he is, in Gibson’s words, an anti-Pope, a “slippery character”.

My friend Scott P Richert has an excellent blog on all this at About Catholicism.

Scott, who is executive editor of the conservative Chronicles magazine, points out that conspiracy theorists (of both Left and Right) can always explain inconsistencies in their arguments by assuming that the subjects of their conspiracies think exactly as they do.

“So Hutton Gibson, who wants to see the Traditional Latin Mass restored, finds Pope Benedict’s restoration of the Mass to be proof of the conspiracy, while Left-wing critics of the Catholic Church join Gibson in declaring that the Holy Father is a homosexual, even though they normally approve of homosexuality and attack the Church for declaring homosexual activity a sin.”

But here is question that occurred to me as I listened to Hutton Gibson: are wackadoo conspiracy theories more often found among Christians than among atheists? I do not know, but I have never come across militant atheists who have quite the same mindset as Gibson and proclaim that, for example, Peter Tatchell is secretly a straight Christian and is working from within the secular humanist movement to further the interests of Rome and to ensure that one day every living person on the planet is a professing Catholic.

If there are such people, I think we should be told.