Posted on 05/23/2009 12:15:01 PM PDT by rhema
I can't stand atheists — but it's not because they don't believe in God. It's because they're crashing bores.
Other people, most recently the British cultural critic Terry Eagleton in his new book "Faith, Reason, and Revolution," take to task such superstar nonbelievers as Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins ("The God Delusion") and political journalist Christopher Hitchens ("God Is Not Great") for indulging in a philosophically primitive opposition of faith and reason that assumes that if science can't prove something, it doesn't exist.
My problem with atheists is their tiresome — and way old — insistence that they are being oppressed and their fixation with the fine points of Christianity. What, did their Sunday school teachers flog their behinds with a Bible when they were kids?
Read Dawkins, or Hitchens, or the works of fellow atheists Sam Harris ("The End of Faith") and Daniel Dennett ("Breaking the Spell"), or visit an atheist Web site or blog (there are zillions of them, bearing such titles as "God Is for Suckers," "God Is Imaginary" and "God Is Pretend"), and your eyes will glaze over as you peruse — again and again — the obsessively tiny range of topics around which atheists circle like water in a drain.
First off, there's atheist victimology: Boohoo, everybody hates us 'cuz we don't believe in God.
Although a recent Pew Forum survey on religion found that 16 percent of Americans describe themselves as religiously unaffiliated, only 1.6 percent call themselves atheists, with another 2.4 percent weighing in as agnostics (a group despised as wishy-washy by atheists). You or I might attribute the low numbers to atheists' failure to win converts to their unbelief, but atheists say the problem is persecution so relentless that it drives tens of millions of God-deniers into a closet of feigned faith, like gays before Stonewall. In his online "Atheist Manifesto," Harris writes that "no person, whatever his or her qualifications, can seek public office in the United States without pretending to be certain that ... God exists."
The evidence? Antique clauses in the constitutions of six — count 'em — states barring atheists from office.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled such provisions unenforceable nearly 50 years ago, but that doesn't stop atheists from bewailing that they have to hide their Godlessness from friends, relatives, employers and potential dates. One representative of the pity-poor-me school of atheism, Kathleen Goodman, writing in January for the Chronicle of Higher Education, went so far as to promote affirmative action for atheists on college campuses: specially designated, college-subsidized "safe spaces" for them to express their views.
Maybe atheists wouldn't be so unpopular if they stopped beating the drum until the hide splits on their second-favorite topic: How stupid people are who believe in God.
This is a favorite Dawkins theme. In a recent interview with Trina Hoaks, the atheist blogger for the Examiner.com Web site, Dawkins described religious believers as follows: "They feel uneducated, which they are; often rather stupid, which they are; inferior, which they are; and paranoid about pointy-headed intellectuals from the East Coast looking down on them, which, with some justification, they do." Thanks, Richard!
Dennett likes to call atheists "the Brights," in contrast to everybody else, who obviously aren't so bright. In a 2006 essay describing his brush with death after a heart operation, Dennett wrote these thoughts about his religious friends who told him they were praying for his recovery: "Thanks, I appreciate it, but did you also sacrifice a goat?" With friends like Daniel Dennett, you don't need enemies.
Then there's P.Z. Myers, biology professor at the University of Minnesota's Morris campus, whose blog, Pharyngula, is supposedly about Myers' field, evolutionary biology, but is actually about his fanatical propensity to label religious believers as "idiots," "morons," "loony" or "imbecilic" in nearly every post. The university deactivated its link to Myers' blog in July after he posted a photo of a consecrated host from a Catholic Mass that he had pierced with a rusty nail and thrown into the garbage ("I hope Jesus' tetanus shots are up to date") in an effort to prove that Catholicism is bunk — or something.
Myers' blog exemplifies atheists' frenzied fascination with Christianity and the Bible. Atheist Web site after atheist Web site insists that Jesus either didn't exist or "was a jerk" (in the words of one blogger) because he didn't eliminate smallpox or world poverty. At the American Atheists Web site, a writer complains that God "set up" Adam and Eve, knowing in advance that they would eat the forbidden fruit. A blogger on A Is for Atheist has been going through the Bible chapter by chapter and verse by verse in order to prove its "insanity" (he or she had gotten up to the Book of Joshua when I last looked).
Another topic that atheists beat like the hammer on the anvil in the old Anacin commercials is Darwinism versus creationism. Maybe Darwin-o-mania stems from the fact that this year marks the bicentennial of Charles Darwin's birth in 1809, but haven't atheists heard that many religious people (including the late Pope John Paul II) don't have a problem with evolution but, rather, regard it as God's way of letting his living creation unfold? Furthermore, even if human nature as we know it is a matter of lucky adaptations, how exactly does that disprove the existence of God?
And then there's the question of why atheists are so intent on trying to prove that God not only doesn't exist but is evil to boot. Dawkins, writing in "The God Delusion," accuses the deity of being a "petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak" as well as a "misogynistic, homophobic, racist ... bully." If there is no God — and you'd be way beyond stupid to think differently — why does it matter whether he's good or evil?
The problem with atheists — and what makes them such excruciating snoozes — is that few of them are interested in making serious metaphysical or epistemological arguments against God's existence, or in taking on the serious arguments that theologians have made attempting to reconcile, say, God's omniscience with free will or God's goodness with human suffering. Atheists seem to assume that the whole idea of God is a ridiculous absurdity, the "flying spaghetti monster" of atheists' typically lame jokes. They think that lobbing a few Gaza-style rockets accusing God of failing to create a world more to their liking ("If there's a God, why aren't I rich?" "If there's a God, why didn't he give me two heads so I could sleep with one head while I get some work done with the other?") will suffice to knock down the entire edifice of belief.
What primarily seems to motivate atheists isn't rationalism but anger — anger that the world isn't perfect, that someone forced them to go to church as children, that the Bible contains apparent contradictions, that human beings can be hypocrites and commit crimes in the name of faith. The vitriol is extraordinary. Hitchens thinks that "religion spoils everything." Dawkins contends that raising one's offspring in one's religion constitutes child abuse. Harris argues that it "may be ethical to kill people" on the basis of their beliefs. The perennial atheist litigant Michael Newdow sued (unsuccessfully) to bar President Barack Obama from uttering the words "so help me God" when he took his oath of office.
What atheists don't seem to realize is that even for believers, faith is never easy in this world of injustice, pain and delusion. Even for believers, God exists just beyond the scrim of the senses. So, atheists, how about losing the tired sarcasm and boring self-pity and engaging believers seriously?
Charlotte Allen is the author of "The Human Christ: The Search for the Historical Jesus" and a contributing editor to the Minding the Campus Web site of the Manhattan Institute. She wrote this column for the Los Angeles Times.
Based on what I've heard and read on Dawkins, he's merely projecting. He simply thinks that God is like him.
Repentance from sins is required to be pardoned. How does one ask forgiveness if one doesn’t recognize or acknowledge the God from whom forgiveness must come?
Ps 14:1 1 The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is no one who does good.
Nowhere in Scripture does it indicate that God approves of sincerity of convictions even though those are wrong and excuses wrong behavior just because the person is *honest* in his convictions.
Unless one accepts Christ, there is no forgiveness. Jesus is the only way to God.
John 14:6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
No one can see God unless they come to Him through Christ. Christianity is very exclusive on one hand, because it’s only through Christ that one can come to God, and very inclusive in that ANYONE has access through Christ to God regardless of position, power, finances, intellectual ability, or whatever.
God made it easy enough for a child to do. Man is without excuse because it’s not too hard for anyone.
How true. Everyone has faith.
It’s simply a matter of who or what one puts his faith in.
John 3:1-7 1Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council. 2He came to Jesus at night and said, "Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him."
3In reply Jesus declared, "I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again. "
4"How can a man be born when he is old?" Nicodemus asked. "Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb to be born!"
5Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. 6Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. 7You should not be surprised at my saying, 'You must be born again.'
One can't pick and choose the god they believe in and expect that one to do anything for him. Jesus Himself was the one who said that man must be born again. You can criticize all you want the God of the Bible, but He's the only real one who IS a god and can do anything for mankind. Anything else is merely a construct of the human mind or some demon masquerading as a god or spirit.
Yeah, we ping each other whenever one of us sees a troll.
Thanks for the ping, Wagglebee.
Here are a couple of links you might be interested in:
An Atheist's defense of Christianity
My Christian Friends' Bad Mistake
If you must be the enemy of something, why not the enemy of the anti-reason leftists that are currently running this country, and why not be the ally of those who would die to defend your right to believe and worship as your best reason leads you to.
The freedom you enjoy (what's left of it) was very much made possible by the Atheist Thomas Paine, whose pamphlet "Common Sense" swayed many to become patriotic defender of America's independence.
Why do you take a couple of noisome idiots claiming to be atheists as the spokesmen for atheism. What would you think of me, if I chose the most despicable of self-proclaimed Christians as your example and spokesman? Hank
Thanks for the ping Wag. I smell ozone in somebody's future. IBTZ
Thanks for the ping!
Some have characterized Paine as having Deistic sensibilities. Cf. this 1707 address:
Thomas Paine on "The Study of God" Delivered in Paris on January 16, 1797, in a Discourse to the Society of Theophilanthropists
It has been the error of the schools to teach astronomy, and all the other sciences and subjects of natural philosophy, as accomplishments only; whereas they should be taught theologically, or with reference to the Being who is the author of them: for all the principles of science are of Divine origin. Man cannot make, or invent, or contrive principles. He can only discover them; and he ought to look through the discovery to the Author.
When we examine an extraordinary piece of machinery, an astonishing pile of architecture, a well executed statue or a highly finished painting where life and action are imitated, and habit only prevents our mistaking a surface of light and shade for cubical solidity, our ideas are naturally led to think of the extensive genius and talents of the artist. When we study the elements of geometry, we think of Euclid. When we speak of gravitation, we think of Newton. How then is it, that when we study the works of God in the creation, we stop short, and do not think of God? It is from the error of the schools in having taught those subjects as accomplishments only, and thereby separated the study of them form the Being who is the author of them. . . .
The evil that has resulted from the error of the schools in teaching natural philosophy as an accomplishment only has been that of generating in the pupils a species of atheism. Instead of looking through the works of the creation to the Creator himself, they stop short, and employ the knowledge they acquire to create doubts of His existence. They labor with studied ingenuity to ascribe everything they behold to innate properties of matter; and jump over all the rest, by saying that matter is eternal.
Why do you take a couple of noisome idiots claiming to be atheists as the spokesmen for atheism. What would you think of me, if I chose the most despicable of self-proclaimed Christians as your example and spokesman? Hank
Dawkins, Hitchens, Myers: not exactly illiterate, inarticulate Fred Phelpses, are they? With their educational bona fides, they're considered a who's who of the intelligentsia, Hank, and they're lionized in the media. That same media, by the way, are perennially taking unlettered hatemongers like Phelps and setting them up as oracles of the [Christian, pro-life, pro-family, you name it] community.
Typo: Paine’s address was delivered in 1797, as the next paragraph’s heading indicates.
Humans are animals...species homo sapiens, order primates, class mammalia, phylum chordata, kingdom animalia.
Sure it can.
What God? What soul?
Because no other animal than homo sapiens has (as of yet) evolved a brain of sufficient intelligence to use and/or invent a computer.
Happy to be of service!
Only by mental pygmies, who are easily fooled by so-celled “educational bona fides,” i.e. pieces of paper handed out to good little academics who can spit out their leftist professors’ pet theories, darlings of the leftist media, that is, all the media.
Good grief. “Intelligentsia.” Not one of them has ever produced a single thing of value in their lives. (That does not mean they have never produced anything that some people like—pigs like slop.)
Hank
I suspect those who do not see him have their hands over their eyes and are a danger to other drivers on the road.
There are genuine atheists and agnostics, and then there are the much larger groups of anti-christians/anti-creationists. The difference between the two usually becomes quickly apparent, with the anti-christians/anti-creationists trying to hide their agenda in 'science' and using every tool they can come up with (evolutionism, etc) to attack those who do not adopt their ideology.
Cambridge (Hitchens) and Oxford (Dawkins) aren’t exactly educational thin gruel. Hitchens and Dawkins may be tendentious acolytes of atheism, but they’re not unlettered.
>>The difference between the two usually becomes quickly apparent, with the anti-christians/anti-creationists trying to hide their agenda in ‘science’ and using every tool they can come up with (evolutionism, etc) to attack those who do not adopt their ideology.<<
And then there are who understand and practice science and have no political agenda at all.
There might be some good minds yet in some of the schools of Cambridge and Oxford, but for the most part they have become as postmodernist, cultural-Marxist, and anti-intellectual as any other modern-day universities. What do you think they are teaching and studying—they, like all big universities get government money—guess what dictates the curricula.
All that has happened to Western culture and society began with the corruption of academia, and it began a long time ago.
Try typing the following into a Google search:
postmodernism in Oxford Cambridge
deconstruction in Oxford Cambridge
environmentalism in Oxford Cambridge
...to get a hint of how much of this nonsense is spewed from the academic elite at these prestigious universities.
I’m not at all impressed by the names of the universities someone as attended. Obama attended Harvard.
Hank
How he got there is one of the age's mysteries. Graduating without honors from Columbia, he's never revealed his LSAT scores that ostensibly qualified him for Harvard Law.
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