Tag: atheism

The consequences of post-Christianity

One of the things I find so eminently fascinating about atheist evangelicals is the vast gulf between what they say the believe concerning science and evidence and their observable behavior. The hypocrisy they reliably reveal is not only every bit as great as that exhibited by the likes of Jim Bakker, it’s actually far greater because they engage in it much more often than the average shamed televangelist. Ever since Freud, we have been told that religion is injurious to the individual. Ever since Jean Meslier, it has been asserted that religion is deleterious to society. And we are still hearing this despite the fact that all the evidence, documentary, testimonial, and scientific consistently demonstrates that religion is good for the individual and a significant positive for society.

And yet, despite literally hundreds of years of evidence directly contradicting their blind faith in the benefits of irreligion, evangelical and militant atheists are still extolling the promised wonders of their sexy, secular science fiction society. And they are doing so even as its reality begins to take shape around them:

Lying, adultery, drug taking, breaking the speed limit, drink-driving, and handling stolen goods are all seen as more acceptable than they were at the turn of the century, it suggests. Disapproval of so-called “low level dishonesty” has [decreased] irrespective of social class, income level or education, according to research by Essex University. Integrity levels were slightly higher among women than men but the most significant variation was by age with noticeably higher tolerance of dishonesty among the young.

I’m not sure if it is more amazing or amusing that the academics who produced the report, who are most likely advocates of secularism if not outright atheists themselves, fail to connect the observed phenomenon to the obvious. Instead, they cast around for ridiculous explanations. “We think it is because their role models are not very good.”

And why might that be? The idea that a society can simply abandon one of its central foundations with only minor consequences is absurd on its face. Genetic science has amply demonstrated the powerful limits on environmental modifications to human nature. Atheists can continue to produce a panoply of illogical arguments meant to decouple morality from God, but scientific observation, historical analysis, and thousands of years of philosophical exploration clearly demonstrate that this cannot be successfully done.

Dawkins doubles down

I know a lot of people found it difficult to believe that Richard Dawkins’s arguments are as haplessly bad as they are. But every time he speaks out, he reveals that he is both dishonest and as reliably inept as I described in TIA:

“If children are taught, however moderately, that faith is a virtue, they are taught that they don’t need evidence to believe something; that they can believe something just because it’s their faith, then that paves the way for the minority to become extremists. If children are taught that they don’t need to defend their beliefs with evidence, then that does pave the way for extremism.”

He believes that atheism will soon become a more popular framework for people. “There seems to be a correlation with education. It’s certainly true within the US — the more educated people are more likely to give up religion. I’m sure that’s true in India as well,” he says, adding that even US presidents may have been atheists but they’re not allowed to say so or they won’t get re-elected. “I think Lincoln, Kennedy, Clinton, Obama may well be an atheist. Obama’s a very intelligent man. He probably is an atheist,” he says. “There are 535 members in the US congress. Presumably some of them are reasonably educated. It’s inconceivable that only one of them is an atheist. There’s got to be at least 50% of them.”

Being a conventionally clueless academic, Dawkins clearly doesn’t realize that the educational systems across the West are barely capable of teaching children how to read or do math. The idea that it is going to teach them to believe in things only based on evidence is absurd. And the stupidity of the idea is underliend by the fact that it is readily apparent that Richard Dawkins doesn’t even know what “evidence” is! This is a massive blunder and proves that he genuinely is as stupid as his inept arguments dissected in TIA make him appear!

One can only wonder about the logic behind Dawkins’s absurd claim that half the U.S. Congress is atheist. Or what is the evidence upon which he bases this belief, since he presents nothing but a naked assertion. As for Obama being an atheist, everyone knows that’s not true. One can quite credibly make the case for him being a Muslim since he is known to have been one as a child; there is no shortage of documentary evidence attesting to his Islamic heritage. Or one could also make the case that he is a Muslim apostate who converted to Christianity, as he himself declared last year. But where is the evidence that Obama is an atheist? Dawkins offers nothing beyond the fact of Obama’s education.

In trying to claim that all of these men who openly and publicly confessed their belief, not only in God, but often in specific religious theologies, are actually atheists, Dawkins is being blatantly dishonest. This is deeply ironic, given his angry response to those historically misinformed Christians who believe that Charles Darwin converted to Christianity on his deathbed.

Post-Christian nirvana awaits

You would think that the realization of what will fill the post-Christian void is significantly more intrinsically anti-atheistic religion would serve as a check on the atheist hatred for Christianity. But that would require atheists to be rational, and as I have demonstrated in some detail, that simply isn’t the case:

31-year-old Alexander Aan faces a maximum prison sentence of five years for posting “God does not exist” on Facebook. The civil servant was attacked and beaten by an angry mob of dozens who entered his government office at the Dharmasraya Development Planning Board on Wednesday. The Indonesian man was taken into protective police custody Friday since he was afraid of further physical assault….

Atheism is a violation of Indonesian law under the founding principles of the country. Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, recognises the right to practice six religions in total: Islam, Protestant, Catholic, Hindu, Buddhism and Confucianism. Atheism is, however, illegal. According to Indonesian criminal law, anyone who tries to stop others believing in a faith could face up to five years in jail for blasphemy.

Atheists point to the inevitable triumph of atheism because a few very small European countries with birth rates below the replacement level now have statistically significant atheist minorities. (None have an atheist majority). Meanwhile, Islamic nations with populations nearly equal to the entire European Union with birth rates nearly twice those of Sweden, France, and other European countries are, unlike historic Christianity, actively prosecuting atheists.

And from this evidence, the atheist somehow manages to conclude that he is not only winning, but that the triumph of atheism is inevitable. It would appear that the godless must subscribe to the Charlie Sheen school of data analysis. It is little wonder their arguments against the existence of God are so uniformly inept.

A portrait in godless courage

Unsurprisingly, British atheists are discovering that snark and striking a superior pose happens to be less effective against some religions than others:

A student Muslim group is demanding the ‘offensive’ image of Jesus and Mo having a drink at the bar, taken from an online satirical sketch, be removed from the social networking site. The president of the Atheist, Secularist and Humanist society at the prestigious University College London (UCL), Robbie Yellon, has stepped down over the controversy….

Secretary for the National Federation of Atheist, Humanist and Secular Student Societies, Michael Paynter,said: ‘Robbie stepped aside because he signed up as president to organise events and run a student society.

‘He did not appreciate the stress he would be under when dealing with a controversy like this, so he wanted to make way for someone else.’

I’ll bet he didn’t. It would appear that being an antagonistic little prick isn’t quite as much fun when the targets are inclined to hit back with vigor. I wonder how long it will take before the more intelligent European atheists begin taking the long view and arguing on behalf of re-establishing Christendom. By now, it must be fairly clear to even the most optimistic atheist that the shiny secular scientific society of their dreams isn’t in the cards and they have leaped from the frying pan into the fire.

Christians may not always succeed in loving their enemies, but they have been remarkably tolerant by historical standards. Now the atheists of the West are beginning to discover what real intolerance looks like.

Imagine!

What the godless fans of John Lennon always seem to forget is that there is a well-known place where there are no countries, no religion, and nothing to kill or die for. It is a very peaceful place, at least when seen from this perspective. It is called “the grave”. And it is no accident that so many people end up there every time a utopian – who is often an atheist, but doesn’t have to be – puts himself in a position of power where he can attempt to build a New Man, a New Society, or a New World Order.

It’s not atheism that causes this lethal utopianism. But the observable fact of the matter is that atheists are particularly susceptible to it.

Mailvox: undermining atheism

These emails tend to illustrate the effectiveness of refusing to permit atheists to make their evangelical claims unchallenged. I particularly appreciated the first email, as it highlights the importance of shattering the false intellectual pride that holds so many young and psychologically immature atheists entrapped. One man writes some encouraging words about the breaking of a spell:

I wanted to personally thank you for the impact you’ve had on my life. This was the first time in several years that I celebrated the holiday by worshipping Christ. Your debate with Luke broke the pseudo-intellectual spell that atheism/agnosticism held over me, introduced me to a sophisticated Christian theology, and helped to reconnect me with my faith. The unwelcome eviscerations of an AWCA found their way to a young man whose ego desperately needed a disemboweling. In a delicious twist of irony that Tolkien himself would have appreciated, your indifference towards my salvation has made all the difference towards achieving it. With the amount of hate mail that you must receive, sometimes it’s nice to know that your words do inspire. I’m truly grateful.

A lawyer reading TIA writes with a related question:

After coming across atheist trolls in the comments section of a CNN article, I was disturbed by militant atheism and its assertions after reading more about it. Writings from individuals such as Gregory Paul caused me trouble with my faith, so I bought your book, The Irrational Atheist, as a Christmas present to myself. I am enjoying your book – it’s entertaining and useful for strengthening my faith since I don’t have a lot of time to both read the claims of New Atheists and methodically consider them. I thank you very much for your work for packaging an analysis of their works into one book.

If you would indulge a question, I would appreciate it. While at Barnes and Noble, I decided to look for New Atheist works to quickly peruse and get a feel for them. While there, I encountered a book from Sam Harris called The Moral Landscape where Harris claims that science can determine morality.

My question is this: I am on page 66 of The Irrational Atheist, and, given Harris’ new book, I am curious as to what you would add to or subtract from the following statement: “The second possibility is that they genuinely believe science leads ineluctably toward certain moral conclusions. Although the careless reader could be convinced of this by a judicious selection of quotes, both Dawkins and Dennett specifically deny this to be possible and even Harris only dares to base his moral appeals on reason, not science.”

I would simply add what I have already written about The Moral Landscape, which is to say that Harris is correctly attempting to provide atheism with a science-based case for rational materialist morality. Without any form of universal warrant, rational materialism remains a barren and psychologically vacant philosophy that lacks emotional appeal as well as even the smallest modicum of moral authority. Harris understands this, which is why he wrote the book in a futile effort to provide a basis for both. I would also note that this attempt does not change the quoted sentence from TIA in the slightest, as Harris not only fails to begin making his case, and as anyone who has actually read the book will know, does not even claim to have done so but merely argues that such a case might one day be made.

But I’m not the only one undermining atheism; I have considerable help from within the godless citadel itself. In this very interesting review from danieljc, we can observe that Mount Chapter Four appears to have struck again!

I decided to give this book a chance seeing as how passionately anti-atheist the author is, I wanted to see if the author could muster up any reasonable arguments for his position. With an open-mind, I proceeded reading the first few chapters….and then I closed the book. The quality of the writing is abhorrent and haughty, not to mention unjustifiably egotistic since the author does not offer any reasonable argument for his position. The author goes on in hopeless drivel with repeated digressions attacking Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens that are almost all ad hominem. There was not an instance of reading this pathetic book where I felt my mind changing for the better, even worse I felt as if I was reading Christian right-wing propaganda. I tried to be as unbiased as I possibly could reading this, but the sheer amount of deceit and misrepresentations of facts forced me to close it for fear of vomiting my lunch if I read just another sentence. This is vile, contemptible nonsense ladies and gentlemen, this book adequately personifies everything that is wrong with the United States of America. This anti-intellectual, anti-science, anti-reason, movement that marches under the banner of the Christian right. I tried to stay neutral, tried to stay balanced, but this book as forced me to take a side, the opposite side of whatever loathsome position this author seeks to uphold.

It is easy to see the deceit that is so habitual for many evangelical atheists, which ironically enough, is the very weakness that makes them so easy for the informed theist to defeat them in debate. This is precisely why I have repeatedly pointed out that one MUST assume they are lying snakes until it is demonstrated otherwise; that review is a beautiful attempt of the utterly shameless manner in which so many atheists attempt to deceive.

The amusing thing is that the book doesn’t pretend to be more than a critique of the fallacious arguments presented by the five atheists mentioned, and even if one wants to argue, however unconvincingly, that the critiques are flawed and the arguments are correct, one cannot possibly claim that any of the critiques rely upon ad hominem attacks. These “reviews” are not actual reviews, they are merely thinly disguised efforts to prevent people from actually reading the book and discovering how feeble the atheist arguments presented by the various New Atheists happen to be.

As the more intelligent atheists will recognize, this tactic is very counterproductive from an evangelical perspective, because if the effort is unsuccessful, the subsequent discovery that the book is not as it is described only underlines the popular sentiment that atheists are immoral, dishonest, and completely untrustworthy. This is not fair to the individual atheist who is intellectually honest and personally reliable, but is the inevitable consequence of the tendency of many atheists to rely upon attempted emotional manipulation rather than reasonable intellectual disputation.

The consequence of tolerance

Maximus destroys a conventional atheist defense in the process of pointing out a powerful reason for the appeal of Islam:

Can we come to a conclusion on the historical record between religious and atheist forms of man’s governance in terms of quality of life OVERALL?

I think we can conclude that while religious traditions, using the name of God as political cover, have committed much oppression and tyranny, atheism under the Communist banner committed far WORSE atrocities since they were committed in the name of NOTHING! Nothing, that is, other than a man made philosophy about how he should organize and govern himself outside the purview of God’s divine law since He does not exist. Man governing himself does not seem to have worked out all that well for him when he removed God from the equation.

This takes the common – if absurd – atheist defense of historical atheist crimes and turns it on its head. The fact that the crimes of atheists like Stalin, Mao, and others were not committed “in the name of atheism” not only doesn’t serve as an effective defense of atheism, (as I and many others have pointed out), but was actually a factor in exacerbating the magnitude of the crimes.

But this is actually the less interesting aspect of his piece. He notes that the appeal of religion, specifically Islam, was magnified by the way in which it mitigated the slaughter in Rwanda:

Islam…was a small faith in the country of Rwanda at the time of the genocide, almost non-existent. It is rising now faster then ever, mosques overflowing, and playing a part in healing wounds and bringing forgiveness to that country. Why is Islam growing in Rwanda? In their own words:

During the genocide, Muslims were among the few Rwandans who protected both neighbors and strangers. Elsewhere, many Hutus hunted down or betrayed their Tutsi neighbors and strangers suspected of belonging to the minority.

But the militiamen and soldiers didn’t dare go after Tutsis in Muslim neighborhoods like Biryogo, said Yvette Sarambuye, a 29-year-old convert. ”If a Hutu Muslim tried to kill someone hidden in our neighborhoods, he would first be asked to take the holy Quran and tear it apart to renounce his faith,” said Sarambuye, a Tutsi widowed mother of three who survived the slaughter by hiding with Muslims. “No Muslim dared to violate the holy book, and that saved a lot of us.”

For many Hutu extremists, Muslims were regarded as a group apart, not to be targeted in the genocide.

Muslims take God and the Quran VERY seriously. They don’t have faith or belief…they KNOW God exists and that his word came down to man through the holy prophet Muhammad (PBUH).

You will note that while Muslim Hutus did partake in the slaughter, but when they were confronted by their own religious community and asked to leave Islam because it forbids the killing of innocents, they put down their machetes, at least in Muslim neighborhoods. Islam saved lives…by the Koran alone. In contrast to the Christian majority that the country is now moving away from, the Bible did not save anyone as a holy book:

Although the Christian clergy in many communities struggled to protect Tutsis and often died with them, more than 20 Roman Catholic and Protestant priests, nuns and pastors are facing charges related to the killings. Rwandan courts already have convicted two Catholic priests and sentenced them to death.

The Rwandan church failed in much the same way that the Christian church in the West has failed. We tolerate the unrepentant sinners in our midst rather than doing what is explicitly commanded in the Bible, confronting them, demanding repentance, and expelling them from the church community if they will not do so. And in both cases, the resulting consequence is that people walk away from a faith that is not true to itself.

The church that will not confront the adulterer, the thief, the homosexual, the liar, or the gossip is one that will not confront the murderer either when he appears at their door, demanding the blood of the innocent.

Rope for the troll

A few of you have been wondering why I tend to leave the atheist TruthOverFaith’s comments when he regularly launches wildly inappropriate and off-topic attacks on Christianity. Below are the three of most recent examples made in the previous three posts:

TruthOverfaith 11/20/11 2:18 AM
And then Jesus said, “Sorry about that, fellas! But when the Son of Man needs to fart, he fuckin’ farts!!”-Jesus F Christ.

TruthOverfaith 11/20/11 2:24 AM
And then Jesus said, “How in the hell does my barbaric blood sacrifice fit in to this fucking conversation!! You need to talk about my precious, fucking blood sacrifice for your goddamned sins!!”-Jesus Christ

TruthOverfaith 11/19/11 5:09 AM
“neutrinos are the Tim Tebow of the physics world”

And I thought Tim Tebow was the anal sphincter of the physics world!

Oops, perhaps I’m confusing Tim Tebow with Kirk Cameron. Which one of those nutbags was on a stupid sitcom in the 1980’s?

“And then Jesus said, “Praise me, praise me, praise my holy name. The rest is total donkey sh*t. Amen.”-Jesus Christ, aka Mr. Messiah, aka Mr. Big Dick.

The reason I don’t delete these is that they demonstrate more cogently and convincingly than I ever could one of my major points about atheism, which is to say, that it is indicative of psychological disorder. Now, obviously not all atheists exhibit this incessant vulgarity, intellectual immaturity, and general social autism. But there is a sufficiently strong correlation than more research into the potential causal relationship is indicated; I note that the initial research into the subject has already offered scientific support for my original hypothesis of a link between atheism and Asperger’s Syndrome.

Just as people judge Christianity by the Christian, atheism is judged by the atheist. And that it is why it behooves us to permit the public face of atheism to exhibit itself rather than sweep the ugliness under the carpet. There is no need to respond to this sort of comment, as it speaks sufficiently for itself.

Mailvox: what am I missing here?

Speaking of interlocutors, one of my occasional atheist emailers sent this in response to yesterday’s Mailvox. MD wrote:

‘ . . . the moment they decide to attempt to convince others that they are correct, they become targets.’

Never has there been a greater endorsement of the ‘new atheist’ movement than that last sentence! You’re cleverer than saying weak stuff like that.

I genuinely do not understand the point he is making here. The idea would appear to be that the New Atheism has made targets of Christians and other evangelical theists because they are incorrect. But I don’t see that this is the observable case at all. It seems to me if that X is attempting to convince others he is correct and Y decides to make X a target in response, the onus is therefore on Y to show that X is incorrect.

So, where do Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, or any of the New Atheists ever attempt to show that Billy Graham or John Wesley or Thomas Aquinas are incorrect? They very seldom attack anything that is even remotely recognizable as Christian theology, preferring instead to take on what appear to be poorly remembered Sunday School versions of it. The Courtier’s Reply of PZ Myers – which, to be fair, other New Atheists besides Richard Dawkins cannot be assumed to endorse – outright attempts to justify atheists knowing nothing about what they are so ineptly criticizing.

I even remarked on this bizarre failure to actually address the most basic Christian theology in TIA: “While Harris doesn’t once cite minor Christian intellectual figures such as Tertullian, Ambrose, Jerome, Gregory the Great, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, John Wesley, G. K. Chesterton, or even C. S. Lewis, he does find it relevant to provide one reference to Tim LaHaye, thirteen references to Hitler, Himmler, and Hess, and six whole pages dedicated to Noam Chomsky. Because, after all, no one is more suited to explain the Christian faith quite so well as an elderly author of pop religious fantasies, a trio of dead Nazis, and a left-wing Jewish linguist.”

Now Dawkins does mention Aquinas and the Five Proofs in The God Delusion, but he does little more than cry “infinite regress” and demonstrate that he has missed the point of them. (I did like his point about the natural terminator, although it doesn’t actually serve to refute any of the Five Proofs since they concern beginnings rather than ends.) He also shows that he has never actually read the Summa Theologica; it is telling to note that Dawkins immediately proceeds from his cursory glance at the Five Proofs to the Ontological Argument without realizing that Aquinas rejected it more than 700 years ago in Part 1, Question 2, Article 1 of the Summa.

“OBJECTION 2: Further, those things are said to be self-evident which are known as soon as the terms are known, which the Philosopher (1 Poster. iii) says is true of the first principles of demonstration. Thus, when the nature of a whole and of a part is known, it is at once recognized that every whole is greater than its part. But as soon as the signification of the word “God” is understood, it is at once seen that God exists. For by this word is signified that thing than which nothing greater can be conceived. But that which exists actually and mentally is greater than that which exists only mentally. Therefore, since as soon as the word “God” is understood it exists mentally, it also follows that it exists actually. Therefore the proposition “God exists” is self-evident.

REPLY TO OBJECTION 2: Perhaps not everyone who hears this word “God” understands it to signify something than which nothing greater can be thought, seeing that some have believed God to be a body. Yet, granted that everyone understands that by this word “God” is signified something than which nothing greater can be thought, nevertheless, it does not therefore follow that he understands that what the word signifies exists actually, but only that it exists mentally. Nor can it be argued that it actually exists, unless it be admitted that there actually exists something than which nothing greater can be thought; and this precisely is not admitted by those who hold that God does not exist.”

So, it seems to me that far from being the greatest endorsement of the New Atheist movement, my statement demonstrates its impotence, its ignorance, and its intellectual dishonesty.