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 website 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.
“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?” What an interesting comment. Change atheists to fundamentalist and the same remark fits exactly. Maybe the two groups have more in common than was thought.
The fool says in his heart, “There is no God”…
[blockquote]What primarily seems to motivate atheists isn’t rationalism but anger[/blockquote]
If you have ever seen Christopher Hitchens interviewed, you say to yourself, “This guy should not be around handguns”. As it is, he is killing himself on the installment plan with cigarettes.
Hitchens is a fundamentalist, which is to say that he has his core, fundamental dogma which he must defend.
A good read on this subject: [url=http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=1435]The Ditchkens Delusion [/url]
If athiests don’t believe in God, so what? Why do they proselytize and write about it so much? I don’t believe in – oh, Hinduism, but I don’t talk and write about not believing in it all the time. I never understood that.
Atheism needs some kind of manifesto that states its core beliefs and philosophy. A practical guide as to how one would live a productive, fulfilling and enjoyable life without borrowing too heavily from Judeo-Christian values such as the Ten Commandments or the Great Commandment. Otherwise, atheists will always be viewed as somewhat irrational, angry and unhappy because the only core belief is a big negative, the non-belief in God, hardly a rallying cry.
Although the author of the article chose the image “atheists circl(ing) like water in a drain,” I think “[i]Drosophila sp.[/i] circling about a piece of rotting fruit” the more fitting description.
Pax et bonum,
Keith Töpfer
And now we have a bishop in the Scottish Episcopal Church that is an agnostic: http://tinyurl.com/qck9od
He doesn’t have the integrity to resign. He still celebrates the Eucharist.
I have said that liberals are parasites on the church. This guy obviously is not drawing anyone to the church.
Robroy,
He still believes in his paycheck.
I have a very moral friend who is also bright and is an atheist. His prime directive is keeping his carbon footprint to a minimum. He is from England and his mother is a practicing Anglican. What surprises me is his continuing need to feed at the trough of Dawkins, Hitchens and Dennett. Why does he need more proof of God’s non existence. I think there can be a natural drift toward belief in God in a moral person that has to be resisted by supplemental “sermons” from fellow Atheists. When I stated to him the other day that it took as much faith to be a Physicist, since much of current theory in Physics cannot be observed or quantified, he didn’t respond. I find it quite laughable that British law required the atheists slogan on British buses to include the word “possibly”. They then were made into agnostics much to their dismay.
#8 FWIW Richard Holloway is former Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church and has been retired since 2000. He’s a bishop after the mold of Spong. An enfant terrible, a dabbler in outre ideas and salesman of exotic trifles, a gifted and charismatic man in a tiny church.
FWIW I didn’t think there was much content in Charlotte Allen’s article. For delightfully splenetic but theologically informed responses to the, so called, New Atheism I’d look to David Hart and Terry Eagleton’s new books.
The atheists success arises in part from the common liberal belief, that the past is primarily a set of shackles from which the present must be freed at any cost. Since much of America is now blue as can be, this notion is widespread and is indeed fundamentalist view, one of the characteristics of a True Believer. The aggressive stance is part of the same picture: gay pride has become also Mad Pride (see Newsweek last week for this frightening notion) and Atheist Pride. We’re Queer And We’re Here, the in-your-face approach to persuasion, has worked so well that America simply has another novelty with which to shape its opinions as a substitute for thought.
Larry
At the rather severe insistance of my son I watched “The Golden Compass”. I was very surprised! It is the most striking and clear revelation of the mind of the Atheist that I have yet found. If there is no God, there is also no order, and that was just one of the many things illustrated.
Don
In about 1982 I heard Madalyn O’Hair’s son (a convert to Christianity) speak. He told of being a small boy and being awakened by a thunderstorm one night. He went downstairs to seek comfort, to find his mother (alone she thought) shaking her fist at the ceiling, loudly daring God to kill her. Just another theist with issues.
I often remind folks in the pews that many atheists don’t believe in God, but they sure are mad at him.