Last month, atheists marked Blasphemy Day at gatherings around the world, and celebrated the freedom to denigrate and insult religion.
Some offered to trade pornography for Bibles. Others de-baptized people with hair dryers. And in Washington, D.C., an art exhibit opened that shows, among other paintings, one entitled Divine Wine, where Jesus, on the cross, has blood flowing from his wound into a wine bottle.
Another, Jesus Paints His Nails, shows an effeminate Jesus after the crucifixion, applying polish to the nails that attach his hands to the cross.
“I wouldn’t want this on my wall,” says Stuart Jordan, an atheist who advises the evidence-based group Center for Inquiry on policy issues. The Center for Inquiry hosted the art show.
Greetings.
Speaking as someone who is at least a nominal atheist, I apologize for our militants. You have your bozos, we have ours. [i]sigh[/i]
regards,
JPB
The only thing that unites atheists is a negative. So of course there is division on everything else.
militant atheism isn’t a particularly sophisticated view of religion. If anything, its a fundamentalist view, inverted.
The athiests I’ve known (mostly through CPE at Roosevelt Hospital in NYC) weren’t so much anti-God as they were secular humanists who just didn’t believe. I’ve always assumed people like Marx, etc., were athiests more as a reaction to the close ties between church and power holders they sought to overthrow (itself not a good reason, but at least it makes sense).
This story caught me up because Dawkins, Hitchens, et al., should know better. For every person who uses religion as an excuse for violence, there are thousands who use religion as their lens for good. My own small congregation most likely does more for the common good locally and globally than their own organizations because Jesus said “Inasmuch as you did it to the least of these my [brothers and sisters], you did it also to me.”
The argument that religion makes people fly planes into buildings falls apart when their stated desire to express disdain and hatred, and to ridicule, and otherwise belittle faith and its adherents can just as easily provoke someone to fly a plane into the Vatican . . .
Aside from the “effeminate Jesus” painting, some of these “artistic pieces” seem to be blasphemy only because the artist was an atheist and had blasphemous intentions. Two pieces mentioned specifically in the article don’t offend me in the slightest, the painting of Jesus on the cross with the blood flowing into a wine bottle and the communion wafer with the rusty nail through it. Why would I be offended at such simple statements of what I believe, and what I could only see as reminders of the truth which has most truly set me free? I might as well be offended every time the soldiers’ mockery of Christ on the cross is read aloud. Would that Christian artists had come up with such simple, literal, and yet metaphorical statements.
I must also say that I find the idea of an “atheist schism” to be quite entertaining, I am somewhat disappointed its only over the treatment of us (theists) and not over the “Ford/Freud” controversy. I guess they still have a little way to go for their brave new world.
Following up on JPB’s much appreciated #1 I would note that I have long tried to convey to people that insulting someone is rarely a conducive instrument of persuasion. Usually that observation has been directed at fellow Christians. But it would seem that there are others in need of learning that lesson.
Under the mercy,
John
I’ve always been interested in the visceral hatred of some atheists at people who hold religious beliefs. On the one hand, they seem to be arguing that Christianity (or religion in general) is bad because it incites hatred/wars/etc, etc. And yet, the hatred they so openly espouse is somehow better or going to make the world a more peaceful place?
I don’t understand how that is in any way considered a convincing argument. When one set of people begin denigrating and feeling superior to another set, the end result is always the same. In fact, I would direct people who act and believe in that manner to read first had accounts (particularly the accounts of Father Arseny) of the “special camps” the Soviets sent people of faith because they were viewed as enemies of the state. Do these atheists of this ilk really want us to think if they suddenly became the ultimate power in the State, history would not repeat itself with attitudes of this nature?
I have also been curious to watch the phenomenon of atheists wanting to “de-baptize” people. If its just a bunch of hocus pocus and there is no God, then baptism has no meaning or power beyond that of sprinkling water on someone. Why something like that needs to be “undone” if there is no meaning behind it seems pointless to me. I mean, if I was superstitious and didn’t “step on cracks lest I break my mother’s back,” if I suddenly stop being superstitious, its pointless to go fill in all the cracks I didn’t stepped on. Just stop doing and move on. By the sheer logic of feeling that they have to “undo” it, then there must be something to it.
My final point is that visceral hatred of that sort (by anyone about anything) usually belies a great personal insecurity. I as a Y feel better about myself if I denigrate X. And if I don’t have X to kick around, then my life doesn’t have as much meaning. If you are really at peace with what you believe, then you are not threatened by other viewpoints.
Hey, I agree with John Wilkins on something (besides politics); well said John!
I do confess — I liked the bit about “de-baptiz[ing] people with hair dryers.”
Happily, I don’t know any true atheists. Most that I have met admitted to at least some form of spirituality, something infinite. I cant think of a darker existence than a dictated by whatever we happen to feel and the only right and wrong is whatever you decide for yourself.
What makes people fly planes into buildings is not their religion; rather, it is hatred for people with whom they disagree…
Militant athiests may not be crashing planes, but their actions suggest a similar motivation.
Re #10
Ralph,
If you want an example of what militant atheism has produced one need only take a glance into any of the many mass graves throughout what was once the USSR. Or alternatively you can read about the vast system of concentration and forced labor camps erected in that and other “atheist” states to deal with (among others) Christians.
We will never know the number of New Martyrs to atheism. But in Russia alone it is conservatively in the millions.
In ICXC
John
#5: Your point is well taken, but according to the broadcast, the nail was driven through a consecrated host.
And that bit about “blaspheming the Holy Spirit” was simply juvenile. It reminded me of the Little Rascals’ ‘He-Man-Woman-Hater’s Club. Those atheists apparently do not understand what blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is (it is not denying his existence: the Pharisees were condemned for attributing the works of God in Jesus as coming from the devil, so unwilling they were to acknowledge the hand of God in Jesus’ ministry).
Religious people have flown airplanes into buildings. True enough. They’ve burned folks at the stake, fired bullets, and would set off bombs if they could get their hands on the. But as #11 alludes, religious violence lights no candle to the systematic damage done by officially atheist states–as well as those who used religion to further their political ends. We have a Lord who taught that only those of us who do the will of his Father will enter the Kingdom of God–no matter how many times we recite “Lord, Lord.” How do atheists distance themselves from the above-mentioned regimes?
I’m thinking right now of the story of the Rev. John Fletcher, Anglican priest and Wesley supporter who died (1785) after catching a contagion by ministering to his parishioners that no one else wanted to touch. In spite of all the horror done in the name of religion, why do these stories of people like Fletcher, let alone the establishment of so many schools, orphanages, and hospitals, have that ring of authenticity when heard–even by secular ears? What are atheists–in the name of atheism–willing to suffer and even die for, especially if this life is all there is?
William Shontz
[url=http://theleca.org ]The Lake Erie Confessing Anglican[/url]
[b]Archer_of_the_Forest[/b] [url=”http://new.kendallharmon.net/wp-content/uploads/index.php/t19/article/25968/#396901″]7[/url] wrote:
[quote]If you are really at peace with what you believe, then you are not threatened by other viewpoints.[/quote]
Hear, hear. Couldn’t agree more. It has been my experience that one can often [i]learn[/i] something from people with whom one disagrees, provided reasonable discussion is possible. It is not necessary for anyone to abandon their position for this to happen.
I will confess a certain temptation to jump in with counter-observations to some of what I read here, but … I’m really not “militant” about it, and don’t feel the need to change anyone’s mind.
WRT [b]John Wilkins[/b]’ observation at [url=”http://new.kendallharmon.net/wp-content/uploads/index.php/t19/article/25968/#396891″]3[/url], I informally define “fundamentalist”* as anyone who adopts a view of the form “X said it, I believe it, that settles it.”
Very few of us hate you. Most (that I know) are just not persuaded to your views, and wish to live and let live. A few of us are even curious about you.
regards,
JPB
*I realize that this does violence to the original definition of “[url=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentalism”]fundamentalism[/url]”, but the colloquial usage has become so common that I usually don’t fight it.
Oh, does this mean some Atheists will break away and try to take the real estate with them? That is just sad.