Saturday Humor: A Holiday for Atheists

This makes the regular e-mail rounds, and it's not true, but it's still worth repeating... 

In Florida, an atheist created a case against the upcoming Easter and Passover Holy days. He hired an attorney to bring a discrimination case against Christians and Jews and observances of their holy days. The argument was that it was unfair that atheists had no such recognized days.

The case was brought before a judge. After listening to the passionate presentation by the lawyer, the judge banged his gavel declaring, “Case dismissed!"

The lawyer immediately stood objecting to the ruling saying, "Your honor, How can you possibly dismiss this case? The Christians have Christmas, Easter and others. The Jews have Passover, Yom Kippur and Hanukkah, yet my client and all other atheists have no such holidays."

The judge leaned forward in his chair saying, "But you do. Your client, counsel, is woefully ignorant."

The lawyer said, "Your Honor, we are unaware of any special observance or holiday for atheists."

The judge said, "The calendar says April 1st is April Fool’s Day. Psalm 14:1 states, 'The fool says in his heart, there is no God.' Thus, it is the opinion of this court, that if your client says there is no God, then he is a fool. Therefore, April 1st is his day. Court is adjourned."

Misplaced Guilt: Take up the White Man's Burden (of shame)

Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones. ~ Bertrand Russell

Atheists, Agnostics, and even large numbers of self-liberated Christians and secular Jews claim to have escaped the chains of shame and guilt.

Not so fast...

Charles Krauthammer (self-described as "not religious") exposes the secular guilt that infests the environmental movement:

Politically it's an idea of genius, engaging at once every left-wing erogenous zone: rich man's guilt, post-colonial guilt, environmental guilt.

Nevermind that our carbon belching factories built the modern world and lifted whole societies and chunks of humanity out of squalor, we must pay for our sins.  No good deed goes unpunished.  Does this spring from a poor self-esteem or a wretched self-loathing?

I am guilty of many things, but I feel not one shred of responsibility for the cesspools of ignorance and grubby fiefdoms that still pockmark the globe.  Liberal enablers need to look in the mirror. 

Real Guilt Serves a Purpose

Rabbi David Hochberg explains the purpose of a properly ordered guilt grounded in an ancient, unchanging morality:

Guilt is a very powerful and healthy emotion that keeps us honest with ourselves. It is our safeguard for inappropriate behavior. It is very difficult to do the wrong thing when we feel guilty. [...]

Guilt is the door to Teshuva (repentance).

God hatred knows no ideology

From loony lefty enviros to Ayn Rand objectivists, we see humanity's tendency to kill God and then invent a poor substitute.  Throw God away, and people will worship a golden calf (or the earth), inventing their own orthodoxy, dogma, and catalog of sins.

It has been said that when human beings stop believing in God they believe in nothing. The truth is much worse: they believe in anything. 
-- Malcolm Muggeridge

Intellectual Honesty

I've had more than a few visitors snort derisively at my claim of intellectual honesty because I believe in God yet also cherish logic. These arrogant atheists think they're smarter than Kant, Pascal and Descartes; men who taught us much about logic yet still believed in an Almighty Creator.

My understanding of intellectual honesty is that you don't purposely distort or hide information in the course of communicating with others. Politicians do this all the time.

Their recent manufactured outrage over the AIG bonuses that their stimulus bill authorized is the latest example. Instead of explaining why the bonuses are needed to retain people to defuse this bomb, they fan the flames of voter anger. They know the real story but withhold information for their own political advantage. That is intellectually dishonest, as well as cowardly.

Here is the WikiHow definition of intellectual honesty that my God-scoffing critics cling to:

Keeping one's convictions in proportion to one's valid evidence

By this definition, an intellectually honest person cannot believe in God because there is no concrete proof. But going down the road of Human Logic Uber Alles eventually leads to absurdity. How do you know your wife is not cheating on you when you can't see her? How do you know your truck is still in the garage when you're laying in bed at night? How do you know the Battle of Hastings really happened? How do you know 2 + 2 doesn't conspire to make 5 when no one is looking? See where this leads?

I like the University of California at Irvine's definition much better:

Honesty in the acquisition, analysis, and transmission of ideas.

Jewish World elaborates:

One of the hallmarks of our great Torah scholars throughout the generations has been the uncompromising loyalty to the concept of intellectual honesty in their writings and commentaries. One would almost take this for granted, for the subject that is being dealt with is Torat Emet -- the Torah of Sinai itself, that to Jews represents ultimate and eternal truth and honesty.

Nevertheless, the temptation to falsify, exaggerate, deny, plagiarize and even commit forgery is a well-known affliction in general academic circles. As such, the unswerving path of intellectual honesty that one finds in the writings of the great Torah scholars is exemplary and inspiring.

This is the intellectual honesty I'm after. No matter how much I believe in some cause or idea, I will sincerely evaluate information that contradicts it, and I will never make stuff up or use dubious information to bolster my case. Cold, hard logic is beautiful to me, it is the clockwork of life, but it is not an end unto itself. Just because the human mind is incapable of apprehending something doesn't mean it's not there.

http://www.ics.uci.edu/~arvo/honesty.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rigour
http://www.aish.com/jewishissues/jewishsociety/Intellectual_Honesty.asp

Atheist Oedipus Complex

Why are atheist so unpleasant?

I hate arguing about religion and God. You can't decide the issue definitively, like you can a math equation or an engineering problem. I have trouble putting my thoughts into words in this arena because I did not arrive at my belief in God by dint of my own reason: I learned to love the Lord through personal experience, reading The Bible, and studying history.

I have referred to philosophers like Kant and Descartes to give me words and logic that explain my belief, but it's still only well constructed chunks of internally-consistent logic: Deny the premise and we're back to square one. Atheists have no success either. They face the same problem only worse: How do you prove a negative, that God does not exist?

A Question for Atheists: If God doesn't exist, why waste so much effort on the issue?

It all boils down to Primum Movens. First Cause. Believers believe God put things in motion. Atheists do not. Both beliefs require a leap of faith, but an atheist will never admit that.

What else besides a Divine Creator would explain that spark in each human being that Descartes and St Anselm refer to? Has there ever been a society that did not believe in some type of deity? Why does the idea of a god or gods occur in every society from the dawn of time if there's nothing to it? I guess a skeptic would argue it is man's feeble attempt to explain the unknown by projecting all scary, uncontrollable phenomena onto a big bad god in the sky. But still, why does everyone (well... almost everyone) come to the same broad conclusion: that there is a creator?

These thoughts are not airtight logical debating points that shut down a God-denying interlocutor, but they are just a few of the many markers that point to a Divine Creator.

My personal theory is that snide atheist anger (I've found very few pleasant atheists) stems from psychological tension caused by denial of the obvious. Their life is a constant battle to quench that God-given inner spark that causes humans to seek their creator. They think they've got their own flame quenched, but it flickers back to life, then rages out of control as arrogant anger against The Heavenly Father and his followers.

Atheists want to kill God and screw the believers: It's the ultimate Oedipus Complex.

GOP Trinity for Success: Unity, Diversity, Charity

Mark Sanford is a successful GOP governor I admire. He once turned a pig loose in the South Carolina Statehouse to chastise the state's pork barrel spending legislators. He has the following advice for the GOP:

I believe Republicans and conservatives must agree on our core principles. St. Augustine called for ‘unity in the essentials, diversity in the nonessentials, and charity in all things,’ and while I believe there should always be a big GOP tent, there must also be a shared agreement on the essentials.

Sorting the essential from the nonessentials is the hard part. Charity (the classical definition meaning love, or a positive attitude towards others) is mostly a matter of tone.

Unity in the Essentials
What are the essentials? The Constitution is a good starting point. Minimal government interference in markets and people's lives. Private sector solutions over government ones. Fiscal responsibility.

This is the line in the sand: Cross it, Mr. Politician, and you are no longer a Republican. If this list is too long, the GOP will be ideologically pure but unable to attract a majority. Make the list too short, and the party will stand for nothing, still unable to attract a majority... Kind of like it is now.

Diversity in the Nonessentials
Politics is about addition, not subtraction. Torch bearing, pitchfork wielding pogroms that run every last RINO out of town may be emotionally gratifying, but it's not how you build a party.

Let me start by saying I think popular culture and a vocal minority of society is hostile and intolerant to religious conservatives, especially Christians. My question is, can conservative Christians be charitable and tolerant of those who do not share their religious or social values?

Before you answer, recall that religious tolerance is a founding principle enshrined in the constitution. The founders thought belief in The Almighty to be essential to a free people but nonetheless consciously chose to not mandate it.

Can you welcome into the GOP tent gay financial wizards, lesbian intellectual Ayn Rand devotees, atheists, agnostics, lapsed Catholics? Hindus, profane money worshipers, deists, and even... *Gasp!*... Muslims? Surgeons who golf on Sunday morning instead of going to church, pro-choice free-market entrepreneurs...

Get used to the idea. All conservatives are not dedicated Christians. Some are not Christians at all. We can't turn these people away; we need to increase our numbers, and the GOP is a political movement, not a church.

Tolerating does not mean condoning. Our constitution tolerates believers and non-believers alike. We should do the same. Discriminating against someone for not believing or believing differently is just as wrong as preventing someone's outward expression of religious belief.

Charity in All Things
Many conservatives come off as mean and they need to stop it if they want to attract more people to their cause. Democrats have used fuzzy bunny, happy sappy tactics for years to great affect. What else can explain voters calling government tax and spend "caring and generous" while declaring letting you keep your own money "greedy?" The Democrats understand the propaganda war.

Would you accept advice from a mean-spirited, loathsome creature, even if it was really good advice and you could clearly see the benefit of it? (think Bill Maher, or Rosie O'Donnell) Probably not, they're so repulsive you'd refuse to listen. Well, it works the same it reverse: To much of the muddled middle, that's how many conservatives look.

It's all in the delivery. Just ask two-term popular ex-presidents Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan. Both men were perpetual optimists with sunny attitudes, and each was the the most effective spokesman for his political movement. Deranged political opponents just couldn't steal their sunshine.

Finally, can we turn the Republican National Committee upside down and empty out all the country club republicans and woolly mammoths and replace them with 20-somethings and Hip Hop Conservatives? If we can't turn on the newest generation of voters to conservatism, this country is doomed.

The Evangelical atheist

Militant atheism was furthest from my mind this Christmas season, yet has been brought to the forefront by some recent comments on the post of "We had a Merry Christmas". It struck me as odd why such a benign post would elicit such a response, then it occurred to me that the response in and of itself was evangelical, so to speak... soliciting converts to 'the truth'.

Of course, as soon as I googled "Evangelical atheist" I was rolling on the floor, for the third hit down on the page was a link to Urban Dictionary which read:

"evangelical atheist - 2 definitions - See [asshole] An evangelical atheist is one who not only believes there is no god or other supreme being, but is obsessed with convincing everyone around them to become an atheist too, usually through hard-line intolerance (the kind they accuse other religions of). ." Don't believe me? Google it.

Ted Peters had this to say on the subject "It used to be that atheists didn’t bother anybody. They simply stayed home from church on Sunday and avoided praying. The social impact was minimal. "

Click here for the rest of a well reasoned article in response to Richard Dawkins: http://www.counterbalance.net/new-atheism/index-frame.html

It is not the argument that I find of interest, but the fanatical and zealous way in which it is delivered. This is not the calm and reasoned presentation of logic, but a vicious diatribe. It is the irrational extreme of Denis Diderot's "Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest". It is the mindset of the soviets, that in 1918 summarily executed 10 orthodox hierarchs and founded The Society of the Godless (an actual organization, not a commentary on soviet society). It is this 'enlightened' viewpoint that resulted in the closing of hundreds of churches, the slaughter of 80 bishops, and a quick trip to the Gulag for thousands of clerics.

One wonders if the fanaticism of the response would have been directed at the author had he "had a happy solstice"? Or if some underlying rage at either organized religion or Christianity is the root cause. I would like to point out to our secular friend a tenet of that most secular of documents, "The Universal Declaration of Human Rights": "Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance." I might also point out that the founding document of our nation, in instituting the separation of church and state, says:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

I might point out Mark Vuletic's (an atheist) words on the subject: Atheism has a comparatively small public voice, but it is a voice that many believers hear. However, when they listen to this voice, they often hear little more than slurs and insults. When interacting with atheists, believers are frequently met with the same arrogance and condescension, the same hatred and vitriol, the same bigotry and prejudice, as atheists so often receive from believers. In short, believers tend to encounter in atheists exactly what they have been taught to expect... If we wish to shatter once and for all the myth that atheism and immorality are inseparable, we must not deny believers the compassion, tolerance, patience, and understanding that humanists are supposed to extend to all.
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mark_vuletic/moral.html

One wonders why someone so obviously convinced of their own moral, logical, and scientific superiority needs to resort to such vile rhetoric in attempting to convince others of the superiority of their position. I have had many friends in my life who have been non-believers, and while the majority of them were more appropriately termed agnostic, I have found the atheists among them to be rather vain, based upon the supposed 'infallibility' of their beliefs. I generally find anyone with absolutist views, whether atheistic, scientific, or religious to be rather intolerable. Even that great philosopher of the Scottish enlightenment, David Hume, contended that meaningful statements about the universe are always qualified by some degree of doubt.

One often finds atheists who advance the argument that religion has been the cause of most of the evil one finds in the historical record, while overlooking the likes of Stalin, Hitler, and Pol Pot. They also overlook the great contributions to peace that science as brought, like Bows and Arrows, Guns, Bigger Guns, and that all encompassing advance of apocalyptic Biblical (or Bhagavad Gita) proportions, the H-Bomb. The argument that religion is evil overlooks the common factor in all evil, us. It is not the nature of religion that institutes such occurrences as the Spanish Inquisition, but the flawed nature of man. One might make the argument that evil stems from absolutism, for most if not all of the evil in our history has stemmed from absolute positions, be it fascist, communist, racist, or theist. It is the belief in one's absolute superiority that propagates throughout history as manifestations of absolute evil, horror, and inhumanity.

While a firm advocate of the separation of church and state, I have always believed that religion, in the form of comparative theology, should be taught in school. Separation of church and state seeks to prevent the establishment of a state religion (Establishment Clause), it was (IMHO) never intended to erase religion from society (Exercise Clause), and while it is possible to separate religion from state, it is virtually impossible to separate religion from culture. Religion, like art and science, is part of the cultural heritage of man, all men, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, or any number of other faiths. In a free public context such displays promote interaction and tolerance.

The 'Christmas Tree Controversy' is one that is particularly irksome. The public expression of faith should be something cherished in our society, the freedom of religion (not freedom from religion) being one of our great nations founding principles. It seems that far from offering religious freedom, we are in the foolishness of political correctness attempting to ban religion from the public space, as if it were something shameful in this enlightened age that should be hidden away like porn... it's okay, but only in the privacy of your own home. I would have no problem with a creche in the town square, any more that I would have a problem with a Jewish, Muslim, or any other display. Living overseas, I can say I took no offense to Buddha's Birthday celebrations and found them educational, and even fun. I take no offense at being greeted with "Īd mubārak" (Blessed Eid), nor would I take offense at being invited to have a Happy Ostara (Wiccan) . To take offense at the proffered good will of others, whatever the reason is petty and small.

What I do take offense at, although I would not prohibit them, are atheist displays such as the one in Olympia, Washington that read "At this season of the Winter Solstice may reason prevail. There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds." I don't oppose the viewpoint, I don't believe it but I don't recommend banning it, but that the display is more of a negative assault than a profession of belief. It is no more acceptable than fundamentalists pointing out Jews as the killer of Jesus in a Hanukkah display or the protesting by the Westboro Baptist Church at the funerals of military members. By all means celebrate your beliefs, celebrate Galileo's Birthday (Feb 15) if it makes you happy, put a whole calendar of Scientific Holidays together, but a 'celebration' putting down other peoples beliefs and customs should be beneath you.

All of this serves to illustrate one main point, that extremism is not the sole domain of religion, one can find extremists of all points of view from religion, to science, to politics, to sociology. The only rational approach is one of cautious restraint and dialogue. No one has ever advanced their own position by attacking the beliefs of others, unless that advance came solely from intimidation.

Until you come to the table with something positive to offer, you just come across as vulgar, barbaric, and mean...

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

~Finntann~

Atheist Encounter

A few weeks ago I followed a provocative link while surfing and ended up staggering into a website popular with atheists. The author was lampooning the virgin birth and Marian apparitions, with readers gleefully piling on with vulgar jokes and comments. I asked a simple question and boy, did I get my hat handed to me. Here is my initial comment that brought what felt like the wrath of God down upon me:

So you're an atheist. Why be so derisive of those who don't share your views? Also, I ask your intellectually superior readers to examine the rolls of history's greatest minds. There you will find believers and non-believers alike.

Why is it so many critics of religion swaddle themselves in smug condescension? I guess everybody's gotta believe in something.

I suppose I brought it on myself with references to intellectual superiority and smug condescension. You can read the whole article and the sorry thread that follows here. My comments start at # 141. You will notice I never criticized their (non)belief, nor tried to convert anyone. That didn't save me though. They flamed me mercilessly.

I still wonder why so many atheists are not satisfied with merely disbelieving, but must make jolly fun of mocking the Almighty and his believers. It is insecurity? There also seems to be a lot of anger in their comments. Many non-believers take their non-belief quite personally. I wanted to know why.

I really upset the faithful when I opined that non-belief becomes a belief with its own orthodoxy. Those who question that orthodoxy become the target of witty, sarcastic derision or worse, angry personal attacks. Keep questioning, and then the comments get angrier. When I pointed that out, it seemed to only engender more anger. From there it became a downward spiral of charges and countercharges, each accusing the other of smugness and condescension.

I have also noticed that atheism and the use (or misuse) of logic go hand in hand. Atheists see themselves as supremely logical, while we believers are illogical, superstitious boobs. Our historical accounts are worthless, although they are of the same kind we trust to inform us of the battle of Marathon or Tamerlane. Rather than use logic as a rapier to slice and dice confusing issues, bringing order out of chaos, they misappropriate it as a blunt instrument to bludgeon those unfortunate enough to stumble into their presence.

Well, Dinesh D’Souza has the antidote. He uses Kant’s philosophy to refute atheism. We learn from him that those who try to prove or disprove the existence of God with traditional logic are committing what philosophers call a category error. God exists outside of time and space and is not subject to natural laws. Indeed, miracles are a contravention of the laws of nature. Just because you cannot see something doesn't mean it does not exist. Anyway, D’Souza breaks it down so ordinary people can understand it. I recommend you check it out.

Finally, I am not nearly as smart as Kant or D'Souza, or the Atheist Richard Dawkins, but I know this: Arguing over the existence of God is futile. It cannot be proven or disproved as can a mathematical formula. Men and women have provided historical testimony. You can choose to believe them or not. Meanwhile, science cannot prove how life spontaneously came into being.