Remember the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s Christmas present to Albuquerque?
What about the “Atheist Activist” driving a wedge between decent people and road side memorials?
Or the Deputy Jim Goff, the atheist evangelist? (See Albuquerque deputy abuses authority -pushes atheism on others).
No wonder that even though Wired Magazine’s Gary Wolf (in The Church of the Non-Believers, found here and here) includes himself in the following description: “we lax agnostics, we noncommittal nonbelievers, we vague deists who would be embarrassed to defend antique absurdities like the Virgin Birth or the notion that Mary rose into heaven without dying, or any other blatant myth,” he, nevertheless wrote:
At dinner parties or over drinks, I ask people to declare themselves. “Who here is an atheist?” I ask.
Usually, the first response is silence, accompanied by glances all around in the hope that somebody else will speak first. Then, after a moment, somebody does, almost always a man, almost always with a defiant smile and a tone of enthusiasm. He says happily, “I am!”
But it is the next comment that is telling. Somebody turns to him and says: “You would be.”
“Why?”
“Because you enjoy pissing people off.”
“Well, that’s true.”
This type of conversation takes place not in central Ohio, where I was born, or in Utah, where I was a teenager, but on the West Coast, among technical and scientific people, possibly the social group that is least likely among all Americans to be religious.
Well, much activism in the name of and in order to promote atheism has been perpetrated in Albuquerque. Now, consider some reasons that atheists give for being as atheist. Indeed, the very best reason for being an atheist, according to some top atheists, is that it just feels right, so nice, so good—oh, what a feeling.
Richard Dawkins noted,
“I believe that, given proper encouragement to think, and given the best information available, people will courageously cast aside celestial comfort blankets and lead intellectually fulfilled, emotionally liberated lives” [emphasis in original].
“people experience freedom when they leave religion or God.”
“There is deep refreshment to be had…you stand to gain ‘growth and happiness’; the joy of knowing that you have grown up.”
“I think there is a poetic consolation to be found in science, and I tried to give expression to it.”
Speaking to fellow atheist Jonathan Miller:
“…you and I probably do have…feelings that may very well be akin to a kind of mystical…I experience, and I expect you experience, internal feelings which sound pretty much like um, what mystics feel, and they call it God. If – and I’ve been called a very religious person for that reason – if I am called a religious person, then my retort to that is, “Well, you’re playing with words.”, because what the vast majority of people mean by religious is something utterly different from this sort of transcendent, mystical experience […] The transcendent sense…the transcendent, mystic sense, that people who are both religious and non-religious in my usage of the term, is something very very different. In that sense, I probably am a religious person. You probably are a religious person…the sense of wonder that one gets as a scientist contemplating the cosmos, or contemplating mitochondria is actually much grander than anything that you will get by contemplating the traditional objects of religious mysticism.”
“…science does have some of religion’s virtues…All the great religions have a place for awe, for ecstatic transport at the wonder and beauty of creation. And it’s exactly this feeling of spine-shivering, breath-catching awe – almost worship – this flooding of the chest with ecstatic wonder, that modern science can provide. And it does so beyond the wildest dreams of saints and mystics…Science can offer a vision of life and the universe which, as I’ve already remarked, for humbling poetic inspiration far outclasses any of the mutually contradictory faiths and disappointingly recent traditions of the world’s religions.”
Michael Martin,
“Atheism is so special. So life affirming.”
Carl Sagan,
“Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us-there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation, as of a distant memory, of falling from a height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries.”
“I find that a chilling, spine-tingling, exciting, perspective-raising, consciousness-raising experience. It’s said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience.”
Michael Shermer stated that the study of evolution was “far more enlightening and transcendent, spiritual, than anything I had experienced in seven years of being a born again Christian.” He also speaks of “the spiritual side of science” which he terms “sciensuality.”
No wonder Michael Ruse noted,
“Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion…This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today…evolution as a kind of metaphysics rather than a straight science.”
Stephen Jay Gould,
“The myth of a separate mode based on rigorous objectivity and arcane, largely mathematical knowledge, vouchsafed only to the initiated, may provide some immediate benefits in bamboozling a public to regard us as a new priesthood, but must ultimately prove harmful in erecting barriers to truly friendly understanding and in falsely persuading so many students that science lies beyond their capabilities…the myth of an arcane and enlightened priesthood of scientists”
Stephen S. Hall also noted,
“Einsteinian religion is a kind of spirituality which is nonsupernatural…And that doesn’t mean that it’s somehow less than supernatural religion. Quite the contrary….It is something bigger, something grander, something that I believe any scientist can subscribe to, including those scientists whom I would call atheists…What I can’t understand is why we are expected to show respect for good scientists, even great scientists, who at the same time believe in a god who does things like listen to our prayers, forgive our sins, perform cheap miracles…I suppose my hope would be that science-the best kind of science, the sort of science which approaches the best sort of religion, the Einsteinian spirituality that I was talking about-is so inspiring, so exciting that it should be sellable to everybody…
We have something far better to offer…Why are we freethinking secular scientists not getting into that same marketplace…and selling what we’ve got to sell? Because it’s a far better product, and all we’ve got to do is hone our salesmanship to the level that they are already doing it.” [emphasis in original]
As per Romans ch. 1, this is Neo-Pagan Atheism (see here). Here is a gleaning from the text of Romans 1:18-28:
“…men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because the thing which may be known of God is clearly revealed within them, for God revealed it to them. For the unseen things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being realized by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, for them to be without excuse. Because, knowing God, they did not glorify Him as God, neither were thankful. But they became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things. Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness… For they changed the truth of God into a lie…
they did not think fit to have God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind.”
Ex-atheist, the late C. S. Lewis, noted the following of a form of atheism spirituality which he referred to in terms of “Life-Force philosophy, or Creative Evolution, or Emergent Evolution”:
“One reason why many people find Creative Evolution so attractive is that it gives one much of the emotional comfort of believing in God and none of the less pleasant consequences.
When you are feeling fit and the sun is shining and you do not want to believe that the whole universe is a mere mechanical dance of atoms, it is nice to be able to think of this great mysterious Force rolling on through the centuries and carrying you on its crest.
If, on the other hand, you want to do something rather shabby, the Life-Force, being only a blind force, with no morals and no mind, will never interfere with you like that troublesome God we learned about when we were children.
The Life-Force is a sort of tame God. You can switch it on when you want, but it will not bother you.
All the thrills of religion and none of the cost.
Is the Life-Force the greatest achievement of wishful thinking the world has yet seen?”
See these links to learn more about Christianity and Atheism.
Also, consider these elucidating books:
Norman Geisler and Frank Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist
Albert Mohler, Atheism Remix: A Christian Confronts the New Atheists
Ravi Zacharias, The End of Reason: A Response to the New Atheists
Jonathan Morrow and Sean McDowell, Is God Just a Human Invention?
Edgar Andrews, Who Made God? Searching for a Theory of Everything
Vox Day, The Irrational Atheist: Dissecting the Unholy Trinity of Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A plea: I have to pay for server usage and have made all content on this website free and always will. I support my family on one income and do research, writing, videos, etc. as a hobby. If you can even spare $1.00 as a donation, please do so: it may not seem like much but if each person reading this would do so, even every now and then, it would add up and really, really help. Here is my donate/paypal page.
Due to robo-spaming, I had to close the comment sections. However, you can comment on my Facebook page and/or on my Google+ page. You can also use the “Share / Save” button below this post.