An interesting article on the cretinism of our loony-toons atheist, scientismificist

[Joe Chi Minh]

friends:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/nov/02/atheism-dawkins-ruse

[hedgehog]

1. I can't get excited about atheists or atheism. While I find that in general they

are overwhelmingly smug, I also think that they are pretty irrelevant. I'm more concerned about how people are treated than by what anyone believes.

A lot of atheists attack Christianity or religion in general on a regular basis, but we have more important things to do then to get engaged with arguments. If we could prove the existence of God by logic, we wouldn't need faith. Atheists are only a distraction from the work we need to be doing.

[Joe Chi Minh]

2. You're missing the point. I could scarcely disagree with you more

completely.

Indeed, if Christ had wanted to prove it all, do you think he wouldn't have? It was essential that he left a certain "wriggle room" for those who did not want to believe in him and his teachings, who did not find them compellingly beautiful. However, that does not mean that it is OK for Christians to allow them to peddle their stupidity, unchallenged - particularly, since the unregenerate, worldly-wise have their inordinate and misconceived sense of sapiential superiority; while those less academically sharp, but who are "rich in faith" (and consequently, wisdom), are liable to feel cowed by their often unhinged onslaughts on here.

Yes, the truth of our faith is not provable, but it nevertheless forms a continuum with knowledge. It is simply a knowledge that is too subtle to be verifiable under laboratory conditions - which are designed only to verify or disprove the basest , most limited form of knowledge, i.e. that of our inanimate, material world. You can't measure or define love, but it is the most real and essential feature of our human condition. Doubtless mammalian, too. Unless you are an atheist who believes that it is just a genetically-conditioned response to a particular stimulus.

You make it sound the way the militant atheists like to portray it, that it is a matter of blind credulity. It is not. Atheism, however, does invite such an accusation, to say the least. And it matters that they be slapped down. You may be comfortable in your faith, but there will be many young people who have no answer in their own minds, when one of those half-wits adopts a sneering, superior tone, and laughably tout their "scientificism" as, potentially, the repository of all knowledge.

If an atheist of integrity sees fit to defend religious faiths against lunacy of the most militant atheists, and the theologians of the early church were said to argue so passionately about the truths of the faith, since so much was/is at stake, that the term, "ira theologica" (theologically-motivated anger) was coined, why do you seek to dismiss their refutation with such blandishments. Refuting error (and the atheists' errors do not arise from subtlety of intelligence) should not be a distraction from the life of the spirit of a Christian, but should be a part of it.

In short, if we cannot prove the truths of our faith (at least, to the unwilling), we can certainly apprise the militant atheists that they are in no more lordly position, themselves; and we should do, when they can "cause alarm and despondency" to younger and more tender Christian souls. Corporal works of mercy are just one facet of the Christian calling, and should certainly not be an obstacle to evangelisation and its ancillary activities.

[hedgehog]

3. I think I'm with St. James and St. Francis on this one.

Preach speak and so act as people who will be judged by the law of freedom.
13
For the judgment is merciless to one who has not shown mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.
14
6 What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him?
15
If a brother or sister has nothing to wear and has no food for the day,
16
and one of you says to them, "Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well," but you do not give them the necessities of the body, what good is it?
17
So also faith of itself, if it does not have works, is dead.
18
Indeed someone might say, "You have faith and I have works." Demonstrate your faith to me without works, and I will demonstrate my faith to you from my works.
19
You believe that God is one. You do well. Even the demons believe that and tremble.
20
Do you want proof, you ignoramus, that faith without works is useless?
21
Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered his son Isaac upon the altar?
22
You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by the works.
23
Thus the scripture was fulfilled that says, "Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness," and he was called "the friend of God."
24
See how a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.
25
And in the same way, was not Rahab the harlot also justified by works when she welcomed the messengers and sent them out by a different route?
26
For just as a body without a spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.


“Preach the Gospel, if necessary use words.” (This seems to be a paraphrase rather than direct quote.)

What I fear is that when we address atheists on their terms, we run the risk of assuming their smugness, their moral superiority and worst of all, their contempt for others. We become their mirror, and thus prove their point.

Even when we preach, I think instead of using logic and worldly wisdom to speak to the brain, we are better off using stories to reach the heart.


C.S. Lewis wrote many thoughtful dissertations on Christianity, but I think today he is more widely known for and most effective with his fiction, the Screwtape Letters, the Tales of Narnia and his trilogy: Out of the Silent Planet, Perlandra and that Hideous Strength. I don't agree with every word of Lewis, indeed, I think he himself became more forgiving and less rigid as he aged. Still, I think in these books, especially the Space Trilogy, he caught the essence of the differences between believers and non-believers.

Look at his friend, J.R.R.Tolkien. His books are set in a world totally apart from Christianity, but they are awash in a view of a world threatened by Evil yet beloved by the Creator.

On the other hand, consider Pullman's Golden Compass trilogy. It's been a year or so since I read them, but I recall a plot that included the sacrifice of innocents so the superior folks could achieve their higher ends. Those ends themselves were empty and meaningless.

I know that many who profess atheism find Lewis and Tolkien silly and Pullman a breathe of fresh air. That's the nature of free will. We're allowed to chose trash over treasure.

Finally, I point you to Mathew 7:

"Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.
22
Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not drive out demons in your name? Did we not do mighty deeds in your name?'
23
Then I will declare to them solemnly, 'I never knew you. Depart from me, you evildoers.'


and Mathew 25:

"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit upon his glorious throne,
32
and all the nations will be assembled before him. And he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.
33
He will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.
34
Then the king will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
35
For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me,
36
naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.'
37
Then the righteous will answer him and say, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink?
38
When did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you?
39
When did we see you ill or in prison, and visit you?'
40
And the king will say to them in reply, 'Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.'
41
17 Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
42
For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink,
43
a stranger and you gave me no welcome, naked and you gave me no clothing, ill and in prison, and you did not care for me.'
44
18 Then they will answer and say, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or ill or in prison, and not minister to your needs?'
45
He will answer them, 'Amen, I say to you, what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.'
46
And these will go off to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."



I suspect that many atheists and Christians will find themselves together in Heaven, and many atheists and Christians will find themselves together in Hell.

[Joe Chi Minh]

4. "I suspect that many atheists and Christians will find themselves

together in Heaven, and many atheists and Christians will find themselves together in Hell."

You do yourself little credit intoning unctuous truisms, while apparently contending that the fiercest diatribes against false teachers preclude the possibility that they may be expressed by a person, at least as intent on "doing good" as yourself.

Have another look at the Gospels and you will see that Jesus inveighed against those who were "de facto" atheists, i.e. many of the scribes and Pharisees of the religious Establishment of his day. There was zero chance of formal atheism being owned up to in that society, and scant chance of a dissident pagan voice being heard in it. Although I don't recall Jesus complaining about that; rather, while he unequivocally, indeed literally, called those false, religious leaders children of the devil (though not naming them individually as they stood before him), he simply dismissed the pagans - not as bad people, necessarily, but in terms of their erroneous beliefs.

However, to revert to the theme of your solemnly invoked Christian truisms, Jesus was won't to cite an ordinary Samaritan, a heretic, as being likely to show far greater natural/supernatural charity than themselves - for all their displays of superb religiosity. Now that is a truism of common daily experience. You are AT LEAST as likely to find a truly deep Christian spirit in a rough and ready soldier as anywhere else in society. Likewise, I would rate the Christian ethos of the armed services higher than that of the politest, civil society. As Jesus put it, love is the fulness of the Law, upon it hangs the whole of the law and the prophets.

However, today, because the worldly-wise control society and the media (endemically, less strong in faith than the poorer folk), Christians tend to be "on the back foot" a lot of the time. That goes with the territory, but it is not always appropriate to passively accept it, you will, surely be surpised to hear. One folly of the militant atheists (the only ones I have a gripe with) which I, personally, am not content to put up with in silence, while so many young people are likely to be intellectually-intimidated by their lordly scoffing at all things religious, is the utter idiocy of their "take" on, indeed their use of the term, "Intelligent Design". Likewise, what Dawkins is pleased to call, "the selfish gene". The philosopher, Mary Midgley, has something to say about the latter, and Dawkins' nonsense, generally.

Incidentally, in his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, C S Lewis describes hearing a conversation on a train, I believe, just after WWII, in which, If I recall correctly, the people were somehow making light of the egregious wickedness of some of the worst of the Nazi war criminals condemned and hanged at the Nuremburg trials, and expressed the belief that the absence of a capacity for outrage reflected a spiritual sickness. This is clearly consistent with the example given by Jesus, himself, our ultimate model, since his diatribes seem likely to rank as the most fierce in the literature of the world. Yet he went about doing good. Almost exclusively, from what we are told, by use of his miraculous powers, and the sufferings of the sick, which he somehow took upon himself in some way. "Virtue (strength) went out of him). Certainly, today, but for his miracles, he would be considered a freeloader, a bludger, being looked after, as he was, by a small group of women.

There may be one or two exceptions in the world, but most of us have to "do good" by non-miraculous means, although clearly this does not make us better Christians than Christ! As far as doing good is concerned, one can perform acts of mercy, spiritual or corporal, without being genuinely motivated by divine charity. Judas must have gone through the motions. The acceptance of suffering however for the sake of the Gospel (love) is really the dynamo of charity, as the very name The Passion, to describe Jesus' ultimate sacrifice and the greatest manifestation of his glory, which won for us our Redemption, indicates. Holy resignation, a very private matter, would, one suspects, have been a less popular virtue in that religious Establishment of Jesus' day. You should perhaps meditate on what Jesus was trying to convey to us in the Gospel story of Martha and Mary, which is related to this point.

Anyway, I don't think it is a good idea to engage in a Dutch auction with you about who is the holiest and more pious, so I'll leave you the field. You go on doing good. And I'll go on talking about it. Nor will I be yielding to the more dozy arguments of the militant atheists, when I see fit.

[47of74]

6. Such smugness bothers me

No matter if it's someone who believes in God or someone who doesn't. I have no use for those who have their noses so up in the air about their religious beliefs or lack thereof that they can't see the faces of others.

[CBHagman]

5. Given how frequently Christians have fought with each other...

...even tortured and killed each other over the centuries, I'm not jumping for joy over a squabble in the atheist ranks. Besides, there are too many other things to do each day.