BibleBelted

Scrutinize?

I'm not sure he knows what that word means.

The Lone Ranger

Quote:

He also says that atheists do not inspire people to fly planes into buildings. What he didn't say was that atheists build iron curtains, enslave nations, exterminate dissenters, and abolish free speech, just to name a few of their accomplishments.

One gets the impression that he didn't read your letter very carefully. In any event, it's not hard to find examples of people murdered in the name of religion; can he find even one example of someone murdered in the name of atheism?

Cheers,

Michael

lpetrich

Communists are usually cited as such people, because they are well-known for being godless.

The Lone Ranger

Yes, exactly. Somehow, religious apologists seem to be fond of claiming that atheism inclines people to be immoral, because some people who happened to be atheists have done bad things. Yet, they can't seem to come up with any examples of people doing bad things in the name of atheism.

Meanwhile, plenty of examples of people who happen to be religious, yet do horrible things can be pointed to. If someone dares to suggest that this is evidence against the theists' assertions that religious belief is inherently ennobling, they change the subject.

Oddly enough, if someone makes the (illogical) claim that because people who happen to be religious commit atrocities, religion itself is to blame, the theists scream bloody murder. "Bigotry!" they cry. Yet they seem to have no problem with claiming that because atheists sometimes do terrible things, atheism causes bad behavior.

***

It is my impression that dogmatic and unquestioned belief -- whether it be in something expressly religious or in something secular, such as communism -- is the root of intolerance and hatred. Nothing is so effective at inspiring persecution of others as dogmatic belief systems.

Cheers,

Michael

Fiach

>>But the historical truth is that God in fact proved His existence when He came in the flesh as the second person of the trinity, Jesus Christ, who was born of the virgin Mary, grew up in Palestine, performed hundreds of miracles, (9) was crucified by Pontius Pilate, was buried, and rose again three days later. <<

He makes this extraordinary claim, but doesn't seem informed enough to know that there is not a solid shred of evidence supporting this silly story. Hearsay is not evidence. Hearsay evidence says that Mithra was a god-man who resurrected. Hearsay says that Amun impregnated a virgin who gave birth to Aten or Horus, son of God, and god-human. Horus and Osiris died and resurrected in three days. All of them performed miracles as witnessed by their believers. The problem is that these other virgin born, god impregnated, Jesus look-a-likes lived, died and resurrected centuries before the time of the hypothetical Jesus. Jesus by the way cannot be proven to have lived at the time he is believed to have lived. Roman records in Palestine fail to mention him or his execution but recorded all others.

>>(10) These are truths that are attested to by hundreds of witnesses, not only in the Bible, but by historians of that era. (11)<<

Historians only reported that there was a cult of people who believed in a Christos, or people who believed in a Jesus Redeemer. They also reported millions of followers of Mithra at that time. The New Testament writen a century later by believers is not factual evidence only evidence that those guys believed. In short he has no proof whatsoever of a God or of a Jesus, nor of a Trinity which is not even Biblical.

Fiach

Captain Pedantic

I agree, and I think many folk believe that the communism practised in various parts of the world - most notably Russia, of course - was a sort of religion in itself.

Not dissimilar, then, to worshipping a king as a god, as was done in ancient Egypt. And (to my mind) not a million miles from the awed treatment some people give to "the stars", whereby certain people seem to believe that "the stars" are made of some different substance to the rest of us.

lpetrich

(Fiach on Egyptian virgin-birth stories...)

I've never heard of those ones before; I think that a better comparison is with the story of Romulus and Remus, both of whom had allegedly been the sons of a god and a virgin.

WHAT Roman records??? Such records would be a valuable historical resource, but nobody has ever heard of them.

I'm not claiming that there are no other reasons to doubt Jesus Christ's existence (there are); only that this argument does not hold up.

Jobar

Off we go again.

A bit of preface to this one. The writer, one Gary Huckaby, I know personally. He is an ordained minister, who once performed a wedding for his brother Emery, and Terry, both of whom I am still friends with- I was the photographer. If you look at my pic in Bill Snedden's rogues gallery, you will see some large photocollages hanging on the wall behind me. One of the pictures in one of those collages shows the smilin' face of- you guessed it- Gary Huckaby!

I'm not going to post this verbatim, because most of it- hell *all* of it- looks to be cribbed from some divinity school text.

"Here's Information About Atheism"

Dear Editor:
I am writing in response to a column that was recently published in your paper. The article was titled "Atheists Can Be Misunderstood By Christians, Too."

My purpose for writing is not as a rebuttal of the article, but as an informative view about just what an atheist is. For the unknowing individual the word 'atheist' represents a person who chooses not to believe in God, or a god. And as your writer states, "Atheism is simply the lack of religious belief." {I bet that Bob Tribble & co. gets their boxers in a bunch over that little error! }

I would like to give a few noted facts about atheism to the readers so that they can decide for themselves that this choice by an individual is one of fact; or one of just rejection that there is a superior deity, to whom all will one day give an account to.

{He gives a dictionary definition of atheist from "the international encyclopedia." Then- "But it seems better that we should consider it under four heads, in order to obtain a clear idea of the different meanings in whichit has been used."

He subdivides it under classical, philosophic, dogmatic, and practical atheism. A few highlights-

Classical- "In this sense it does not mean the denial of the existence of a Divine Being, but the denial of the existence or reality of the god of a particular nation. Thus the Christians were repeatedly charged with atheism, because of their disbelief in the gods of heathenism."( ) He notes that Socrates and Diagoras of Athens were charged with this type of atheism.

Philosophic- "It is not meant that the various philosophic systems to which this term is applied actually deny the existence of a Divine Being or a First Cause, but that they are atheistic in their teaching, and tend to unsettle the faith of mankind in the existence of God." Gary relates this sort of atheism to the "Idealism of Fichte, of the Ideal Pantheism of Spinoza, the Natural pantheism of Schelling, and similar forms of thought." He comments that true theism insists that God is a personal, self-conscious being, and not "merely a first cause or force."

Dogmatic- "It absolutely denies the existence of God. It has often been held that this is, in fact, impossible. Cousin has said, "It is impossible, because the existence of God is implied in every assertion." ... In many cases, however, it resulted form a loose use of the word (?), careless definition, and sometimes from the spirit of boastfulness." {more headscratching, here...)

Practical- "It has nothing at all to do with belief. Indeed it accepts the affirmations of theism. It has reference wholly to the mode of life. It is to live as if there were no God. It takes the form often of complete indifference to the claims of the Divine Being or again of out broken or defiant wickedness (Ps 14:1). That this form of atheism is widespread is well known. It is accompanied in many cases with some form of unbelief or prejudice or false opinion of the Church or Christianity. Dogmatic atheism is no longer a menace or even a hindrance to the progress of Christianity, but practical atheism is widespread in its influence and a dangerous element in our modern life. ... Whatever the form... it is always a system of negation and as such tears down and destroys. It destroys the faith upon which all human relations are built. Since there is no God, there is no right nor wrong, and human action is neither good nor bad, but convenient or inconvenient. It leaves human society without a basis for order, and human government without foundation. All is hopeless, all is wretchedness, all is tending to be grave and the grave ends all. Arguments against atheism may be summarized as follows:

1) It is contrary to reason. History has shown how impossible it is to bring the mind to rest in this doctrine. Although Buddhism is atheistic in its teaching, idolatry is widespread in the lands where it prevails...

2)It is contrary to human experience. All history teaches that there are deep religious instincts within the human breast. To regard these as deceptive and unreasonable would itself be utterly unreasonable and unscientific. But the fact of such spiritual longing implies that there is a Being who is responsive to and can satisfy the cry of the heart. (Heb 11:6)...Reville has said on this subject, "It would be irrational in the last degree... [to believe that spiritual longing] corresponds to nothing, that the tendency has no goal."

3) It fails to account for the evidence of design in the universe. (Practically all who claim to be atheists are also evolutionists, which by the way is a belief in something.)

4) It fails to account for the existence of man, and the world in general. Here is the Universe: how did it come to be? Here is man: how is he to be accounted for? To these and like questions, atheists and atheistic philosophy have no adequate answers to give.

Atheism is in fact a religion, for it is a belief in something or nothing. In closing I would like to give this simple thought. {At this point, my thought was, 'Yep! Here it comes!' } Suppose those of us who believe in God are wrong, then we have lost nothing at death. But to the so called atheist, what if you are wrong and there is a God as the Bible says, then at death you have a terrible conscience fact awaiting you. {Exact quote there.} I wouldn't take that chance if I were you. Gary Huckaby."

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There is also a message from the editors in this week's edition- they are going to start limiting letters to 250 words, and 1 per month per writer. So no more long letters...

Vibr8gKiwi

They probably realized a rebuttal of the above letter would require even more space than that one did. Perhaps they decided it's better to close the pulpit now that the theist has had the last word.

Queen of Swords

Originally posted by Gary Huckaby (I'm tempted to start singing, "Huckaby baby, on the nut tree, none are so blind as those who won't see") :

<strong>All history teaches that there are deep religious instincts within the human breast. </strong>

That mammogram must've squeezed all the instincts out of me.