Answers To the Atheists (WaPo)

[White_Male_Canada]

Before you go beserk I`ll inform you it`s leftist E. J. Dionne Jr. and WaPo :


Answers To the Atheists

By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Friday, April 6, 2007; A21



This weekend, many of the world's estimated 2 billion Christians will remember and celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

While some Christians harbor doubts about Christ's actual physical resurrection, hundreds of millions believe devoutly that Jesus died and rose, thus redeeming a fallen world from sin.

Are these people a threat to reason and even freedom?

It's a question that arises from a new vogue for what you might call neo-atheism. The new atheists -- the best known are writers Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins -- insist, as Harris puts it, that "certainty about the next life is simply incompatible with tolerance in this one." That's why they think a belief in salvation through faith in God, no matter the religious tradition, is dangerous to an open society.

The neo-atheists, like their predecessors from a century ago, are given to a sometimes-charming ferociousness in their polemics against those they see as too weak-minded to give up faith in God.

What makes them new is the moment in history in which they are rejoining the old arguments: an era of religiously motivated Islamic suicide bombers. They also protest the apparent power of traditionalist and fundamentalist versions of Christianity.

As a general proposition, I welcome the neo-atheists' challenge. The most serious believers, understanding that they need to ask themselves searching questions, have always engaged in dialogue with atheists. The Catholic writer Michael Novak's book "Belief and Unbelief" is a classic in self-interrogation. "How does one know that one's belief is truly in God," he asks at one point, "not merely in some habitual emotion or pattern of response?"

The problem with the neo-atheists is that they seem as dogmatic as the dogmatists they condemn. They are especially frustrated with religious "moderates" who don't fit their stereotypes.

In his bracing polemic " The End of Faith," Harris is candid in asserting that "religious moderates are themselves the bearers of a terrible dogma: they imagine that the path to peace will be paved once each one of us has learned to respect the unjustified beliefs of others."

Harris goes on: "I hope to show that the very ideal of religious tolerance -- born of the notion that every human being should be free to believe whatever he wants about God -- is one of the principal forces driving us toward the abyss. We have been slow to recognize the degree to which religious faith perpetuates man's inhumanity to man."

Argument about faith should not hang on whether religion is socially "useful" or instead promotes "inhumanity." But since the idea that religion is primarily destructive lies at the heart of the neo-atheist argument, its critics have rightly insisted on detailing the sublime acts of humanity and generosity that religion has promoted through the centuries.

It's true that religious Christians were among those who persecuted Jews. It is also true that religious Christians were among those who rescued Jews from these most un-Christian acts. And it is a sad fact that secular forms of dogmatism have been at least as murderous as the religious kind.

What's really bothersome is the suggestion that believers rarely question themselves while atheists ask all the hard questions. But as Novak argued -- in one of the best critiques of neo-atheism -- in the March 19 issue of National Review, "Questions have been the heart and soul of Judaism and Christianity for millennia." (These questions get a fair reading in another powerful commentary on neo-atheism by James Wood, himself an atheist, in the Dec. 18 issue of the New Republic.) "Christianity is not about moral arrogance," Novak insists. "It is about moral realism, and moral humility." Of course Christians in practice often fail to live up to this elevated definition of their creed. But atheists are capable of their own forms of arrogance. Indeed, if arrogance were the only criterion, the contest could well come out a tie.

As for me, Christianity is more a call to rebellion than an insistence on narrow conformity, more a challenge than a set of certainties.

In " The Last Week," their book about Christ's final days on Earth, Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan, distinguished liberal scriptural scholars, write: "He attracted a following and took his movement to Jerusalem at the season of Passover. There he challenged the authorities with public acts and public debates. All this was his passion, what he was passionate about: God and the Kingdom of God, God and God's passion for justice. Jesus' passion got him killed."

That's why I celebrate Easter and why, despite many questions of my own, I can't join the neo-atheists.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...pinion/columns

[corbomite]

athiests have killed more people than the spanish inquisition ever did.

its no contest.

[White_Male_Canada]

Naturally atheism has killed more people. That is something Dionne didn`t touch upon.

Atheistic Communism accounts for over 100,000,000 souls. Add to that the other atheist regimes such as China and others and the number bumps up to over 140 million.Add to that non-believers and abortion that total in the billions and it really is, no contest.

Almost 50% of all the killings in human history were committed in the past 100 years by regimes that either actively promoted atheism or strongly discouraged religion.It is very clear that atheism is the most deadly philosophy ever embraced by humanity.

[North_of_60]

Another deep thought by White Male Canada...

It is very clear that atheism is the most deadly philosophy ever embraced by humanity

"Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord..."
Adolf Hitler -Mein Kampf, Chapter 2-

I've found this for you. You'll love it...
http://atheistdelusion.cf.huffingtonpost.com/

[White_Male_Canada]

Another deep thought by White Male Canada...

It is very clear that atheism is the most deadly philosophy ever embraced by humanity

"Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord..."
Adolf Hitler -Mein Kampf, Chapter 2-

I've found this for you. You'll love it...
http://atheistdelusion.cf.huffingtonpost.com/

Fluffington, please. For every quote you dig up I could post two from Hitler that is negative towards original Christianity.

So, Christinanity argues in favor of aryan supremacy, extermination of Jews, racial purity, etc?

Deranged lunatics telling Germans what HE thinks the Bible means. That`s almost like the left telling Americans only THEY know what the Constitution means, it means whatever they say it means. Not what is printed on paper. Perverting the written word to advance one`s own cause is a recipe for disaster.

[North_of_60]

Your logic could apply to Stalin and who ever used the Marxist theory to run totalitary regimes. Atheism has nothing to do with it.

Throughout history, religion has been used to push extreme political viewpoints, racism, destruction of cultures, hatred, selfishness and ignorance. Even if we accept the argument that religion was not the true cause of those crimes, it was used as an effective justification for them. And this from the proselytist nature of religion and faith.

Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply the absence of belief in the existence of God or other deities.

[guyone]

It's agenda not ethos that creates policy.

[Pirate_Mann]

You'd think you could go to a board for shemales and shemale appreciation without running into religious wackjobs.

[chefmike]

You'd think you could go to a board for shemales and shemale appreciation without running into religious wackjobs.

We've had our share of offensive bible-banging wackjob jesus-spammers here...but the mods have cracked down lately...as a matter of fact, the wingnut who started this thread is now banned, along with his jesus camp buttbuddy TFan aka TFool. :P

[Caleigh]

really?

WMC and Tfan banned?

i'm so out of the loop