The extraordinary claim is: “God exists”.
The extraordinary evidence is the self-evident existence of the self-awareness that is able to doubt the truth of the proposition: “God exists”.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence
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Tag Archives: Atheism
Atheists sue museum for displaying 9/11 cross
American Atheists have filed a suit against the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation because the WTCMF is displaying a cross formed from some steel beams left after the building collapsed.
The fact that the cross was on display for five years as a symbol of hope to thousands of people makes it an historically significant artefact worthy of display in a museum.
That is not good enough for today’s atheists whose hatred for the God in which they disbelieve is so bitter that they cannot countenance any reminder that billions of people know that he is real. As Kenneth Bronstein, New York City Atheists President pointed out: “That a worker resurrected one of these girders and dubbed it a Christian cross is an affront to all of us who believe in our constitutionally based right to have public places free of religious propaganda and religious coercion.” That the cross is an affront to those who are perishing is not exactly a new idea, but that its display is somehow religious coercion defies all the rationality that atheists are so eager to claim as their own.
Contemporary atheists will not rest until all expression of Christianity is expunged from our civilisation and its citizens’ lives are rendered as narrow, unimaginative, and vacuously meaningless as theirs.
From here:
The American Atheists organization has sued the National September 11 Memorial and Museum over the installation of the “9/11 cross” in the museum. The organization’s president, David Silverman, insists that it will not “allow this travesty to occur in our country.”
The 20-foot cross — two steel beams that had held together as the building collapsed — was discovered in the rubble of Ground Zero on September 13, 2001, by construction worker Frank Silecchia. The 9/11 cross became a venerated object, and many of those who were searching for survivors and clearing debris from the “pit” took solace from its existence. On October 4, 2001, it was moved to a pedestal on Church Street, where it was treated as a shrine by visitors to Ground Zero for the next five years. In October 2006 it was removed to storage, and in July 2011 it was returned to the site for installation in the National September 11 Memorial and Museum.
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The Lord’s Prayer causes an atheist to suffer “anguish, discrimination, exclusion, rejection and loss of enjoyment of life”
Well good, you might be thinking, serves him right for being an atheist. The atheist in question, Pete the Atheist, has persuaded Secular Ontario – I’m sure they didn’t need much persuading – to sue Grey County council for $5000 to soothe his excluded, rejected, anguished ego and restore his “enjoyment of life.” It’s well known that recitation of the Lord’s Prayer has been cutting a swathe of excruciating angst through its hearers for centuries: it’s time someone put a stop to it.
As he points out:
He said councillors are infringing upon his Charter right to freedom of conscience and religion, referencing a 1999 Ontario Court of Appeal decision that ordered the town council in Penetanguishene to stop reciting the Lord’s Prayer.
“I don’t like politicians who break the law, and our county council is breaking the law,” said Mr. Ferguson Tuesday from his home in Kimberley — one of nine municipalities within Grey County. He said if he wins the case, he’ll donate the $5,000 to Canadian Civil Liberties Education Trust.
“I don’t really care about religion that much, I care about the law. I care about being fair.”
So it’s a matter of the Law. But as one of Pete the Atheist’s probable heroes, Sam Harris has pointed out in his book Free Will, the councillors had no choice but to recite the Lord’s Prayer. What appears to be choice is actually rigid determinism disguised as choice: their chemicals made them do it. They were not responsible, so there is no point in punishing them.
As a corollary, Pete the Atheist has not chosen to be an atheist because if he is right, according to Sam Harris – and I agree with Harris on this – there is no such thing as choosing.
Thus, if Pete the Atheist’s views are correct, they are little more than the inane divagations of an automaton to which no-one should feel obliged to listen. And that’s where we came in.
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Atheists Anonymous
“Hello, I’m Jerry and I’m an atheist.” Nothing unusual about that, you might think – other than the fact that when Jerry drifted from Christianity to disbelieving in hell to universalism to God is our inner dialogue, to atheism, he was a Pentecostal minister.
Since he wasn’t an Anglican minister, this presented Jerry with a bit of a dilemma which, on hearing of his new-found lack of faith, his congregation helped him resolve by firing him.
From there, he fell into the welcoming arms of The Clergy Project, a “confidential online community for active and former clergy who do not hold supernatural beliefs”: TCP, the spiritual formulation, guaranteed to disinfect the bacteria of Faith, Hope and Charity from contaminated souls.
Having come out, Jerry has been photographed with Richard Dawkins and become executive director of Recovering from Religion; that’s about as transcendent as it gets for an atheist.
A brief perusal of this clip will confirm that, although Jerry has abandoned Pentecostalism, it hasn’t entirely abandoned him: his intonation, gestures and stagecraft are all standard Pentecostal minister fare. I was expecting a “preach it, brother” from the audience; Jerry needs to attend a few more Reason Rallies to purge the remnants of what used to intoxicate him from his system.
From here:
In the span of just a few months, Jerry DeWitt went from a respected pastor with a vibrant congregation to an atheist without a job.
DeWitt, 42, is the first “graduate” of The Clergy Project, a program supported by several atheist organizations that assists pastors who have lost their faith to “come out” as atheists to family, friends, congregations and communities.
DeWitt, who lives in Southern Louisiana, went public last October when he posted a picture of himself with the prominent and polarizing atheist Richard Dawkins, snapped at a meeting of atheists and other “freethinkers” in Houston.
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Richard Dawkins comforts the afflicted
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Atheist threatens human rights complaint after public prayer
From here:
A Christian prayer by a city councillor at a City of Saskatoon volunteer appreciation dinner discriminated against non-Christians, says a volunteer who intends to complain to the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission.
Ashu Solo, a member of the city’s cultural diversity and race relations committee, was among the guests at the dinner Wednesday, where Coun. Randy Donauer said a blessing over the food in which he mentioned Jesus and ended with “amen.”
“It made me feel like a second-class citizen. It makes you feel excluded,” said Solo, who is an atheist.
What can one possibly say to an atheist who feels excluded by prayer? A number of things spring to mind, but I will confine myself to this: Good.
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Atheists believe in unholy water
Unable to think of any positive activities with which to occupy their brief sojourn in this pitiless, indifferent universe, atheists in Polk county have decided to busy themselves with scrubbing a road with “unholy water” – water cursed by Richard Dawkins, one presumes. Their intent is to wash away any remnants of a blessing bestowed on the road by Christians.
The Christians prayed that “God would protect us from evildoers, mainly the drug crowd, that they would be dissuaded to come in to the county”. The atheists are bent on “welcoming everybody into Polk county”. Obviously, atheists enjoy the company of drug dealers.
From here:
Atheists in Polk County symbolically scrubbed away at a major highway leading into the county Saturday.
The were removing a blessing placed there a year ago by a group of religious leaders.
Brooms, mops and water hoses in hand, the atheists gathered at the roadside.
“We come in peace .. now that’s normally what aliens say when they visit a new planet, but we’re not aliens, we’re atheists!” Humanists of Florida director Mark Palmer shouted to the group along Highway 98.
Representatives from various atheist groups in the area scrubbed the road at the Pasco-Polk county line. They were figuratively removing holy oil that had been put on the road last year by a group of area religious leaders. That group was Polk Under Prayer, or PUP.
PUP director Richard Geringswald said his group had been blessing the county line.
“And praying for that entryway in to the city, that God would protect us from evildoers, mainly the drug crowd, that they would be dissuaded to come in to the county,” Geringswald said.
But Humanists of Florida members don’t see it that way. They say it makes them feel unwelcome.
“It sends a very bad signal to everyone in Polk County, and (anyone) who travels through Polk county who doesn’t happen to be Christian,” Palmer said, “This event is not about atheist rights; this is about welcoming everybody into Polk county.”
So they took their “unholy water” and washed the road.
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On hating God
The ten commandments popped up as part of my regular Bible reading this morning and Ex 20:5-6 struck me:
You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.
“Who”, I thought to myself, “could possibly be stupid enough to hate God?” Even though I now believe atheism to be illogical, I can empathise with being an atheist, since I once was one; being oblivious to God I can understand because even after I thought the idea of his existence was at least plausible, I didn’t want to have much to do with him. But who could hate God? If nothing else, a sense of self-preservation ought to keep one from such folly.
Not so, however. The so-called new atheists don’t so much disbelieve in God as loath him. Christopher Hitchens, shortly before his death, paraphrased the famous C. S. Lewis proposition: “if Jesus isn’t the Son of God, he is a hideous wicked imposter; his words were vane, empty and intended to deceive.” Lewis concluded that Jesus, therefore, was the Son of God, Hitchens that he was….. a hideous wicked imposter. Dawkins, Dennett, Harris et al echo similar sentiments.
Blinkered fools!
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Richard Dawkins forgets the full title of 'The Origin Of Species'
Richard Dawkins is becoming an increasing embarrassment to his less strident atheist comrades. For my part, I am glad to see him doing his bit in inadvertently exposing the threadbare reasons for disbelieving in God’s existence.
It is purely speculation, of course, but I suspect that Richard Dawkins is now driving more people towards Christianity than Rowan Williams is away from it, so congratulations are in order.
From here:
Richard Dawkins has been labelled an “embarrassment to atheism” after clashing with a priest in a debate on BBC Radio 4.
The author of the God Delusion could not recall the full title of Charles Darwin’s ‘The Origin Of Species’ during a discussion with Giles Fraser, Former Canon Chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral, over a poll conducted for the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science (UK) which found that self-identified Christians didn’t go to Church, or read the bible.
Dawkins said an “astonishing number couldn’t identify the first book in the New Testament.” But his claim that this indicated self-identified Christians were “not really Christian at all” was challenged by Fraser, who said the poll asked “silly little questions” to “trip” people up.
Giles Fraser: Richard, if I said to you what is the full title of ‘The Origin Of Species’, I’m sure you could tell me that.
Richard Dawkins: Yes I could
Giles Fraser: Go on then.
Richard Dawkins: On The Origin Of Species.. Uh. With, Oh God. On The Origin Of Species. There is a sub title with respect to the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life.
Giles Fraser: You’re the high pope of Darwinism… If you asked people who believed in evolution that question and you came back and said 2% got it right, it would be terribly easy for me to go ‘they don’t believe it after all.’ It’s just not fair to ask people these questions. They self-identify as Christians and I think you should respect that.
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In the UK, you can no longer proclaim “God can heal”
From here:
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said it had concluded that the adverts by Healing on the Streets (HOTS) – Bath, were misleading.
It said a leaflet available to download from the group’s website said: “Need Healing? God can heal today!”
[….]
The ASA said it had been alerted to the adverts by a complainant, and concluded that they could encourage false hope and were irresponsible.
If all advertising that “could encourage false hope” were banned, then there would be very little advertising at all and the economy of the UK would collapse even faster than it already is.
The fact that these advertisements have been singled out for special opprobrium is yet another example of secularism’s attempt to expunge Christianity from public view.
On purely factual grounds the ban is absurd: if a person believes there is no God, his hopes for healing will not be stimulated by the ad; if a person believes in God, but he doesn’t actually exist, he is already so deluded that one more false hope won’t make much difference; if a person believes in God and God does exist, then there is no false hope in believing God can heal – he can do anything he chooses, including heal.