Thomas Paine (The Age of Reason) did a great job of explaining the issue with belief in an anthropomorphic God—be it Zeus, Vishnu, Ahura Mazda, Manitou, Yahweh, Allah or any other.

Dawkins, Hitchens and others, though far from being in the same league with Paine, evidently write and gives talks for those who think something written over two centuries ago can’t still be true or relevant.

As far as the “angry atheists” mentioned by Tom in the above article, I don’t know their reasons for their hatred of Christianity, but I can understand why many people these days look down on Christians with scorn.

What should we expect when they see and hear neocons, who proclaim themselves to be Christian, Catholic, Jewish, etc., and then see these snakes lie us into war, call for nuclear murder, impose and create a spy and torture government in our own borders?

What should we expect when they see and hear the small but vocal group of sedevacanist-monarchist-heretic groups who call themselves Catholic, yet defy church authority, and talk of crazy schemes of bringing forth an iron fisted “monarch”, imposing their anti-natural law legalistic “morality”, and hearing them proclaim their sympathy with fascism and National Socialists?

What should we expect when they see and hear Christian fundamentalists, who call for, like the two above groups, a strong central government, a foreign policy to kill all Muslims and people with skin darker than an albino Geisha, and who hold some crazed end-times belief in a “rapture” and Jesus coming back blaring away with an M-16 firing on all people who don’t think like them?

Were it not for the fact that many years ago I properly taught myself the fundamentals of Orthodox Catholicism, and for the fact that we have a Pope who speaks out against the Iraq murder, I too may very well have grown cynical of what goes for “Christian” these days.

The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do.” -Samuel Huntington, Harvard Professor, “The Clash of Civilizations”

I am an atheist, or at best a very skeptical agnostic. And some times I hate religion. Not religion per se, but when its used for political purposes. Like the hypocrisy in US political campaigns or when zionists claim the god given rights from a god they don’t believe in. Everyone with more than rudimentary knowledge in European history knows how religion has caused a lot of conflicts and suffering through the centuries. Most of the first emigrants to US left Europe because of religious persecution . Still today you find religious fundamentalists in the vortex of conflicts, and I see no difference in complicity whether they are hiding in Tora Bora, harassing and killing Palestinian children in Hebron or planning new wars in the White House. 
The precondition for peace in ME is to remove religion from politic, and politics from religion. 

Matt. 6:6
“But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you

The above reference does not justify the sequestering of religion into a private sphere isolated from the public.

Tom Piatak writes: “What a strange
focus of inquiry for the angry atheists,
all of whom grew up in America and
Britain, one a nation with no state
church, and the other a nation whose
religious establishment is famously
mild.”

A similar mystery attaches itself to
the origins of angry atheists in
Australia, a country whose de
facto religious establishment
is - and has always been in my
lifetime - so mild it makes the
average British clerical invertebrate
look almost like Ahmadinejad.

Religiousness—in whatever form—also correlates heavily with female fertility. (German researcher Michael Blume has done some terrific work on this. He also, kind of, proved that religion is best transmitted by the mother. If the mother is very religious, the chances will be very large for children for to become religious too.)

In other words: secular people will, in time, get fewer and fewer. Not just relatively, but absolutely. The secular nature of Europe is probably just a byproduct of the ideological struggles since the French Revolution. The arrival of Islam also meant the return of religion.

Even though, I’m not a believer myself, I’d choose the company of religious people, preferably Christians, over militant atheists anytime.

(German researcher Michael Blume has done some terrific work on this. He also, kind of, proved that religion is best transmitted by the mother. If the mother is very religious, the chances will be very large for children for to become religious too.)

I’ve read a recent study that correlates the stability of religious observance by adult children with that of the father, which seems more plausible to me.

@pb

The above reference does not justify the sequestering of religion into a private sphere isolated from the public.

Of course it does, here is one more:
Luke 20:25
And He said to them, “Then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

Religion is a private matter between yourself and the God you worship, not something you wear on your uniform as a decoration or sign of nobility.

Religion is a private matter between yourself and the God you worship, not something you wear on your uniform as a decoration or sign of nobility.

I don’t have a problem with the latter statement, but that does not mean that religion has no role to play in the public sphere or the governance of a society. Neither text supports your desire “to remove religion from politic, and politics from religion”

I wonder where Hitchens resides on the scale of “undistinguished human beings”?

A recent conversation with a Christian mininister, who just happens to be an alcoholic, told me while sipping on his vodka,"You cannont be moral if you are agnostic.” These kinds of attitudes towards non-believers doesn’t exactley endear us to self righteous Christians. Nor does it give us a warm and fuzzy feeling when we’re told we will burn in hell for not drinking the kool Aid.

If there is an attitude of intellectual superiority among aagnostics it’s because many of us have read about the many “Saviors” or “Messiahs” came before Jesus. They also claimed the same virgin birth, son of God status, and who, they were told, died to save them form their sins.

Conclusion.

Jesus is a compilation of thousands of years of myths and outright lies. You will forgive me if that sounds angry!

Insightful post.  This hostility, I think, may have its roots in the late 19th century where the political dichotomy is set up:  the intelligent (liberal progressives) versus the stupid (traditionalists).  But even atheists like John Stuart Mill were circumspect in what they would say about Christianity, probably because they were living in a more civilized age.  But almost extinct seem to be men like Cicero who, although agnostics, saw it a duty to praise publicly religion. 

I have often heard the “more people have been murdered in the name of Christianity” slogan more times than I would like to count.  To all these people I refer the book Little Black Book of Communism*, especially the chapter on Mao, the atheist, who liquidated 65 million of his own people. 

But it’s not as if reason will abate this hatred of Christianity.  These people hate the West and its contributions (except science, which they believe sprung up and lives in a historical vacuum).

We live in a barbarous age.  Compare the beautiful churches (you mention) with the cinder-block monstrosities (used for schools, projects, government buildings) of the modern state, and ask yourself:  who’s more civilized?

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Book_of_Communism

The notion that the absence of religion would ease conflict in the Middle East does not pass muster.  Israelis and Palestinians each want the same land, neither recognizes the other as part of its nation, and the fight over the land would persist even if all the Israelis and Palestinians became atheists tomorrow.

If there is an attitude of intellectual superiority among aagnostics it’s because many of us have read about the many “Saviors” or “Messiahs” came before Jesus. They also claimed the same virgin birth, son of God status, and who, they were told, died to save them form their sins.

Really? Name them. Describe to us how their arrival, like that of The Messiah, was prophesied in sacred texts for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years before their birth.

Tell us how they died and rose from the death.

Jesus is a compilation of thousands of years of myths and outright lies. You will forgive me if that sounds angry!

Don’t assume you have my forgiveness.

Seek the forgiveness of your Creator, Redeemer, and Saviour and stop acting like a teenager

Religion has no place in public, none whatsoever, save as another con game such as palm readers, psychics and the like. The difference between alleged psychics and clergy are that the psychics know that they are frauds, preying upon gullible fools.

Atheists such as myself are angry over the fact that knowing that religion is a fraud, our society still encourages it, the “opiate of the masses” indeed.

We are coming out into the open now and confronting the frauds of Christianity and Judaism by using facts about the fraudulent nature of the so-called “holy works”.

In my field of engineering, it is very rare to encounter a “jesus nut” these days. High tech companies simply won’t hire them, regardless of the laws banning discrimination on religious grounds. We won’t hire psychics or wiccans either, and none of the women in my office wear a burqa.

BTW, read some accounts of the Black Death to see how well the clergy and papacy did when Europe lost a third of its population. Also, read about the Thirty Years War, the conflict that nearly destroyed Europe.

And no, I didn’t like Hitler Youth member Bennie the 16th coming to the US, unless it had been under arrest for crimes against humanity. Was he a “gentle soul” when he was supporting the Gestapo and the SS in the good old days?

I am tired of tax exempt status for religious organizations, especially when the clergyman drives a Rolls-Royce and 90% of his congregation is at or below the poverty line(as a contractor, I have seen this kind of thing more than once.)

Give ALL religious institutions the same tax status as the local psychic, used car dealership, and pawnshop.

“And no, I didn’t like Hitler Youth member Bennie the 16th coming to the US, unless it had been under arrest for crimes against humanity. Was he a “gentle soul” when he was supporting the Gestapo and the SS in the good old days?”

Don, you are a douchebag and you don’t know what you’re talking about.  Every German was
required to belong to the Hitler Youth and you were enrolled even if you objected.  Ratzinger
had no more choice about membership than he did about being born in Germany.  Secondly,
there is no evidence he ever “supported” the Gestapo or the SS.  You are calumniating
scum and a jackass.

In reply to Piatak comment, least there would be no suicide bombers to die for seventy-two virigins. However, since human beings can be quite inventive in their ability to find reasons to kill each other, I bet all the Palestinians will become communists like they almost did in the 60s and 70s. They would become in essence Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka, a communist group that has kill thousands, and is infamous for being quite effective in the use of suicide bombings. The Jews, however, would likely continue same policy of denfense before they all became secular, since substantial majority already secular. The only real change for the Jews is maybe no more West Bank settlements, and thats only because of the Othrodox Jews. Which I might add is only a maybe, since there could be some secular Jews living in the West Bank. In conclusion, bravo to you Piatak for being right; however, that may not last, for I the lord of dreams will be watching you.

O’yes it is defense, not denfense. Sorry for the misspelling, I the lord of dreams will make sure it never becomes of error after this post. Correct spelling is a virtue.

What really makes atheists angry is that Christians vote.  Even though we do not vote in a monolithic bloc, we do have an influence.  Which is what the Founding Fathers expected.  Too bad we don’t have
enough worthy candidates for political office today.

@Tom Piatak

Israelis and Palestinians each want the same land, neither recognizes the other as part of its nation, and the fight over the land would persist even if all the Israelis and Palestinians became atheists tomorrow.

The driving force behind this expansion is the orthodox zionists claim that this is their promised land, and not for Israel to give away. Normally such crazy claims would have been dismissed by the international community long ago. I guess I don’t have to tell you of US use of veto in UNSC, nor the power of Christian Zionist in US
So I beg to differ, without Israel’s inability to deal with its own fundamentalists and their staunch support from the “Bible belt” a lasting and just peace would be possible.  I’ve been following the “Doha debates” for a while, and my impression is that the Palestinian refugees might be willing to negate on their “right of return”.

You make a fine point Dagai, but I must sort of disagree on one point. The majority of Israelis are secular in nature, and want to keep the land that they have for themselves. The Palestinians have since of disfranchisment that is similar to the African American community, that will not dissapear with religion. However, you are right that the Israelis would not have to deal with their orthodox community, and lose support in America. However, in my opinion the conflict would continue. But this is just my opinion, which I meant could be wrong. Why look at the way I spelled orthodox, it should have had the r after the o, than h. So my opinion un closing, could very will be wrong.

O’yes, I know it is in, not un.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaGgpGLxLQw

Rarely is something devestating and entertaining.  And Rap!?

Militant atheists are angry because there real problem is authority.  They don’t want to live in a world constrained by authority and unchosen obligations.  And so long as many people believe in God and have not handed His authority to man in the form of science or psychology or various varieties of liberalism, they know that man’s authority will always be limited by God’s.  They’re in rebellion at rules, constraints, ignorance, and the human condition, just as Adam was in the Garden.

Could the explanation for the starkly different perceptions be that the terms “religion” and “Christianity” are exeedingly broad?  Many people consider themselves religious, but they are not exactly replicas of Mother Theresa.  Similary, many groups in history have called themselves “Christians,” but they did not give much attention to what Christ taught in the Sermon on the Mount (Dispensationalists come to mind.) The root of the problem thus may be in sematics, and paying attention to the differences between religions, particularly various “Christianities,” might be very hepful in the debate.

Daga1, “‘The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence . . . ‘ -Samuel Huntington.” There is a problem with this argument:  for most of the time, the military forces of the British Empire were laughably small.  The British themselves were acutely aware of the fact that they could never rule their Empire by armed force.  This was the idea that underlied the “Oak in a Flowerpot” view of the Empire.  Look also at what Toynbee sees as the difference between expanding and declining civilzations.

“Don” is a fairly typical example of the “new atheists” one encounters on the internet: convinced of his own intellectual superiority, bitter over events that have had no effect on him or anyone he knows, ignorant of history and culture, and malicious, boasting of how his company engages in religious discrimination.

“Don” might be interested to know that my father has a master’s degree in engineering and my brother-in-law a bachelor’s degree in engineering, and both are regular churhgoers, as are two of my close engineer friends, one with a Ph. D. and the other with a master’s in engineering.  Too bad they are all too stupid to enjoy the pleasure of working with “Don.”

An interesting question.

The New Atheists strike me as feral. They’ve lost something needed to see themselves and others in a setting in which reason and civilization make sense. As a result they become irrational and vicious.

Who knows how Pascal would bet if he had the Internet ?

Surely the reasons people hate Christ’s teaching now are little different from why they were hated when He walked the streets of occupied Israel.  Who hates Zeus?

Mr. Piatak,
Once again you have managed to enlighten and entertain.  Well Done.  Anger is a typical sign that someone is afraid of losing something they hold near and dear.  This is particularly true when someone’s beliefs are called into question. Einstein was very defensive when Niels Bohr challenged certain elements of his theories. 
The so-called atheists are particularly defensive about their religion, Secular humanism.  Their insistence that God CAN NOT exist defies reason and logic.  Mr. Dawkins will even allow intelligent design, as long as the intelligent designer is a little green man who is, himself, a product of evolution.  The root of their anger is clear – by defending our faith, we are calling their baby ugly.

@Christopher Roach

“And so long as many people believe in God and have not handed His authority to man in the form of science or psychology or various varieties of liberalism...”

So now science=liberalism?  Gee, heaven forbid science was, um, something objective and a part of the natural order which God created.

Science can answer many questions, but it can’t (and doesn’t purport) to answer metaphysical and moral questions.  To imagine it could, is to put it in God’s place instead of it’s proper place.  So liberalism may depend on a certain view of science, but clearly science is not liberalism.

Zeus! That bastard!

And don’t even get me started on Thor and Odin!

Having been raised without religion, it’s not an emotional issue for me.  I do know some other atheists who are carrying a grudge, whether it’s against friends and family who shunned them when they got tired of going through the motions, or in some horrible cases, clergy who abused them.

All religion is nonsense, but it varies tremendously in its virulence.  Zen Buddhists pretty much live and let live, while the Jim Bakers of the world rob their marks, and far more depraved criminals use the conditioned obedience of believers to gain power over their victims.

At any rate, when you propose an imaginary friend in the sky, the burden of proof is yours:  go ahead, I’ve not heard anything close to a convincing argument yet.

-jcr

Mr. Randolph:

Ralph McInerny disagrees with you and argues that the burden of proof is on the atheist:  http://www.leaderu.com/truth/1truth11.html

That is my own sense as well.  Those arguing that the belief that gave birth to our civilization is wrong, and should be replaced by an atheism that has never defined any great civilization, much less Western civilization, should explain why they are right and why Leibniz and Pascal, Michelangelo and Bach, Mozart and Newton were wrong.

Tom,

PZ Myers has handily disposed of this tactic:

http://richarddawkins.net/article,463,The-Courtiers-Reply,PZ-Myers

Try again.

-jcr

Oh, BTW:  spotted this line in the article you linked to:

“The truths of faith, the mysteries, are truths about God whose truth cannot be established by natural reason.”

In that line, the person you look to for your argumentum ad verecundiam simply fails to support his (and your) position.  The existence of your imaginary friend is left entirely as an emotional appeal.  Sorry, that’s just not convincing to one who wasn’t indoctrinated with it from childhood.

-jcr

Mr. Randolph:

PZ Myers is not a philosopher, Ralph McInerny is.  Given the quickness with which you replied to me, you could not possibly have read McInerny’s article.  You may want to actually read it.

As for me,I am a conservative, which means I have respect for history and tradition.  So I care what the great men who formed our civilization thought, and I respect the belief that inspired our tradition, even if Myers et al. do not.  In fact, Christopher Hitchens is clearly motivated by a hatred of tradition:  http://www.amconmag.com/2005/2005_10_10/article3.html

I give more of my thoughts on the angry atheists, and why belief in God is reasonable, in my review of Hitchens’ atheist manifesto:  http://www.takimag.com/site/article/hitchens_hubris/

Mr. Randolph:

I also refer you again to the quotes from Murray and Fleming with which I close my article.  Even if Christianity were false, it has undoubtedly formed the basis of Western civilization.  One would think that the attitude of anyone who admired Western civilization toward Christianity would include a measure of gratitude.  The great anger against Christianity expressed by Myers, Dawkins, and Hitchens, none of whom have been harmed by Christianity in any way, is simply bizarre.

Are we going to revisit the question of whether it is possible to be a conservative without being Christian, or a respect for Christianity? (I am thinking of the discussion started by Heather MacDonald a while back...)

““The truths of faith, the mysteries, are truths about God whose truth cannot be established by natural reason.”

In your quick browse “Mr. Randolph” you missed the differentiation between the preambles of faith and the mysteries of faith. The preambles of faith, like the truth of the existence of God, are knowable by human reason alone.

PB:

It is certainly possible to be a conservative without being a Christian.  Given the centrality of Christianity to the development of our civilization, though, I doubt that it is possible to be a conservative and despise Christianity.  Certainly, none of the leading “new atheists” are conservatives, or even pretend to be.

The “new” atheists: bottomless ignorance, stunning fatuity, blind self-absorption, and the angst of the pampered adolescent bravely trumpeting the bold new ideas he heard the day before in his sophomore English class (usually something about the courage to break the societal-imposed, gender-based restraints that inhibit self-actualization through sexual experimentation.)

Ho hum.

I dreamed I saw Tom Paine last night. He said tell them to grow up.

PZ Myers is not a philosopher, Ralph McInerny is. 

Not much of one, I would have to say, given that his argument is so trivially dismissed in a puff of logic.

As for Christianity and western civilization, need I remind you how the church retarded intellectual and scientific development in Europe during the middle ages?  It was the renaissance and enlightenment, spurred by the rediscovery of the Greek roots of our civilization that allowed us to progress beyond superstition and achieve our modern standard of living.

-jcr

Tony,

Let’s suppose for a moment that you’re a Christian, and one who actually cares about saving the souls of his fellow man, rather than an adherent of the “ha, ha: god’s going to torture you forever in hell” school of theology.

Do you imagine that your affectation of superiority is going to achieve this purpose?

-jcr

Let’s suppose for a moment that you’re a Christian, and one who actually cares about saving the souls of his fellow man,

It is Jesus who saves, not the gentleman you insult via your question.

Deny Jesus and he will deny you and you will have, literally, all of eternity to quip, jape, joke, and engage in self-adjulation with Satan and his minions.

So, you got that going for you…

Preen away, pal.

Mr. Randolph,

Many historians of science now think that it was no accident that science developed only in Christendom, and that the great scientists of the 17th-18th centuries were almost all Christians.  Indeed, many historians of science have concluded that it was the medieval scholastics who gave birth to science, and that the Western empirical scientific tradition could not have arisen apart from Christian belief in the reality of the physical world and the existence of natural laws and the Christian denial of pantheism.  There is a good discussion of this in Thomas Woods’ book, “How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization.”

And those who have concluded that Christianity spurred, rather than hindered, scientific developments are hardly limited to Christians.  Charles Murray, an agnostic, concluded after his exhaustive study of human accomplishment that “it was the transmutation of [the classical] intellectual foundation by Christianity that gave modern Europe its impetus and that pushed European accomplishment so far ahead of all other cultures around the world.”

“As for Christianity and western civilization, need I remind you how the church retarded intellectual and scientific development in Europe during the middle ages?  It was the renaissance and enlightenment, spurred by the rediscovery of the Greek roots of our civilization that allowed us to progress beyond superstition and achieve our modern standard of living.”

Well, what motivated great men for the Renaissance and the Enlightenment? All of that grew out of the fertile Christian culture. It’s a bit silly to deny that, it’s like arguing we never landed on the moon. Religion is here to stay. Religion is natural. Religion is from all times and all places.

Sure, sometimes religion deserves some hard words, some critical thought and (in the case of contemporary Islam and medieval Christianity) some tough opposition.

(PS The classical period was filled with religious observance, just as pre-classical *pagan* times were.)

Spartacus,

In my experience, what people have to say on religious topics is a valuable indicator of their personality.  Those who speak of god’s love tend to be sweet and decent people, who imagine a god in their own image. 

Those who threaten others with hellfire and damnation however, are imagining a god who shares their virulent misanthropy.

Try to work it out in therapy.  There may be hope for you yet.

-jcr

“Religion is here to stay. Religion is natural. Religion is from all times and all places.”

That’s what we used to think about smallpox.

-jcr

“science developed only in Christendom”

What’s your next guess?

The Chinese were vastly ahead of the west for many centuries before they become an object lesson in the danger of complacency. 

-jcr

Point to Randolph- there is more to the history of science than the tautological observation that it happened where it happened , because the methodological ‘it’ in question entailed the putting aside of teleology and metaphysics as primary intellectual concerns.

The magisterial announcement that “many historians of science” are disposed to mistake Woods’ book for intellectual history merely turns up the volume on the baloney alarm-- he ain’t exactly de Chardin. Perhaps Mr. Piatak should peruse some back issues of Isis or review Dennett instead of Hitchens for a change.

As a warm up exercise ,he might ponder this charming reminiscence of Rorty, who competes with Quine as being as close an approximation to a conservative as one can find in the real set of contemporary philosophers:

http://www.bu.edu/arion/Geuss.htm

Russell,

Why not try reading Woods’ book before you dismiss it out of hand?  He cites numerous historians, including, of course, the great scientist and historian Pierre Duhem, who found much of scientific merit in such scholastics as Jean Buridan.

As far as nonsense goes, the moral relativism espoused by Rorty is near the top of the list.  And describing Rorty--a defender of contemporary leftism and such exemplars of the left as John Rawls and John Dewey--as a coservative philosopher is rather odd, to say the least.  When I think of contemporary conservative philosophers, I think of someone like Alasdair MacIntyre, not Rorty or Rawls.  Or maybe Elizabeth Anscombe, a close friend and colleauge of Wittgenstein who was also a moral traditionalist.

Books like Coulters demonising people as pagans certainly doesnt make people happy. This form of ministry attack is really just a strawman argument pinned to the backside of people that dont believe as Christians do. Its a form of demonisation and it, of course, is judgemental, which BTW, is something the bible says a Christian should not do.

Those who threaten others with hellfire and damnation however, are imagining a god who shares their virulent misanthropy.

Mr. Randolph. Jesus, who is both fully God and fully man, spoke forcefully and repeatedly about Hell and its fires.

You do not appear to even know the most fundamental facts of Christianity.

Try to work it out in therapy.  There may be hope for you yet.

You prolly are not used to being responded to in a masculine manner. Your writing is boorish, jejune, and catty.

Consider a law suit against the schools you attended. Clearly, you were sinned against.

Speaking of Daniel Dennett (whom Russell no doubt considers a fine conservative, in the tradition of Richard Rorty), here is an interesting observation on Dennett by physicist Stephen Barr:  http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=111

I think Barr gets to the heart of the matter quite nicely.  Americans respect and admire science.  They are far less likely to respect and admire scientists who misuse their scientific credentials to advance atheism.

@JCR

Look, you’re clearly confused. You think Christianity and religiousness are one and the same. They’re not. The former is the software, the latter, the hardware.

Although I value Christianiy as a non-believer, that’s not what I’m arguing for. I’m just stating the obvious: religiousness is an instinct, like language or territorial drift.Therefore, I believe it to be natural. That’s why it’s prevalent among all tribes of all places and all times.

Really, stop fighting against human nature. Instead, cherish human kind for what it is, not what you think it should be. Just look at the anger, bitterness and irritation which took hold of. Dr. Dawkins, I have to advise you not to become like that. Militant atheists remind me of communists, they couldn’t except that humankind just wasn’t suited for extreme altruism. Humans are not like that.

I do not know why atheists are angry, however it may have something to do with insecurity.  Some twenty years ago it seemed that in much of the Western World religion will disappear, and atheism is likely to triumph, the Dawkins’s can sit back and watch their own victory.  This tendency was less intense in the U.S., although in much of where the so-called “intellectual elite” is thought to reside, it was strongly present there as well.

However, recently it has become obvious that this tendency is not going to continue, at least not easily.  In U.S. statistics shows it already, in Europe less so, but the dialogue between hard-core modern humanists such as Habermas and Benedict XVI (and the former’s recent praise of Christianity), and a variety of other factors (it seems to me that Europe is experiencing a renessaince of Christian art: Churches are becoming musical venues as well for Gregorian chants or baroque Christian music) indicate a halt to atheisms march.  I also think that the ID-Darwinism debate is making a fool of modern scientists, exposing them for the dogmatic clique that they are, not to mention the hypocritical clique that they are, since scientists often criticize religion for its dogmas.  Scientists are equally as dogmatic, only that they are not as open about it.

Actually, to be precise, not all scientists are like Richard Dawkins. For example the recent dialogue between Cardinal Schönborn of Vienna (who has written a NYT article in favour of ID), and Anton Zeilinger (an expert in quantum optics who has contributed to what we understand about the fundamentals of quantum mechanics) is yet another sign.  But being pro-ID in science can, and usually does, lead to being isolated, if not ostracized. Actually, the EU has passed laws against ID (a major indication of insecurity).

Another factor that may be disquieting to those wishing to see atheism march to triumph is that many of its “church fathers” are being rapidly discredited.  Marx and Freud nowadays offer limited intellectual capital even in their own fields of supposed expertise, and now ID may take a hammer to Darwin’s pedestal.

One might think that the reasons for being an Angry Atheist are as varied as being an angry Christian / Muslim / Jew.
All sides have their (very well-known) bad apples.  I thought libertarian conservatives were supposed to judge others individually rather than judge them on the group to which they belong.

The various proofs for the existence of God – the ones that have persuaded the sages and common folk alike for millennia - all derive from evident propositions.  Now, if in several thousand years and across all cultures human reason hasn’t been able to work out the logical implications of “something exists” or “there is change” then how can we trust human reason, operating over a comparatively short period of time and in a single culture, to arrive at scientific knowledge or knowledge derived from non-evident propositions? 

The problem is especially acute given that scientific knowledge ultimately rests on and presupposes those same evident propositions – the ones that imply (at least according to every thinker of the first rank in the western tradition, including the founders of modern science) the existence of God.  So, it would seem, to reject God is to reject science.

Finally, and tellingly, many of the angry atheists claim to have rejected God by the tender age of 12 or so.  This is quite interesting, for by the age of 12 they claim to have discovered a fundamental truth – indeed, the fundamental truth of existence - that eluded Aristotle and Newton until their deaths.  That’s quite a claim and suggests to me that something other than purely intellectual considerations are at work.

Gee, glad to see that the vaunted “click to flag this comment as abusive” program is working out so well.
Both tenor and discourse appears to have come a blessed long way.

For more detailed evidence on the interaction between religion (some forms of Christianity) and science, please look at the research done on the history of the Royal Society in 17th century England.  Webster is a good source, and before him Morton’s writings.  The main finding is that the majority of the society’s founders and early members were either Puritans or very conservative Anglicans.

A good example of the type is Isaac Barrow—he was the teacher of Newton, who resigned his professorship in favor of Newton.  Barrow was a university professor in four different fields, and after resigning his professorship of mathematics for Newton he became a preacher.  Barrow’s workaholic lifestyle brought about his untimely death, after which Archbishop Tillotson used whatever free time he could find to personally edit Barrow’s writings (including the scientific ones) for publication.

A second example of the type is Newton, who wrote far more on theology than he wrote on science.  Intriguingly, some of Newton’s theology was blatantly heretical—the trought the Holy Trinity was an erroneous concept; it should be holy quaternity.  This was hushed up, and instead of being persecuted Newton was widely celebrated and highly rewarded.

The moral of the story is the importance of looking at details: at some times and places religion has opposed science.  At other times and places, science seems to have received a strong boost from theology—indeed, it may not be going too far to say that science grew out of theology.  (If memory serves me right, the Jesuits upheld Galileo’s findings.)

Reading some of the comments of our “angry atheists” has been lots of fun for me, at least.  I particularly liked the one about the Catholic Church stifling intellectual growth during the Middle Ages.  That might come as a surprise to Dante, Aquinas, Louis XI, et al.  Of course this abysmal ignorance of the Medieval is not confined to atheists; it is flourishing, alas, in many a “Catholic” university system.  So one shouldn’t be too hard on the atheists, I guess.

Many good responses have been offered to counter these folks, so it isn’t necessary to go over ground well-covered.  Many of the agnostic/atheist writers above, especially the one who keeps on gracing us with what he imagines to be his profound thoughts, sound so much like petulant teenagers anyway. I would only add that the one thread that seems to run through all these atheists’ epistles is a very obvious and all-consuming pride.  It’s as obvious as the red nose on W.C. Fields’ face.

http://scitation.aip.org/journals/doc/PHTOAD-ft/vol_60/iss_12/48_1.shtml

Perhaps of interest to those keen on the science vs. the Catholic Church debate and its history.  Many of the common assumptions regarding the Church (such as its adherence to certain philosophical dogmas) are placed under a thorough investigation and proven false.

With respect to jcr’s comment on scientific progress and China; yes, China was more advanced than Christian Europe for a time.  But then China had a thousands-year head start on Europe.  Remember, the Europeans whose technological and scientific progress was so dizzying emerged from the barbarian hordes that had destroyed the old Western Roman Empire.  Within approximately 1,000 years, from 500 AD to 1500 AD, these tribesmen’s descendents had circumnavigated the globe, discovered and were on their way to conquering the western hemisphere, had built cities and cathedrals, and were 100 years away from Shakepeare and Rembrandt, etc. etc.

If the Goths, Franks, and other tribes had not been converted to Christianity as they overwhelemd the western Roman empire it is is likely that those barbarians who had emerged from the forests of northern Europe would have changed as much as, say, the Mongol and Tatar conquerors of Eastern Europe.  JCR, you seem to feel that it is a mere coincidence that a religious tradition that happened to place man, created in the very image of God, at the center of the universe and above all things in this world, would exist in a culture whose mastery of the physical world through technology would see no parallels.  I suspect the relationship is causal.

Great article. I have noticed the same thing. The new evangelical, angry atheist is constantly popping up on the Internet. They just have to let you know how smart they are and how dumb the rest of us are. They just can’t help themselves. They wear it on their sleeves like a badge of honor. In the past, they would have been shunned or ridiculed or just ignored for the eccentrics they are. Every village had one. But most skeptics kept their skepticism to themselves out of deference to the majority. This is what civilized people do. The new angry atheist is at least in part a reflection of the loss of civility.

In my experience, the new angry atheists seem much more motivated by asserting their own superiority, than they do by any well meaning concern for others or society as a whole.

Regarding jcr’s comment about the Chinese being so far ahead of Europe scientifically before complacency set in, that itself is testimony to the power of the Christian worldview.  The notion of “progress” that is so much a part of Western culture is a product of an understanding of history that sees Providence acting in and through human beings and institutions, an understanding of creation as something with its own integrity that gives witness to the glory of God to those who endeavor to study it, and an understanding of humanity itself that deems betterment of oneself and one’s neighbor as crucial to moral development.  Certainly, one can find elements of these ideas in other times and places, but it is in the context of Christian civilization that they flourished and coalesced into the idea of progress that secularists have co-opted as their own invention today.

Christopher Hitchens badly loses debate with Christian

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/mayweb-only/119-12.0.html

As for Christianity and western civilization, need I remind you how the church retarded intellectual and scientific development in Europe during the middle ages?

People float “facts” like this so often that it simply blows my mind. No one with an ounce of historical literacy could say such a thing.

I actually AM a medievalist, and I can tell you what a bunch of utter, tired bunk that myth is. The truth is exactly the opposite. When civilization was in its darkest days, the Church preserved it, nourished it, and saved it. Science and learning in the Middle Ages were profound. It was in this “dark time” that the Catholic Church invented the University, and began formalizing the process of studying the natural world. In what soil do you think Renaissance humanism grew? Do you think it sprang from Zeus’s head, wholly formed?

Western Civilization was built by the Catholic Church. Semi-intellectual atheists bang on about the Church’s evil influence in history with half-formed “facts” gleaned from Western Civ sources and angry web sties, but they’re merely airing their own historical ignorance. Our very civilization would not exist without the Church. That’s a simple FACT of history. You’ll need some other justification for your anti-Christian bigotry.

I am one of those agnostics to whom Mr. Piatak refers who deeply respect Christianity’s fundamental role in Western culture.  However, while my reasons are quite different from those of C. Hitchens, I too am angry at contemporary Christianity, and I’d like a chance to explain why, since in the polarization between staunch Christians and fierce atheists my point of view is rarely heard.

Whenever atheists attack Christianity, I am indeed the sort of person who is inclined to respond, “but what about...the Sistine Chapel/Chartres Cathedral/Bach’s St. Matthew Passion/Choral Evensong?” etc.  But the question must be asked: what does the bulk of contemporary Christianity as it actually is, with its banal liturgies, hideous architecture, pathetic capitulation to egalitarian agendas, horrible music, and puritanical/philistine attitudes among those ("traditionalists") who claim to be resisting all of this, have to do with all of that past glory?  Not very much, it seems to me.

I’m honestly not sure what I believe about God, but I do know that I long to be able to attend a beautiful church in which traditional liturgy (whether Latin or Elizabethan English) is celebrated by an all-male clergy and augmented by a strong commitment to the greatest sacred music of the past millennium (preferably sung by a choir of men of boys, though I suppose one can compromise on that last point).  In most of the United States, that simply isn’t possible anywhere, and yes, that makes me angry.  Now, my two favorite American churches that I’ve attended, St. John Cantius [Roman Catholic] in Chicago and St. Thomas Fifth Avenue [Episcopal] in New York are truly magnificent in every way, and I salute them, and I am deeply moved by the heroic efforts of those responsible for making them what they are.  But what of those of us who do not live in Chicago or New York?  Are we condemned to compromise with the most despicable cultural trends of the past half-century and accept the nearly universal dumbing-down of liturgy, music, and architecture?

I am angry at Anglicanism for “ordaining” women; I am angry at Catholicism (Pope Benedict excepted) for not caring about good music; and I am angry at BOTH churches for modernizing their liturgies and for the misguided emphasis on congregational singing which rules out the regular use of Christendom’s countless magnificent choral settings of the Ordinary of the Mass.  The “traditionalist” movement has its own problems, as I discovered when, as a volunteer organist at an SSPX chapel, I was not allowed to play Bach Preludes and Fugues before and after mass as it might “distract people from their prayers.”

I am tired of the lectures (ironically from both Novus Ordo and traditional Catholics, though they put their different spins on it), examples of which are plentiful online, about how one must choose “Truth” over “Beauty.” I don’t accept that, because I don’t see liturgy, music, and architecture as superficial, but rather as fundamental to what’s gone wrong with liturgical Christianity in the past half century.  I cannot support a church, or a Church, that is committed to capitulation to cultural trends I regard as destructive, and “conservatives” are often no better than “liberals” in this regard.  Part of me genuinely wants to believe, but where is there to go?  Surely I am not the only non-believer who has been alienated from Christianity, not because it isn’t “modern” enough, but because it has tried too hard to be “modern,” and in the process has sacrificed nearly everything that ever made it beautiful.

Correction: “choir of men of boys” should, of course, read “choir of men and boys.”

Mr. Harvey,

Thanks for your thoughtful comment.  The leftist hatred of beauty is very puzzling, but it is deep, and it is that spirit that has helped produce the banal liturgies you rightly decry.  I do believe that things are very slowly getting better, but your cri de couer is on target.

Mr Harvey,

I do not understand your hostility to the SSPX.  Being one who assists at such a chapel, I know that we certainly do not forbid Bach’s Preludes and Fugues.  And who in the world is arguing that there is a dichotomy or even antagonism between Truth and Beauty ?  The essence of God is both; thus Truth is beautiful and objective Beauty is true.  I think the point, though, is that some music is better for some occasions but does not fit the mood of others.  For instance, after Mass, people are usually very contemplative and praying, and a triumphal Fugue occasionally does not inspire the proper emotions for that sort of meditation.  However, sometimes that is not the case, such as at a High Mass on a special feast day or what have you, in which case the Fugue is practically demanded as the conclusion of the Mass !  Who could imagine such things being excluded from Christmas or Easter ?

To me, there is no antagonism, just different modes of propriety for various occasions dependent on the liturgical year and the propers of the day.  I admit that I am puzzled why you would become as upset over what happened to you as you are.  Some priests have different opinions on the matter and it is not all uniform.  I do not like to say this, but tough it out.

I agree with Dan that many of the angry atheists have plain pride running through their posts, but I think fear is just as evident.
Though they think religious people deluded, a large portion of their humanity is blind.  The soul, the part designed by God to seek Him, has been for whatever reasons, closed off.  I’m sure they would consider this a tribute to their intellect.  I find it sad.  To face eternity as silent meaninglessness is depressing.  They do well to be frightened and hide it with ugly diatribe.  I don’t have a hard time understanding the self-destructive nihilism that underpins a lot of their discourse and behavior in society at large.

For those who have doubts but are genuinely open-minded, and strive to be kind, understand, and actually know their history and have some respect for religion, I am sure they are the ones that the Catholic Church, anyway, speaks of when she holds out hope for their salvation.  I don’t judge this; I am content to leave it to God, but they do seem less likely to me to choose to turn away from Him in the end (again, that’s Catholic teaching on the definition of Hell).

yes, I’m sure they’d find me ignorant and pat me on the head for comforting myself with religious drugs.  yawn.  Truth exists independent of our personal opinions and beliefs.  The next life will tell, or at least will silence the debate.

(and don’t anyone get on and start interpreting the Church’s teaching unless you’ve got a Cathechism of the Catholic Church sitting at your right hand, and you’ve consulted it prior to consulting MSN; especially the slow-poke who took a swing at the Pope and clearly knows nothing of his biography)

Tom’s ad hominem raises an interesting question- is it more absurd to suggest I consider Dennet a conservative, or to believe that his profile in the culture wars does not stem from his being a formidable player in contemporary philosophy? It is after all what he does and Woods does not. Maybe we should give two cheers for Oakeshot and an
Ole for Ortega y Gassett.

I’m a great fan of Duhem, but his contributions to understanding medieval thought are no substitute for the history of the scientific revolution a la Murdoch, Bagniolo and Westphall. Can’t you think of anybody who didn’t up and die before relativity was tested or quantum mechanics arose ?

Ah, good old relativity!

The theory which finally put to rest the Galileo mythos, demonstrating that not only did Galileo have no conclusive proof, he was also very very wrong.

It’s always amused me how this incident is so misunderstood by the misinformed.  The real moral of the story?  Don’t be arrogant in contradicting university academics.  They’ll do anything in their power to silence you, including suckering the Pope into getting involved.

Mr. Seitz,

Dennett is well known because he is saying things that please the leftist elite and antagonize traditionalists.  That’s a sure fire way to gain prominence in the culture wars, whether you’re a dogmatic atheist philosopher like Dennett or an “artist” like Andres Serrano or Aliza Shvarts (although Ms. Shvarts might have gone a bit far even for the left.) Those wanting to tear down Christianity are never going to want for friends in the cultural elite.

I’m glad that you are a fan of Duhem.  He was an historical pioneer, but he established the link between the science of the scholastics and Galileo, a link that anti-clerical scholars of his day wished to deny and that ill-informed atheists still do.

By the way, Woods cites a number of contemporary scholars in his book, including Stanley Jaki and Thomas Goldstein.  Since Woods in fact writes for this site, you may wish to read his book.

“Can’t you think of anybody who didn’t up and die before relativity was tested....?”

Obviously Russ is not one of these people, given that he is prone to making asinine self-contradictory quips like “Forget Darwin and Einstein—not even Newton’s Law of Gravity is safe these days.”

Yarr, mateys. 

Pompous dumbass off the starboard bow.

I think this article would also be Valuable, written by James Franklin, an Australian professor of Mathematics and History of Science titled
“The Renaissance Myth”
http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/renaissance.html
Also good is “Myths About the Middle Ages”
http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/medmyths.html

I mean…

- *Einstein.*

- *Is Newton’s Law of Gravity still safe?*

In the same friggin’ sentence.

Yes, Russ, please teach us ignoramuses about the history of science.

In my field of engineering, it is very rare to encounter a “jesus nut” these days. High tech companies simply won’t hire them, regardless of the laws banning discrimination on religious grounds. We won’t hire psychics or wiccans either, and none of the women in my office wear a burqa.

You can be confident that you won’t hire psychics ... but how do you know the psychics haven’t read your minds and concealed their psychism from your interviewers?

Who know what psychism lurks in the hearts of engineers?

Christopher Hitchens and his ilk are shameless self promoters with nothing interesting to say so they jab at hot-button topics such as religion in the hopes of stirring outrage and hype to sell their tired re-treaded dogma.  They know that there is a ready market for anyone attacking religion so they yammer away and of course are given plenty of opportunity to bore us to death.  Give Hitchens some credit though for advancing more varied forms of nuttiness than the typical atheist provides.

Here’s part of the memorial to Rorty that the ever-smug Russell Seitz quoted above.  See if he’s
worth reading about:

“As the years went by, and we both left Princeton, I am afraid the incipient intellectual and emotional gulf between us got wider, especially after what I saw as Dick’s turn toward ultra-nationalism with the publication of Achieving Our Country. Dick had always been and remained to the end of his life a “liberal” (in the American sense, i.e., a “Social-Democrat”): a defender of civil liberties and of the extension of a full set of civic rights to all, a vocal supporter of the labor unions and of programs to improve the conditions of the poor, an enemy of racism, arbitrary authority, and social exclusion. On the other hand, I found that he also enjoyed a spot of jokey leftist-baiting when he thought I was adopting knee-jerk positions which he held to be ill-founded. That was all fair enough. I tried not to rise to the bait, and usually succeeded, but this did not contribute to making our relations easier or more comfortable for me. The high (or low, depending on one’s perspective) point of this sort of thing occurred some time in the 1980s when Dick sent me a postcard from Israel telling me he had just been talking with the Israeli official responsible for organizing assassinations of Arab mayors on the West Bank. He closed by saying he thought this was just what the situation required. I often wondered whether in acting in this provocative way he was treating me as he would have liked to have treated his father, a well-known poet, and man of the (relatively) hard Left, who eventually, as Dick put it, “became prey to very powerful fantasies on which he was perfectly willing to act”; Dick had to have him institutionalized after some potentially murderous outbreak. Probably by wondering about this, I was trying to convince myself that I had an importance in Dick’s imagination that I surely did not have.”

“quoted above”

Excuse me, not “quote,” but “refer to.”

How lubberly of GS to forget Cardinal de Polignac’s warning his flock to shun Newton’s “atheistic Calculus.”

Tom, the good Father Jaki’s excellent and absolute recapitulation of the history of metaphysics merely retraces Whitehead , and his fine apologetic sensibility simply does not cut the mustard as philosophy of science.

Caper has no importance n my imagination ,having failed to detect Rorty’s concern with the future of culture in the face of globalization, and his partiality to philosophers the left denounces as reactionary.

Calculus.

Proof positive that Hell exists.

“How lubberly of GS to forget Cardinal de Polignac’s warning...”

Negative, Russ. 

Spraying ink to cover yourself won’t work this time.

The issue was not a great big boner made by some French cardinal you dug up from back in the day.

The issue I raised was a great big boner made by YOU, Takimag’s resident grand poobah of science, and how that great big boner reflects on YOUR supposed right to lord it over everybody as the elite know-it-all.

YOU made a boner, Russ—one of many, many boners you continually make with your ten-dollar lingo, trust me, you don’t even want to get me started—which is now coming back to haunt you as you anoint yourself the cosmic authority on what does or does not “cut the mustard as philosophy of science.”

“Forget Darwin and Einstein—not even Newton’s Law of Gravity is safe these days.”

How big of a fuck-up was that smug little quip, Russell?

Pretty big, I’d say.

What kind of light does a fuck-up like that cast upon somebody’s ability to philosophize about science?

Not a good one, I’d say.

Now, if you were anything approaching a man, your understandable desire to save face would have expressed itself either by admitting it was a fuck-up and moving on, or (more preferably) keeping your yap shut.

The right response was NOT to play the sleight-of-hand distraction game—“Hey look, everybody!  A Cardinal who didn’t like Newton!”—and then move on to breezily act like you are the infallible assessor of whose thoughts regarding the scientific enterprise are valid, and whose aren’t.

How do we know Father Jaki doesn’t “cut the mustard?”

Easy.  He believes in God, and he is theologically
-minded.

Now, what were you saying about Newton, numbnuts?

Mr. Seitz,

Cardinal de Polignac was of course wrong about Newton, but it should be pointed out that both Newton and Leibniz, who together gave us calculus, were fervent believers in God, even though Newton was not an orthodox Christian.

As for Rorty, he was a self-professed leftist, pure and simple.  The fact that some Straussians like him makes him even more suspect in my eyes.  Leo Strauss and his nihilistic followers, who make a virtue of deceit, have been a plague on the American right.

G. S.,

Yes, I think you are right about Fr. Jaki.  Apparently, anyone who believes in God just can’t understand science.

By the way, they taught calculus in my Jesuit high school, Cardinal de Polignac notwithstanding.

“Caper has no importance n my imagination”

Wonderful wit—I nearly upset my laptop slapping my knee.  If I were you, Mr. Seitz,
I’d be more careful about shooting off my mouth.  Yes, that’s right, some of us actually
read your article in re Shvarts before it—mirabile dictu—disappeared from this
site.

Tom ,The problem with Fr. Jaki is not his theology, but a commitment to teleology makes it hard for his work to engage the philosophy of science exemplified by anti-Marxists like Quine. Presuming the subject to be philosophy of science,I pointed to the conveniently linked piece on Rorty as an example of a heavyweight Princeton philosopher who refused to swallow the postmodern koolaid, and affording ample political contrast to Peter Singer, a distinction I hope Jaki would approbate, since unlike their Jesuit contemporaries Benedictines of his generation were free to study at universities with departments of modern philosophy. Imagine what de Chardin might have accomplished had he.

The absence of a conservative presence in academic philosophy is a problem too severe to be solved by defining the subject down to include classicists with delusions of political grandeur like Strauss.

Woods’ book failed to hold my attention in comparison withthe books on early European science I I chose to review as among the best science books in print for the WSJ last year. I commend the latter to Woods’attention :

De Re Metallica
By Georgius Agricola
1556
DOVER 1996 PAPERBACK EDITION
In 1898, embedded reporter Winston Churchill, confronting Islamic terror in the Sudan, wrote: “Were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science—the science against which it had vainly struggled—the civilization of modern Europe might fall as did that of Rome.” Thank God for Churchill’s stout grasp of the importance of military technology. But it is to Herbert Hoover—the mining engineer and future president— that we owe the translation in 1912 of “De Re Metallica,” a Renaissance Latin metallurgical classic that reveals art and science are intertwined in everything, from the masterpieces of Cellini to the guns of Lepanto and the Thirty Years War.[[The Industrial Revolution starts here.]]

Promethean Ambitions
By William R. Newman
University of Chicago, 2005
As William R. Newman reminds us in “Promethean Ambitions,” his fascinating history of alchemy, the failure to distinguish good science from bad has been a recipe for policy disaster for centuries. Newman shows that alchemists were more than dreamers trying to convert lead into gold. From 1200 to 1700, they followed trends in metaphysical fashion by trying to create tiny humans, called homunculi. In Newman’s description of Machiavelli’s contemporaries wrangling over the moral status of these imaginary creatures, one hears echoes of today’s cloning debates.”

Here for the benefit of readers is the link to the article that continues to fascinate CS http://www.adamant.typepad.com/seitz/2008/04/god-and-taliban.html

Mr. Seitz:

I am glad we agree on Strauss.  Unfortunately, I cannot read your book reviews, which you did not link to (so I assume they are not online).

Compared to modern philosophy, the philosophia perennis of Aristotle and Aquinas has much to recommend it, as do the writings of Stanley Jaki.  Thinkers formed in that tradition are largely immune to leftism.

Hi Mr. Piatak.

I confess I am rather frustrated by your article, and although I can’t respond to it with anywhere near the eloquence with which you wrote it, I still find myself driven to respond.

I was, a short while ago, one of those “angry atheists” you mention in your blog. I was irritable and defensive about religion(inwardly, because I felt much too scared to outwardly declare my lack of religion in my relatively conservative school). I grouped “christians” into one group of people who believed in every word of the Bible, thought all homosexuals would go to hell, and hated all atheists with a burning and condemning passion, etc.

It’s quite obvious I was wrong, and this grave oversight was brought to my attention when I attended a meeting of a Christian club at my school to hear a good friend speak. In going to support her, I listened to her talk about her religion and felt that she had been greatly helped through her troubles by her perception of God. My best friend who also attended was moved by this, and we had a discussion afterward where I came to the conclusion that Christianity, though not something I could find myself a part of, was not necessarily the inimical influence I had been thinking.

So I guess that’s the story of my conversion from “angry atheist” to “accepting atheist,” but my frustration stems from the fact I think you’re doing the same thing I did in reverse- grouping all activist atheists into one group of condemning, hateful individuals.

As an atheist, I want, ideally, to live in a culture where there is separation of church and state. I want politicians to feel they can make decisions that aren’t based on what the Bible says. Having read the majority of Richard Dawkins’s book “The God Delusion” (have you read it, I wonder? I’m not sure how it would seem to someone who’s not already atheist which is why I decided not to quote/reference from it here, worrying that I might have just noticed that it was biased. To me, Richard Dawkins seems far less demonizing in it than he does from your blog.) it seems that most atheists want to stop being “hated on” for the sole reason that they don’t believe in a God. Because, at least in America, it seems as though this is a distinct problem.

I guess what I’m trying to say in this convoluted comment is that yes, some atheists are angry, but do they not have a right to be so?  They’re testing the limits of society’s acceptance of atheism because they want people to hear about them instead of just pushing them into the “quiet corner” to continue to be ignored.

Those such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens are important because they are public ATHEIST figures. They scream it from the hilltops so that those from the furthest reaches can hear it, and you may think it annoying, but atheism needs to become a more widely accepted lack of belief and it’s going to annoy some people on the way.

Personally, I just wish everyone considered atheists and christians on an individual basis, rather than grouping them and making generalizations, which always tend to rankle and annoy. But I doubt that’s ever going to happen.

Excellent piece, Tom! You’ve taken on a thankless task, trying to illumine members of an entirely new religious movement, Anti-Theism, which is as charming, fruitful, and creative as its predecessor, Anti-Semitism. Indeed, if one identifies Jews as their prophets did (instead of looking at them racially, as Hitler did), the new creed is just one variety of the old. Walker Percy pointed this out brilliantly in “The Thanatos Syndrome.”

Why are atheists so mad? Gee, I dunno ...maybe it’s because the Brothers of the Book have stoked the trash fire a little too high and while they’re arguing , they’ve failed to notice the siding on the doublewide is melting. This in turn, impinges a tad too much on the reviewing of sports statistics and home shopping bargains, leaving the beige world of the get-along to go along populists a little too chromatic for comfort.

Meanwhile, the scientists are spiteful because it’s readily apparent that those “state-of-the-art” dioramas of kiddies cavorting with dinosaurs at the Museum of Intelligent Design are more interesting to NASCAR Nation than their own tendentiously tedious mugwumpery.

Then again , angry books sell and one does not even have to hire a snotty publicist anymore because one’s own opponents will do all the screaming one needs to sell by the truck load.

“Regarding jcr’s comment about the Chinese being so far ahead of Europe scientifically before complacency set in, that itself is testimony to the power of the Christian worldview.”

Not at all.  Christianity kept Europe locked in ignorance and stagnation from the fall of Rome until the rediscovery of the classics during the crusades.  Europe succeeded because Europeans learned to relegate religion to the back burner and get on with business. 

The critical invention of the joint-stock corporation, which allowed Europe to dominate the commerce of the world and develop the technologies that eventually gave us the industrial revolution was far more important to our success than the predominant religion.

While capitalism was reforming the world, the clergy for the most part just bitched and moaned about it, in the way that the Marxists do today.

-jcr

Sparky,

“Mr. Randolph. Jesus, who is both fully God and fully man, spoke forcefully and repeatedly about Hell and its fires.”

If he did, then he was a misanthrope like you.

“You do not appear to even know the most fundamental facts of Christianity.”

As it happens, you have no idea whether Jesus spewed hellfire and damnation like today’s bible-thumpers do.  It’s pretty obvious that there was a lot of editing of the bible over the years from one translator to another, and it’s just as likely that they put words in his mouth to back up their power cravings, as it is that he actually said those things.

-jcr

Look, you’re clearly confused.

Nope, I’m not the one with an imaginary friend.

-jcr

Mr. Randolph,

Congratulations.  You are a perfect illustration of the phenomenon about which I wrote, from comparing religion to smallpox, to comparing belief in God to having an “imaginary friend,” to displaying at this point a nearly invincible ignorance of Western history.  (The joint stock corporation of which you write was a medieval creation, by the way).

“I do not understand why some atheists are so angry.” Have you considered that they are not atheists at all, but born of Satan, and therefore, liars like their father?  As we read in the epistle of today’s Mass, “You believe that God is one. You do well. Even the demons believe that, and tremble” (James 2:19).  Satan is no atheist.  He is, however, very angry (Revelation 12:12).  And he is the father of lies (John 8:44).  So, might he claim to deny God’s existence?  Of course!  Why not?  It’s a lie, and lies are what he purveys.  But he can’t hide his anger, nor can his minions.  They don’t need you, Tom, so much as they need an exorcist.  Really.  You’re just their sport.

St. Josemaria Escriva wrote:  “When pride takes hold of a soul, it is no surprise to find it bringing along with it a whole string of other vices: greed, self-indulgence, envy, injustice. The proud man is always vainly striving to dethrone God, who is merciful to all his creatures, so as to make room for himself and his ever crueler ways.  We should beg God not to let us fall into this temptation. Pride is the worst sin of all, and the most ridiculous. If, with its multiple delusions, it manages to get a hold, the unfortunate victim beins to build up a facade, to fill himself with emptiness, and becomes conceited like the toad in the fable which, in order to show off, puffed itself up until it burst. Pride is unpleasant, even from a human point of view. The person who rates himself better than everyone and everything is constantly studying himself and looking down on other people, who in turn react by riduculing his foolish vanity” (Friends of God, 100).