atheists – Page 5 – St. Eutychus

Ten of their best

Here are my ten favourite assumptions, insults, and accusations thrown at me by PZ Myer’s angry horde.

That I chose to use the word “seem” in the title because I don’t think atheists are capable of being nice.
That the “curiosities” column creates revenue for me/is advertising and I wrote this post in order to receive the attention I did.
That I would censor comments, or that I was doing so, because I was scared of criticism.
That I would hatch a conspiracy theory regarding my site’s demise and blame atheist hackers.
That no Christian has ever read anything about the formation of the Bible or church history and that we are completely unaware of criticism of that process.
That noise = victory and silence = an admission of defeat.
That if God exists human morality should still trump morality as ordained by God.
That just because they’ve given a name to a school of thought… and their philosophical leaders have rebutted it… everyone should fall into line and stop using arguments they disagree with.
That no Christian knows how to use the Old Testament, or deal with difficult philosophical positions created by a God society does not agree with.
That atheist scholarship regarding the Bible and Christianity is more objective than Christian or independent scholarship.

October 1, 2009

A comic you can believe in

The question now – should I duck for cover? Wouldn’t want to go saying anything that the people binarily opposed to me from a philosophical standpoint may find offensive now would I…

From here.

September 30, 2009

New beginnings

Right, well, I have a new host. Hightek Hosting were great – they just seemed not really to know how to handle WordPress.

PZ Myers’ rebuttal of my five tips for atheists got me 4,000 hits (so far) – and about 60 comments – feel free to join the fun. Here, or there.

September 28, 2009

So, Christians have been pretty guilty of wrongly accusing atheists of doing bad stuff before – but the prominent atheist PZ Meyers wrote a rebuttal to yesterday’s post, linked to it, and I was flooded with angry commenters.

I’m trying to keep up with moderating the comments (most of which seem to assume I’m an American writing for an American audience).

I’m getting there – but the traffic and comments were the straw that broke the camel’s back with regards to my webhosts, so I’m currently moving.

I’ll flick the switch soon. In the meantime – try to hold off on commenting because new comments and stuff won’t come through.

See you soon.

September 28, 2009

Why Hitler is actually a problem for atheists

Atheists rightly get angry when Christians make arguments about “morality” on the basis that Hitler was an atheist (by most accounts). It’s a stupid argument by an extreme and is the equivalent of people arguing that Christianity causes war on the basis of the Crusades.

No, Hitler is not a problem when it comes to atheists being able to act morally – but he is a problem for atheists when it comes to the question of evil.

I don’t know if this is true for all atheists. It’s probably not. But the ones I talk to, who are pretty smart, and cover a spectrum of “moral” approaches to life, are pretty consistent on the question of the existence of evil. They say there’s no such thing.

I asked them, out of curiousity, to define evil.

Here’s a mix of responses I got…

I find evil is a helpful word to describe abhorrent things. "Evil" is not a noun, it’s an adjective. What does exist is broken people and randomness… I don’t like it when Kevin Rudd uses it to describe something. My immediate reaction is negative because it makes me think of spiritual absolutes which I really just see as a lazy guide to morality. When I use the word "evil", I would use it with the knowledge of the religious overtones to give the word more impact.

It’s much better to view the world is terms of Harmful/Not Harmful.

Was Hitler harmful, yes.

Is homosexuality harmful, no.

That’s more meaningful than:

Was Hitler evil, yes.

Is homosexuality evil, yes.

Is abortion harmful? Yeah, I guess, but then is not-abortion even more harmful? I think so. Talking in terms like that is a lot more helpful than absolute evil.

And another response:

Evil is just a lazy shorthand way of simplifying things. Evil exists in stories not in reality. I also think it’s harmful as an idea. Let’s go Nazi’s since it seems appropriate. Humanising a Nazi or Hitler is something that will get the public up in arms. But all "evils" are perpetrated by people not by some strange creatures of darkness and we can’t ignore this. To understand them is not to excuse actions but it can inform how these things happen. The Nazi’s, paedophiles, murderers, dance music producers, etc are just people.

And another…

I think the word "evil" creates more problems than solves it. I suggest a movement toward more specific terms, like "malicious", or "malevolent", or "unfortunate", depending on context and circumstance.

It seems there are a few of problems these guys have with the label. It’s got theological, and semantic baggage that make it unappealing – but in this discussion there’s also a question of relativity.

I personally find comfort in operating in a binary world of good and evil. I think it explains lots of things. I think Christianity provides a framework for understanding this binary that atheism doesn’t.

I think atheism is at its weakest when it tries to address evil, or bad, behaviour and explains away the purposeful actions of malevolent dictators as “insanity”, or the acts of the crazy. It’s more than that. There’s rationalised intent involved.

Reading any atheists (not just these specific friends of mine) trying to define how they decide if a behaviour is “positive” or “negative” is like watching someone trying to nail jelly to a wall.

There is no atheist apologetic for evil that sounds even remotely convincing to someone who believes in “good” and “evil” as absolutes. Which is a shame for the atheist – because all of our popular entertainment perpetuates the idea of such an absolute. Actually, it seems that the exceptions to that rule are the truly exceptional and intelligent, more nuanced, shows like the West Wing, The Wire and The Sopranos.

Good and evil come in degrees – and particular actions are nuanced by context. Shooting someone and killing them is not always evil. Similarly to these atheists I would support a harm v benefit process when deciding whether or not to shoot a dictator. But murder (defined as unjustifiable killing) is always evil, or bad. It doesn’t matter what rationalisation the perpetrator uses as a justification. If it’s truly justifiable then it’s not murder.

The Bible has a fair bit to say about evil, and about sin – and I think it’s where the Bible intersects the best with the human experience, along with the evidence of careful design in creation. I also think it’s the point where atheism is at its weakest when it comes to alternative explanations for why things are the way they are.

What do you reckon?

Update: one of my atheists pointed out that I haven’t really made a clear point about why I think atheism struggles with Hitler/evil.

Here’s my argument…

Most of atheism’s arguments from a scientific standpoint make sense if you remove the idea of God from the picture. You can observe most of the things atheists observe. And come to a conclusion ultimately based on how you think things came to be…

When it comes to giving any rationale about why people behave in evil ways – you’ve either got a compelling and consistent theological picture (evil is the result of rejecting God’s rule) or you’ve got the atheist’s answer – “some people do stuff that other people don’t like.”

September 8, 2009

Strobel light

I was so intrigued by Lee Strobel’s approach to talking to atheists at the Friendly Atheist, and so annoyed by a Facebook friend’s recent somewhat ill thought out Answers in Genesis inspired attack on the morality of atheists, that I decided to ask my atheist friends for advice on how they’d like to be talked to.

Christians, by nature of their belief in God, have an imperative to share the gospel with their atheist friends, and in fact any non-Christian friends. It would be unloving not to. Atheists have a low tolerance for evangelism – but they do tolerate it when they understand the motivation. Or so I have found, and generalised. The problem for atheists is that once you reject the notion of God any further assumptions about how God might or might act move further and further away from that point of distinction. For the Christian it is perfectly rational, because we believe in God, to then believe that he would intervene in things, provide the mechanism for a relationship and raise the dead. We work deductively from that point. The atheist would prefer to work inductively (it seems) from the point of something miraculous (other than our miraculously balanced continued existence) like a visible miracle or visible, physical, answered prayer.

That’s a rather long preamble. I asked my friends, who I will identify by their online nom de plumes (except for Benny) some questions. While there are some obvious problems with some of their answers from a Christian perspective, they answered honestly and gave a pretty good representation of a cross section of atheist thoughts on the matter.

What should the church do better, in your opinions, if it wants to grow?

Benny

Push its community spirit more. I think people today would appreciate being part of a social group as much as learning their chosen religion. I think the non-church opinion of churches is that they are becoming less of benefit to the community and more benefit to members and the religion. ie, there is a divide opening.

Mr Paroxysm

That’s an odd question for an atheist/agnostic to answer as they wouldn’t want the church to grow. I think Ben covered this though. The good churches do is with community building and support systems. I think it is important however to keep the religious aspect separate from support groups/charity they provide and instead let people naturally discover those aspects if they wish. The Salvation Army does this extremely well.

What arguments from Christians do you have the most problems addressing?

Mr Paroxysm
I don’t really find any subject difficult to address. I suppose when the Christian uses "read the bible" as some kind of proof then you fall into an argument about the legitimacy of the bible and considering all the different theories on it’s authorship, differences in translation, included and omitted texts most of which can not be historically proven from either side and likely never will be (with exception to translation issue, the original text isn’t an issue for debate as far as I’ve ever seen just the different translations can be confounding)

Mr Snuffle

Problem is I don’t find any of it convincing, and when you start getting into prayer/resurrection it all just sounds ridiculous. If you want to understand the way I think about what you say, simply replace the words "Christian God" with "Santa", and then ask yourself which part of the argument you find the most compelling.

I think the meat of the argument you make is the argument for a god, any god. Or the likelihood of God as a starting point.

Assuming for a moment that Christianity is true, how should Christians do better at not annoying non-believers and people from other religions?

Benny

Who knows. Toning down the righteousness would be a good start. I think non-Christians are sick of having their views thwarted/not taken seriously because apparently they are morally and ideologically inferior.

Mr Paroxysm

Well your first point is something that I think encapsulates what I was going to say. Christianity is true… for you. What Christians need to recognise is that their religion is a personal truth and all other religions are as personally true for other people. Obviously for themselves Christianity it "True" but they need to recognise that they do not lay claim to any more evidence of truth than any other religion. You have faith that your religion is true but so does everyone else. The difference is with the Atheist who sees equality amongst all religions but has no faith in the evidence presented by any.
Christians (as with any other religion) can not expect their personal truth to be impactful to anyone not adhering to their dogma.

August 27, 2009

Let there be light

I often feel discouraged when talking to my atheist friends. Not because their arguments are compelling, but because I love them and believe Christianity is true and offers hope.

It’s hard. It’s like talking to a brick wall. But this long quote gives me a fair bit of hope that all is not lost.

“My commitment to atheism essentially came in three steps. The first was when I was in junior high school and began asking Christians uncomfortable questions, like, “How can there be a loving God with so much suffering in the world?” And, “How can a loving God send people to hell?” And, “How can Jesus be the only way to God?” Rather than engage with me, they basically told me to keep my questions to myself. I quickly concluded that the reason they didn’t want to discuss these matters was because there were no good answers from the Christian perspective.

The second step came when I began studying neo-Darwinism in high school. I was particularly struck by Stanley Miller’s 1959 experiment in which he recreated what he thought was the original atmosphere of the primitive Earth, shot electricity through it to simulate lightning, and discovered the creation of some amino acids, the building blocks of life. I naively concluded that Miller had proven that life could have emerged in a purely naturalistic way. To me, that meant God was out of a job!”

That’s Lee Strobel – American author of a number of books of Christian apologetics. He said it in answers to a series of questions from the Friendly Atheist back in January.

You can find them here, here, here, and here. It’s a great example of respectful dialogue between two opposing camps.

And here’s the encouraging rub.

For nearly two years, I investigated science, philosophy, and history. I read literature (both pro and con), quizzed experts, and studied archaeology. On November 8th, 1981, alone in my room, I took a yellow legal pad and began summarizing the evidence I had encountered. In light of the scientific evidence that points toward a Creator and the historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, I came to the conclusion that it would have required more faith for me to maintain my atheism than to become a Christian.

Essentially, I realized that to stay an atheist, I would have to believe that nothing produces everything; non-life produces life; randomness produces fine-tuning; chaos produces information; unconsciousness produces consciousness; and non-reason produces reason. Those leaps of faith were simply too big for me to take, especially in light of the affirmative case for God’s existence and Jesus’ resurrection (and, hence, his divinity). In other words, in my assessment the Christian worldview accounted for the totality of the evidence much better than the atheistic worldview.

August 21, 2009

No dogs go to heaven

The first movie I ever saw on a cinema screen was All Dogs Go To Heaven. It was in the little cinema in Grafton, 40 minutes from our home town in Maclean. It’s a Disney cartoon with really bad theology. There’s no Biblical reason to expect your pet to be in heaven with you (except perhaps for the Biblical illustration of lions lying down with lambs… but I’d say that’s more an allusion…).

Even the atheists know this. In fact. In the same vein as the service that sends post cards to your unsaved loved ones post rapture comes a new service offering to care for your pets.

We are a group of dedicated animal lovers, and atheists. Each
Eternal Earth-Bound Pet representative is a confirmed atheist, and as such will still be here on Earth after you’ve received your reward. Our network of animal activists are committed to step in when you step up to Jesus.

For those who doubted – this is proof that atheists can be moral people after all.

Which is sweet. We’ll have two very appreciative turtles – which is lucky – because apparently turtles are impervious to fire.

August 20, 2009

The Links Effect

Are you missing my daily links posts? Me too. It means posting links requires heaps more effort on my part. But there’s so much good stuff out there.

Izaac* has been fighting the good fight – collating suggestions for a response to atheist university students who are postering campuses around Sydney.

Ben came out of the hip-hop closet and let us all know about his history as an MC in a hip-hop posse.

There’s a pretty interesting discussion happening as a follow up to my abortion post over at the Fountainside.

Simone* has pointed her readers to another blog (Jean in all honesty) which is discussing the use of childcare for Christian parents. I refrained from commenting there because I’m a guy, and not a parent, but Simone’s husband Andrew* has put up a post where us guys can feel comfortable chiming in.

CafeDave is a little blog about cafes and marketing – so you can see why I’d like it – Dave posted his responses to the Jesus All About Life campaign as reported by Steve Kryger’s (very helpful) Communicate Jesus and discussed by a pack of raving atheists on mumbrella – atheists who can’t seem to distinguish the activities of churches from “tax payer funded activities” simply because churches receive certain tax exemptions. Churches are not for profit community organisations – no not for profit community organisations pay tax, and plenty of them (my employer included) advertise.

Recent new reader/first time commenter Drew has a blog. It’s worth reading. I particularly like his insights into the use of a blog as a tool for getting things done – including getting things off one’s mind. I read quite a few of his posts last night while watching NCIS.

Ali has a biting insiders view on what’s wrong with legal writing – I must agree, having started a law degree and been told that it’s all about plain writing and then sitting through hours of lectures, reading case notes and hearing lawyers talk, I can completely understand the sentiment behind the quote she shared.

Tim* had a go at me for giving up fast food. I should have a go at him for giving up grammar. But he makes some interesting points.

Dan* used his gloriously designed blog to reflect on a recent lecture on Christian ethics and the reconciliation debtate in two parts.

Byron Smith – whose name sounds suspcisciously like Bryson Smith – has posted a really helpful reflection on parenting that covers one of those little topics I’m toying with as future post fodder – the idea that indoctrinating your child is abusive. It’s not. As a Christian it’s the most loving thing you can do for your child.

I’m thinking about writing quite a few pieces on parenting – and this is not any kind of announcement – but I’m also struck by Queensland’s new surrogacy laws. On one hand they open up great possibilities for offering to formally adopt children from those considering an abortion, and on the other, they turn “parenting” into a right and privelige for everybody – rather than a responsibility and natural outcome of being part of the archetypal family unit. I’m not a fan of that part, but it’s not enough of an objection for me to not be a fan of the whole thing. My inner pragmatist realises that gay couples – particularly women – can have children whenever they want already, and this is, on the whole, designed to protect their child, and the biological father.

And for those of you wondering which of my posts from the last few days I’d bother reading if I were you it would be these:

* Denotes people I know in the real world…

NB: The photo at the stop is completely unrelated to the post, it was just text heavy and I hadn’t posted it before. It’s from Lucinda. You should go there. I would have put up a photo of a can of Lynx, if I had one.

That is all.

August 19, 2009

Izaac needs your help

Izaac works for AFES at Cumberland College. They have been putting up posters. The atheists have responded with some wit. Izaac is preparing for a tit-for-tat battle of the poster. So he’s looking for some witty responses in order to start discussions.

Here are the slogans;

1. INFINITE BEING IS AN OXYMORON
2. WE’RE A NON-PROPHET ORGANISATION
3. BLASPHEMY IS A VICTIMLESS CRIME
4. IF GOD CREATED THE UNIVERSE THEN WHO CREATED GOD?
5. WE JUST BELIEVE IN ONE LESS GOD THAN YOU

August 17, 2009

Mor(e )on Christian music

Two interesting tidbits to add to my crusade against cringe worthy Christian music…

The first, is an opinion piece in The Age where an atheist journo went along to a PlanetShakers experience*… it’s got all the echos of the South Park episode I mentioned a few weeks back – just so you know I wasn’t exaggerating the issue here’s a quote…

“Christian pop, ’80s power anthems, Metallica meets Cheap Trick. A mosh pit for Jesus was jumping with teenagers in rapture and a balcony of Planetkids went off for Christ. Music blared from the stadium sound system while the screen seduced us with slick videos edited so fast the phrase ‘‘subliminal image" kept popping into my head. Lyrics flashed up: "Come like a flood and saturate me now." I wondered what Freud would have made of the disproportionate use of such words as ‘‘come’’, ‘‘touch’’ and ‘‘feel’’, and the phrases "move within me" and "being filled". My favourite was "King of Glory, enter in".”

Secondly, There’s apparently an article somewhere where Matt Redman – cliched songwriter extraordinaire – repents from his ways of writing love songs to God. I’ll find that article when I get home and update this post.

*As a side note – this gonzo journalism thing where atheists try to experience Christian stuff from a true outsiders perspective is an interesting phenomena and is probably worth listenting to for those people trying to catch the atheist cultural zeitgeist. Other examples are the Guardian’s Alpha experiences and the Friendly Atheist Hermant Mehta’s book on his experiences in churches that he went to after an ebay campaign where confident churches could buy the right to try to convert him.

August 4, 2009

Dialogue with Atheists

I love my atheist friends. Not only do they brighten up my work days with interesting emails, the also get me thinking quite a bit about what we do right and wrong as Christians.

The Internet Monk has entered into his own little dialogue with an atheist – it’s interesting reading.

That old “morality” chestnut comes up. One of the things atheists seem to find profoundly annoying (apart from being generalised and slandered as a bunch, and references to Hitler) is the idea that you can’t be a moral person without God.

This is a communication breakdown. When I say “you can’t be good without God” it’s because I believe in God, believe humanity to be totally and naturally sinful, and believe that God graciously allows sinful people to act morally. Other people mean something different – they mean that you can’t be moral without “believing” in God. They’re different. And I think we need to be careful to express the difference in meaning. Non-theists are capable of moral behaviour. Theists believe that’s because God lets them, atheists don’t feel that compulsion because they don’t believe God is there to do it.

The internetmonk article also brings up the question of indoctrinating children and whether or not this constitutes “child abuse” – which it can’t possibly, if God is there. And I believe he is.

August 2, 2009

Alpha beta

We’re running Introducing God at church at the moment. It’s like Alpha, for the Bible minded…

I’ve never done the Alpha course. My opinion of it is largely shaped by criticisms from people I know and respect. But it’s second hand.

For more “second hand” accounts of Alpha you should read this “orthodox atheist” journalist from the Guardian (UK paper) as he blogs the Alpha experience.

“The nearest I’ve come to a religious experience recently is my nightly dose of the Wire. Ain no thang. But I leave St Mary’s looking forward to next week’s session. I spend precisely no time with people openly discussing their faith in a very personal way. Mostly when I think about religion it’s the foolish edicts of preposterous old men in dresses. But sitting down with people who choose to spend a sunny Tuesday evening discussing the meaning of life with strangers seems to be a much more interesting insight into what makes people of faith tick. We shall see.”

July 28, 2009

Christian Socialism

Christian socialism is all the rage. Bonhoeffer is the new black – cited by everyone from K-Rudd to Greens candidates… to Terry Eagleton. Terry Eagleton is the guy who wrote “that review” of the God Delusion – that took Dawkins and co for task for failing to understand theology when dismissing Christianity. He says they’re dismissing a caricature – they say the caricature is ok because they’re rejecting the fundamental premise that faith is based on.

This has caused a bit of a philosophical stink amongst friends in Britain’s intellectual circles. Eagleton is a Marxist with a Catholic background. He used to be a drinking buddy of Christopher Hitchens (another angry atheist). He’s got more in common with the writer of this interesting little interview from the New Humanist than he has differences. It’s worth a read. If only for these two quotes:

“Listen. If Dawkins has emancipated people, freed them from the religious closet as it were, then all credit to him. Loath as I might be to compare Dawkins to Jesus Christ, in this he resembles the heroic figure in the New Testament who comes to sweep away all the fetishism and sickness and cynicism of the neurotic religionists.”

In a sense, Dawkins is the opiate for the religious masses…

You want to save Christianity from the Christians?

“Yes, I quote my father who insisted that Jesus Christ was a socialist and that any Christianity that is not on the side of the dispossessed against the arrogance of the powerful and rich is utterly untraditional. Dawkins and Hitchens write about Christianity and never link the words God, justice and love. That is either a sign of their obtuseness or a sign of the massive self-betrayal of the Christian movement. It has got to the point where intelligent people like them don’t understand that Christianity is not about how many months you get in purgatory for adultery. It’s about a love and a thirst for justice that will bring you to your death. There’s nothing lovely about it.”

So, was Jesus a Marxist? Has the church got it so badly wrong that people need rescuing at the hands of someone like Dawkins?

I think Eagleton’s definition of Christianity is skewed – but it’s probably a useful thought for pulling people away from bible belt conservatism.

One of the central tenants of humanism is that humanity can basically “save itself” – that left to our own devices, and without nasty people causing trouble, humanity will move in a positive trajectory.

July 23, 2009

The death of death

An ABC blogger reckons religion is in decline because nobody is as scared of death any more… his post attracted a bunch of rabid atheists – like any such post on the interwebs does. There aren’t enough rational Christians commenting on these kinds of posts with gospel intent…

“The appeal of the big three monotheistic religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – has always been that they offer us a mechanism to deal with death, an accommodation with our inevitable personal extinction.”

The study of religious structures is pretty fascinating. But the idea that religions came about to control people rather than in a search for truth and meaning is pretty insulting to any believer.

Christianity, is not, as the author of this piece suggests, about “moral living’ that’s an outcome of Christianity not the process of Christianity. And it’s not the end goal of Christian life.

“In exchange for living according to a moral code, life can be infinitely prolonged after the death of the body. But for Westerners, death is now further away than ever before. Western science has not yet conquered death, but it has now banished death to a comfortable distance.”

One of the angry atheists in the comments suggested that the God of the Bible is immoral – kind of defeats the purpose of being God if you’re not the arbiter of morality doesn’t it? That statement is not logical.

“This article made no mention of the wealth of evidence and arguments against religion. The immorality of the god of the bible, mohammed, and just the illogical nature of the whole thing.”

July 9, 2009

Tag: atheists