Atheists like to discuss religious people. They like to portray them as bigots and intolerant, gun wielding tyrants. Of course, a staple of atheist discussions is how to avoid praying when friends get together and pray, such as before Thanksgiving dinner. They intended inference is that, is an atheist doesn’t pray, all hell will break lose and the Christians will behead the damn pagans for their failure to pray.

Interesting thought, but one without basis in reality. The vast majority of Christians, especially Protestants, value individualism and respect the rights of others to not believe or to believe differently from themselves.

The irony is in the intolerance and negativity of the modern atheists. The histrionic name-calling by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens and atheists in general is in stark contrast to the tolerance and respect for others demonstrated by Alister McGrath and Christians in general.

As atheists go about attacking religion with name calling and their “Imagine no Religion” placards, one drives by a Churches and cannot help but notice the lack of negativity demonstrated by the religious people who are so utterly demonized by atheists.

Instead of focusing on the perceived faults of non-believers, Christians tend to focus on the virtues of belief. Love, faith, hope, etc. When was the last time you saw a Christian church displaying a placard saying “Atheists are evil” or “No Buddhism” or “End Hinduism”?

If atheism has any virtue, then atheists would be better served to focus on those positive attributes, instead of dwelling forever on the perceived negative attributes of religious persons.

It’s almost been 20 years since my mother gave me a gift - Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Supreme Court today heard arguments on the legality of the detaining “enemy combatants” in Guantanamo Bay with neither US constitutional rights to habeas corpus, nor Geneva Conventions POW rights.

Solicitor General Paul Clement, representing the administration, said foreigners captured and held outside the United States “have no constitutional rights to petition our courts for a writ of habeas corpus,” a judicial determination of the legality of detention.

Read the rest of this entry »

Invalid Arguments in the Abortion Debate

Nothing is more vexing than have to debate dishonesty and disinformation, or a combination thereof. It’s supremely annoying.

To illustrate, the debate of communism versus capitalism. That right there is an honest debate. No semantic games, just very different values and perspectives on society.

But the minute you enter the abortion debate, you’re greeted with a wealth of misinformation and a good measure of dishonesty, from people who are often otherwise intelligent.

Read the rest of this entry »

The question is whether or not intolerance is intrinsic to the nature of atheism, or Christianity.

Vicious crimes have been committed in the name of Hinduism, yet Hindu is praised by most as a nonviolent belief system. Even Buddhist have murdered Hindu, Christians and Muslims in the name of their beliefs.

Is violence intrinsic to Buddhism? No. Is violence intrinsic to Hinduism? Or to Christianity? The fact that a Buddhist can remain a Buddhist without the need to kill non-Buddhists proves beyond any possibility of debate that Buddhism is not the cause of the violence. The same goes for Christianity, Hinduism and any other belief system.

A causal relationship between a theism and violence, or between atheism and violence, would preclude the possibility of nonviolent adherence.

Read the rest of this entry »

Redefining Atheism

Atheists have for some time wanted to redefine “atheism”. Let’s look at the accepted meanings of the word. A few definitions found via Google’s “Define” command:

The doctrine or belief that there is no God.

The belief that God does not exist.

A belief that there are no gods. Greek “a-theos”: without-god.

This word comes from two Greek words, a the negator, and theos, God. Atheism teaches that there is no God of any kind, anywhere, anytime.

These would be the standard, commonly accepted definitions of atheism. But hold up there a minute, there’s more. I’m a big fan of the OED. Let’s see what she has to say:

atheism: (from Greek atheos, “without God, denying God”) Disbelief in, or denial of, the existence of a God. Also, Disregard of duty to God, godlessness (practical atheism).

You see there the seeds of the debate. The debate is “disbelief” versus “deny the existence of”.

Read the rest of this entry »

One of the biggest obstacles to worthwhile intellectual debate is the hopelessly dishonest and counterproductive framing of arguments.

Read the rest of this entry »

While reading Dawkins’ The God Delusion, I became more and more offended by the sheer arrogance and belligerence of Richard Dawkins. At first, I was all too willing to excuse it as a cultural thing. Maybe on that side of the pond, they just tend to sound arrogant.

Read the rest of this entry »

When I was a child, my parents encouraged us children to solve our differences with verbal sparring. If we wanted to get physical, they allowed that, too. (They were very laissez-faire.) But the preference was for verbal sparring based on formal logic.

We conducted this “fights” in front of witnesses (family) and the victor was declared when the opponent lost his cool and started calling names or cried. (Hey, we were kids. We cried.)

Read the rest of this entry »

“Scientists, like many others, are touched with awe at the order and complexity of nature. Indeed, many scientists are deeply religious. But science and religion occupy two separate realms of human experience. Demanding that they be combined detracts from the glory of each.” -
The National Academy of Sciences

Read the rest of this entry »