To all my Democrat Friends: Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all. I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2010, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great. Not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country nor the only America in the Western Hemisphere. Also, this wish is made without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishee.
To my Republican Friends: Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Well said! This greeting appears to cover all the important bases. If memorized and delivered with feeling, you’ll save yourself from the tedium of a being on the receiving end of a rant.
For Christians, the revelry goes on and on until January 6th (the feast of Epiphany) though of course they don't talk about that any more than conservatives discuss, say, Russell Kirk (we probably ought to mention him on occasion, as well as the other leading lights of conservatism. Otherwise, if you're cornered into a conversation by a Leftie about your political ideas -- as I was recently -- she'll swear all your principles come from listening to Rush Limbaugh[PBUH]. She wouldn't believe I don't listen to radio or watch TV. According to her own sacred texts, I am a drone whose mind has been taken over by Limbaugh & Co. No wonder they're afraid of him).
NOTE: The greeting was stolen from the Dillard Doctrine, a political blog which has closed down in preparation for the beginning of a new site, Virginia Black Conservatives. VBC will open its doors for business on January 5th.
Drilling down a ways, you find that DD got this season’s greetings message from Bearing Drift. If you go over there, on the sidebar to the right you’ll see an “About” statement sure to delight a conservative’s heart:
- - - - - - - - -
Bearing Drift was established in 2004. The name comes from the relative motion of objects at sea. If there is no bearing drift, and the distance between you and the object is closing, there will be a collision; therefore, action must be taken.
Most navigation rules state that the best course of action with constant bearing and decreasing range is to alter one’s course to starboard - to the right! Therefore, most of us at Bearing Drift ascribe to this rule - if it looks like the ship-of-state is going to wreck, move right; you can’t go wrong!!!
And with that advice, we begin the battle of 2010: to take back Congress before it eats all our seed corn.
I’ll be posting more Virginian and American election information as the year wears on. Our patient European readers can skip the details. However, our American readers deserve as much information as possible before November. If Gates of Vienna can supply even a small trickle to the oncoming river of material about to inundate the electorate, may our additions prove to be helpful and to the point.
This post, though, is just for fun. I mean, saying “Merry Christmas” to a Leftist atheist fundie (a Leftist fundie isn’t religious. It means he lives off his trust fund) can be fraught with problems. The Leftie is a-tremble over the parlous state of Gaia, a state which is due to clods like us. So watch your language there, bub. And count your carbon emissions before exhaling.
41 comments:
May all your emissions be offset and all your presents biodegradable.
Dymphna,
What a marvellously PC greeting,it would be ideal for Labor supporters here in Australia,with some minor alterations.We wouldn't need to memorize the message,it could be printed on a small card,then all we would need to do is show it to the wishee.
By the way the term 'atheist fundie' is an oxymoron,atheists have no religious beliefs to be fundamental about.
No problem here. I don't have any leftie friends.
By the way the term 'atheist fundie' is an oxymoron,atheists have no religious beliefs to be fundamental about. --- mace
You may want to check the likes of Richard Dawkins, mate.
EscapeVelocity,
What point are you making here? Yes,I've checked the likes of Richard Dawkins and indeed he doesn't have any religious beliefs to be 'fundamental' about.
Yes,Dawkins is rather forceful in promoting his lack of belief (and somewhat arrogant)however, the term 'fundamentalist' is not appropriate.
The usual atheist position is that there is no evidence for the supernatural whatsoever,so it is not a belief system and that even the term 'a-theist' is misleading as it implies that there's an entity not to believe in.
To avoid any misunderstanding,although I'm an atheist,unlike Dawkins,I don't care what people believe as long as they-
(1) obey the laws of the liberal democratic,secular,state and
(2)don't try to force their particular superstition on others.
This, is after all, this site's mission.
"By the way the term 'atheist fundie' is an oxymoron,atheists have no religious beliefs to be fundamental about."
What a silly thing to say, as though "fundie" mindsets were limited to religion.
Moreover, the assertion that "There is no God" is certainly a fundamental statement of atheistic belief. Furthermore, it’s not only a “religious” belief, but a belief about the fundamental nature of reality. You know, in much the same way as the statement "There is a God."
Given that Chapter 4 of The God Delusion is titled "WHY THERE ALMOST CERTAINLY IS NO GOD", anyone accusing Richard Dawkins of fundamentalism is exposed as clueless. He says that if you give him evidence, he'll change his position (in his various writings he even lists the evidence for his current position, which tells you what you'd need to get him to change it). Fundamentalists maintain belief in spite of evidence, and have no use for it.
I have to note the on-going hostility of the GoV crowd to atheists and atheism. What's the greater danger here, Muslim domination of your bodies or atheists saying that neither Islam nor Christianity has any foundation for its supernatural claims? Did Jan III Sobieski have to go to Vienna and take up his sword against a bunch of people who hung around and said "We think Catholicism is bunk"?
The Muslim abuse of atheists among all non-Muslims should make atheists your natural allies in this fight, but if you keep up your hostility you'll push them into alliance with the other "embattled minority". I see this happening among people I know; they experience direct hostility from Christians and feel sympathy for Muslims as a consequence. Christianity works fine with a secular government, while Islam is poisoned by it; you have to stop making enemies you don't need.
Engineer-Poet --
I don’t know if you include me among the “GoV crowd” that is hostile to atheists, but my personal opinion is and always has been that atheists are the natural and valuable allies of anyone who wants to successfully resist the Islamization of the West.
From my own personal experience, however, holding such an alliance together can be very, very difficult — and not simply because fundamentalist Christians have an antipathy towards atheists. Many of the militant atheists I have known are angry, paranoid, dogmatic, and intolerant in their attitudes towards any and all Christians, not just fundamentalists or evangelicals.
I don’t really know Richard Dawkins’ work, so I can’t comment about him. However, among the orthodox atheists I have known personally, the assertion that they are open to evidence and willing to have their minds changed is usually a pose, a pretense of being tolerant, when it actually impossible that their minds could ever be changed.
Strictly speaking, any non-religious person who is open to evidence of the existence of God is an agnostic, and not an atheist. Atheists don’t hypothesize or have tentative opinions; they know.
But my main problem with what you describe as the Dawkins approach — “show me the evidence and I’ll believe in God” — is with its basic premise, which is false. Anyone who is well-educated in modern science and mathematics knows that Kurt Gödel’s incompleteness theorem irrefutably demonstrates that the existence of God can be neither proven nor disproven in any coherent and consistent logical system constructed by the human mind.
One of the marvels of the 20th century was the clarity that it bestowed on epistemology, for those willing to examine the various results with an honest and dispassionate eye. From Einstein to Gödel to Heisenberg to Mandelbrot: the limits to what can be known by the human mind have been laid out for all who care to see them. The existence or non-existence of God cannot logically be known.
Science is science and faith is faith. Anyone who asserts the non-existence of God as an irrefutable fact is as much a true believer as Pat Robertson or Osama Bin Laden.
Or, as Walt Whitman put it (Leaves of Grass 23):
Hurrah for positive science! long live exact demonstration!
[…]
This is the geologist, this works with the scalper, and this is a mathematician. Gentlemen, to you the first honors always!
Your facts are useful, and yet they are not my dwelling,
I but enter by them to an area of my dwelling.
Exit Question,
Will fundamentalist Atheists like mace and Dawkins try to push their superstitions onto others via state agencies, the public school system, and lawfare?
I think we all know the answer to that question.
Sorry mace, youll have to do better than that, mate.
EscapeVelocity --
Gates of Vienna's rules about comments require that they be civil, temperate, on-topic, and show decorum. Your comment violated the last of these rules. We keep a PG-13 blog, and exclude foul language, explicit descriptions, and epithets. This is why I deleted your comment.
Use of asterisks is an appropriate alternative. Also, when I recreated your comment below, I redacted portions that were gratuitously insulting to other commenters.
----------------------
EscapeVelocity said...
Engineer Poet, I think you would do better to have your little chat with Atheists, especially those of the Richard Dawkins variety.
The next time you are having an Atheist pow wow, and some Atheist rips into Christians or Christianity, you could launch into your, "What is the greater danger here, Muslim domination of your bodies, or Christians preaching love and merry making at year end and trying to converty you to Christianity via words and good deeds? The Muslim abuse of Atheists should make us allies with the Christians who allow us to live in the free-est scieties in the world that they created. But if you keep up your hostility toward Christians, or they may put you in the Muslim "minority" column as an enemy of all that is good and righteous in the world. Christianity not only works fine with secular government, they created it. You have to stop making enemies you dont need."
Just a heads up there mate.
If you come strutin' and preenin' and p***ing on Christians, and have the gall to lecture them about their reaction to you as driving away potential allies against Islam, well, let's just say that is right up Atheist alley. [redacted] bout time you showed some appreciation for [tolerant Christian lands], instead of launching into an Anti Christians rant, and campaign.
Escape Velocity --
Even your apology contained a gratuitous insult of other commenters. This is not acceptable in our comments.
Well, I was hoping to send you a private email.
If you think about it, according to your definition here, your blog is filled with gratiutous insults of Muslims. I never referenced anybody in my posts, but used generalized terms.
I see it a PC enforcement, not related the side language issue.
Muslims are what they are, and Atheists are what they are. They arent all the same, but the majorit of them can be described in generalized terms that retain meaning.
I realize that your mission is forge anti Jihad ties among various groups. Censoring serious disagreements may serve that goal, but it doesnt remove the serious disagreements, or disagreeableness. It only suppresses it, which is what PC is all about.
Best
EV
EV --
First of all, anything I do here is not censorship. If the government restricts speech in a public forum, that is censorship. This is a private forum which has rules, and I am not the government. Every commenter who is dissatisfied with our rules is free to set up a Blogger blog just like this one, and use it to say whatever he likes.
Secondly, insulting an entire group of people is quite different from insulting specific people with whom you are engaged in debate. You called one or more of your fellow commenters names, which did not serve the discourse here nor advance your argument effectively. It also violated our rules for civility.
If a Muslim commenter appears here -- and we have had a few from time to time -- I expect him to be treated civilly, too.
Exceptions are made for celebrities and well-known political figures. They may be freely insulted, within the limits of polite language. Fortunately, they never appear here in person, so I don't have to resolve conflicting standards with respect to them.
Group insults will be treated on a case-by-case basis, and I do allow more latitude there. However, I delete "Kill all the Muslims" as readily as I delete "Kill all the Jews".
Im not in a huff. I am merely stating what I see to be the case.
I never called for the Killing of All Atheists. As some may gather from your last post to me.
You are free to remove my comments directly addressed to you....I see no reason to leave them up, as they are off topic and are about the modding of your blog.
I simply wanted you to understand where I was coming from.
In closing, I would like to state, that as soon as their is proof that there is no God, then I will change my position. (As you noted, that is an unlikely occurence.)
Have a good day!
Baron Bodissey: I don’t know if you include me among the “GoV crowd” that is hostile to atheists, but my personal opinion is and always has been that atheists are the natural and valuable allies of anyone who wants to successfully resist the Islamization of the West.
Speaking as an devout agnostic, I will not only confirm an overall lack of hostility for atheists at GoV but also concur heartily regarding the need for such an alliance. During a recent layover in Taiwan, I addressed a Mormon missionary couple regarding this exact same topic. Namely, that all valid spiritual faiths had damn well begin forging some sort of mutual survival pact against Islam or watch from the sidelines as each one of them falls to Allah's minions. After providing them with a brief explanation of why Islam is an ideology and tends to create almost robotic followers, they noted how Islam may well be the Hand of Darkness in our world today.
Many of the militant atheists I have known are angry, paranoid, dogmatic, and intolerant in their attitudes towards any and all Christians, not just fundamentalists or evangelicals.
Which is one major reason why I am an agnostic. The nearly miraculous nature of our universe's origin and the fact that our bodies are built from stardust in a cosmos tuned with such incredible precision as to defy imagination. Consider reading Robert Sawyer's "Calculating God", for a delightful examination of intelligent design (something I do not subscribe to), and theology in general. His observations (on or around page 55), regarding the extraordinary interplay of physical constants needed for life to appear make it a fun read.
Add into this the profound nature of the human spirit along with consciousness plus other stupendous traits and it becomes exceedingly difficult to dismiss all possibility of a Divine existence.
EscapeVelocity: If you think about it, according to your definition here, your blog is filled with gratiutous insults of Muslims.
[Ralph Wiggum] That's unpossible! [/Ralph Wiggum]
Islam is such a monumental degradation of all mankind along with being the source of so much constant and near-infinite human suffering that it is literally impossible to insult it or Muslims gratuitously. Allah's followers work tirelessly to earn the limitless scorn and derision of all thinking human beings. Most abominable of all is how there seems to be little, if any, chance that this will change in time to avert the looming Muslim holocaust.
The entire doctrinal structure of Islam is literally predicated upon precipitating an eventual global conflict of such proportions that Muslims have a minuscule chance of surviving it at all. To date, not even the dimmest awareness of this pending calamity has been expressed by any sizable number of Muslims and it indicates a stunning degree of hubris that typically precedes the downfall of entire civilizations.
Baron,
Of course atheists are your natural allies, as we aim to protect the secular state from subversion by religious(particularly Islamic) influences.The liberal democratic state is the best guarantee of freedom of worship and belief.
Atheists don't assert
anything or 'know' in regard to the existence of a deity, as there is no evidence,why believe? Why create the enormous superstructure of the Church? There's an infinity of entities I could believe in;God,the Easter Bunny,Santa Claus,Thor,Venus,why should I have to disprove/prove their existence? The burden of proof is on the believer, you beg the question by assuming that there's a God and then argue from that premise.
The problem of theodicy is an overwhelming argument against the existence of the personal Judeo/Christian God.
I was educated at a Presbyterian Grammar(High)School so I'm not ignorant of Christianity or hostile to its doctrines,I'm just not interested,I,like most people, just want to be allowed to believe or not believe.
mace --
The burden of proof is on the believer, you beg the question by assuming that there's a God and then argue from that premise.
I did no such thing. You evidently failed to read my words carefully.
In my statements, I assumed neither the existence nor the non-existence of God. Rather, I asserted that Kurt Gödel’s incompleteness theorem demonstrates that the existence or non-existence of God cannot be proven logically. No amount of evidence can provide a proof in either direction.
Summarized briefly, Gödel’s theorem shows that any system governed by the rules of logic must of necessity contain formulations that cannot be proved within the system using the system’s premises. As a corollary, assertions about the entire system cannot be proved within the system itself. Such formulations must remain axioms.
Gödel used number theory to prove his theorem, and his work cannot be understood without a knowledge of advanced mathematics. Which unfortunately means that most people will simply have to take his QED on faith.
Funny about that.
I doubt we will be seeing Zenster's post edited to remove the gratuitous insults and implied threats of violence against Muslims.
Looming Muslim Holocaust?
Over to you, Baron.
Atheist's are not Christian's friends. There continued aggression towards Christians, Christianity, and the institutions of Christianity are assured. They are enemies of Christians....they will continue to be hostile to Christians. It's as simple as that.
It's kind of like expecting to form an alliance with the Western Left against Islam.
"In closing, I would like to state, that as soon as their is proof that there is no God, then I will change my position. (As you noted, that is an unlikely occurence.)"
It's not only unlikely, it's impossible, for what is false cannot be proven true.
The reality of minds in a material world (thus, every human being who has ever existed) is proof that atheism is false. If atheism were indeed the truth about the nature of reality, then we would not -- because we could not -- exist. But we do exist. Therefore, atheism is not the truth about the nature of reality.
This is the general form of the argument to support the prior claim --
GIVEN the reality of the natural/physical/material world, IF atheism were indeed the truth about the nature of reality, THEN everything which exists and/or transpires must be wholely reducible, without remainder, to purely physical/material states and causes.
The explanation/proof is as follows --
This "everything" (which exists and must be wholely reducible, without remainder, to purely physical/material states and causes) includes our minds and all the functions and capabilities of our minds -- including reason (and, really, not just the individual acts of reasoning that we all engage in, but big-r 'Reason').
Now, specifically with respect to reasoning, what inescapably follows from atheism is that it is impossible for anything existing in reality (that included us) to reason.
When an entity reasons, it chooses to move from one thought or concept to another based on (its understanding of) the content of the concepts and of the logical relationship between them.
But, IF atheism were indeed the truth about the nature of reality, THEN this movement from (what we call) thought to though (which activity or change-of-mental-state we call 'reasoning') *has* to be caused by, and must be wholely explicable in terms of, state-changes of matter. That is, it is not the content of, and logical relationship between, two thoughts which prompts a reasoning entity to move from the one thought to the other, but rather it is some change-of-state of some matter which determines that an entity "thinks" any particular "thought" when it does.
I leave it to the reader to dwell on the further implications.
This logical implication/consequence of atheism (the one I have explicated) directly denies what we all know to be true about the "cause" of all acts of reasoning. This logical implication/consequence of atheism states an absurdity, namely that we do not, and cannot, reason. Since the stated absurdity is a logical implication/consequence of atheism, therefore atheism is shown to be absurd. Which is to say, necessarily false.
EscapeVelocity: I doubt we will be seeing Zenster's post edited to remove the gratuitous insults and implied threats of violence against Muslims.
That is entirely up to this Blog's administrators. However, in the meanwhile, please be so kind as to identify (with verbatim quotes), where in my comments I make any "gratuitous insults" or "implied threats of violence against Muslims".
I predict these things. I DO NOT advocate them.
Looming Muslim Holocaust?
I suggest that you read Wretchard's classic analysis "The Three Conjectures. For your convenience, I'll excerpt the appropriate passages here:
The most startling result of this analysis is that a catastrophic outcome for Islam is guaranteed whether America retaliates or not. Even if the President decided to let all Americans die to expiate their historical guilt, why would Islamic terrorists stop after that? They would move on to Europe and Asia until finally China, Russia, Japan, India or Israel, none of them squeamish, wrote -1 x 10^9 in the final right hand column. They too would be prisoners of the same dynamic, and they too have weapons of mass destruction.
Even if Islam killed every non-Muslim on earth they would almost certainly continue to kill each other with their new-found weaponry. Revenge bombings between rival groups and wars between different Islamic factions are the recurring theme of history. Long before 3,000 New Yorkers died on September 11, Iraq and Iran killed 500,000 Muslims between them. The greatest threat to Muslims is radical Islam; and the greatest threat of all is a radical Islam armed with weapons of mass destruction.
Is there anything unclear about the foregoing?
As I said earlier: "Most abominable of all is how there seems to be little, if any, chance that this will change in time to avert the looming Muslim holocaust.
The entire doctrinal structure of Islam is literally predicated upon precipitating an eventual global conflict of such proportions that Muslims have a minuscule chance of surviving it at all. To date, not even the dimmest awareness of this pending calamity has been expressed by any sizable number of Muslims and it indicates a stunning degree of hubris that typically precedes the downfall of entire civilizations."
Islam continues to display every intention of risking all human life, Muslim and Infidel alike, in its gamble for world domination. All of its previous historical advances have been over countless Muslim corpses and there is absolutely nothing to indicate that this mindset has changed in any way. The elimination of ijtihad during the eleventh or twelfth century, in favor of cutting Islamic doctrine in stone, is one element which literally assures that Muslims are placed on a catastrophic collision course with modern, nuclear-armed, Western civilization.
Last I checked, the vast majority of Islamic nations have little to no advanced weaponry. Their battlefield incompetence is legendary and, combined with their dismal military track record, such a war fighting deficit is just as often fatal.
@ No problem here. I don't have any leftie friends. — Charles Martel
Nor do I. But I used to have a lot .
@ From my own personal experience, however, holding such an alliance together can be very, very difficult — and not simply because fundamentalist Christians have an antipathy towards atheists. Many of the militant atheists I have known are angry, paranoid, dogmatic, and intolerant in their attitudes towards any and all Christians, not just fundamentalists or evangelicals. — BB
There’s an exception, perhaps: the most important secular humanist organization in America, the Council for Secular Humanism, related to Prometheus Books (which has published a Robert Spencer book). I happen to know the founder, Paul Kurtz, who allowed a feature article criticizing Islam in his Free Inquiry magazine.
Before my 2008/2009 ideological transfiguration I was an angry atheist who hated the American fundamentalists. Now I consider them my best friends ever—even if I’m still an agnostic.
What neither believers nor unbelievers know is that child mistreatment produces displaced hatred toward the traditional religion of our parents. I know this is absolute true since it happened to me. And I have analyzed a woman who hates Catholicism. In fact, poor parenting was exactly what made Nietzsche to hate his religion.
Those who want to study this fascinating subject shouldn’t miss Alice Miller’s psychobiography on Nietzsche.
Baron,
I refer to my comments in regard to the infinity of entities any one could believe in,where is the specific evidence for the existence of, for example,the Christian God? There is no evidence and therefore there is no justification for the development of Christian(or any other religious) doctrine and institutions.You didn't address the problem of theodicy,the attributes Christians assign to their god and the condition of individual human lives are irreconcilable.
I doubt that a theorem that has to be taken on faith is of much use.
Mace: "... where is the specific evidence for the existence of, for example,the Christian God? There is no evidence and therefore there is no justification for the development of Christian(or any other religious) doctrine and institutions."
While my previous post does not prove specificically Christian doctrines, for that is not its purpose, it does (more than!) prove the falsity of your assertion about there being a lack of evidence for the existence of an entity whom we may properly call 'God.'
Not that I *ever* expect an admission of this truth.
By the way, should any reader of this thread wish further to rationally discuss the argument-against-atheism which I've posted above, rather than further going off-topic in this thread, I've re-posted the argument here
mace, I don’t have to take Gödel’s theorem on faith because I have studied the mathematics of it extensively, and I know that it was conclusively proven.
Someone who doesn’t study mathematics has to take it on faith the same way that someone who rides in a jetliner takes on faith the aerodynamics that allows him to fly. You might not understand the physics that makes the machine work, but you have faith that well-trained and competent people do understand it, so you go ahead and get on the plane.
It’s the same with Gödel.
If one can only accept as true that which one has personally researched and understood, then one has very, very little actual scientific knowledge. Even the most accomplished scientist is a specialist. An astrophysicist who takes insulin for his diabetes has to have faith that the biochemists and pharmacologists at Merck know what they are doing.
To assert that a rigorously-developed theorem should not be recognized as true because you don’t understand it is a surprisingly Luddite position, coming from a scientific atheist.
Baron: "... To assert that a rigorously-developed theorem should not be recognized as true because you don’t understand it is a surprisingly Luddite position, coming from a scientific atheist."
Ah, but it's SOP for a "scientific atheist" (and, therefore, not at all surprising).
There are words to describe such behavior, however using them is offensive to Atheists, and therefore not allowed on this blog. They arent even 4 letter words.
Here is another perhaps better analogy. Atheists are allies to Christians, like France is an ally to the US.
And enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend. This should be well understood for any Christian looking to form alliances with Atheists.
Mace, I invite you to seriously study Christian Philosophy....and disregard institutions, churches, and simple narratives. While the parables are worth contemplating, its the deeper analysis that is more interesting.
Could I recommend you start with something easy (as in easily read and understood, breazy) like C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity. Before you move on to other heavier weights.
If you dont like the trappings of Christianity, you may indeed embrace the deeper philosophies...as well reasoned, logical, and rational.
EV
@ “…This should be well understood for any Christian looking to form alliances with Atheists.” – EV
Not so sure… Free Inquiry, which is run by atheists, has published several articles by Ibn Warraq criticizing Islam. In a controversial thread I said that during these times, where millions of westerners have already become Body-Snatched Pods, “I see no enemies to my right”. This sounded like a lunatic statement for some posters. However, in the context of the present discussion let’s keep in mind how Prometheus Books, run by atheists and which published the much needed Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism by Warraq in 2007, might help us with our publishing needs.
I read a bit of Free Inquiry, where Christians were depicted as persecutors of Atheists, and right down the line with Victimizaiton Indentity Politics.
Not very inspiring, Chechar.
Im sure they are all very supported of lawfare against Christians, Christianity, Christian institutions, and Christians and Christianity in the public and government lawmaking sphere.
Cheering when Christian children are punished and persecuted for mentioning their beliefs in God at high school graduation speeches.
I don’t claim they have religion in high regard, but as to making allies, according to Wikipedia’s Free Inquiry article, linked above:
“In 2006, the magazine's published a story about the four cartoons that originally appeared in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, which sparked violent worldwide Muslim protests. Kurtz, editor-in-chief of Free Inquiry said, "What is at stake is the precious right of freedom of expression". In 2006, Borders Group refused to carry the April-May issue of Free Inquiry in their Borders and Waldenbooks stores because of the cartoons. The reason given by Borders for their decision was not sensitivity to religion but fear of violence. The story made national and international news and the implications of this self censorship was widely discussed by CBS News, the Washington Post and the New York Times.”
Also, once secular humanists learn that the most fanatic atheist individuals have childhood issues, they’ll stop displacing the hatred toward religion and direct it on the perps themselves. Cf. again, Miller’s The Untouched Key.
The problem of course is that most Atheists and Secualar Hedonists wage their war not at Islam but at all religion. And as you can see they focus disproportionately on Christianity.
Thus we Christian Conservatives will be fighting the Islamics all the while the Atheist Secular Hedonists are stabbing us in the back.
I wish we could send the Atheists and Leftwingers to Muslim lands to live. That would teach them a valuable lesson.
Im reminded of an interview that was done with a Nederlander with an American print media agency. He proclaimed proudly that "We dont have a Religous Right in our country to contend with, like in America." Hello, buddy, you may not have a Christian Right worth speaking of any longer, but you most certainly have a Religious Right...the Islamic Right. Just because they vote for the Leftist parties now, doesnt mean that they are Secular Hedonists or support them. My guess is this chump will be willing to give both his left and right gonads, to trade his Islamic Right for all the American Christian Fundies in the United States before long.
Bruce Bawer found out personally, by moving to the Netherlands to get away from the American Christian Right.
Blind fools.
Ill leave you with this, from Mark Steyn...
Our lesson today comes from the songwriter Frank Loesser:
"Praise The Lord And Pass The Ammunition."
continued...
http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/obama-20905-america-guns.html
Bottom line is Christianity works as a way to organize a viable self perpetuating society, some of the freeist on Earth. You should be thankful for Christianity. Attempts to move beyond Christianity and organize man by reason and apart from his paradoxes, have been dissasterous....Communism, Nazism, (New Leftist Secular Hedonism as we now see).
Until you come up with something proven to work, how about lets not tear down the free-est societies on Earth, in attempts to move fromt the Good to the Perfect, heh? And if you are into social engineering or want to try out your latest secular fad, how about try them out in Muslims lands, or some other area of the planet where failed societies already exist.
God Bless
EV
I am thankful for Christianity. As I have said elsewhere, only CBN exposes the Islamic threat. Not even the secularized Fox does it as vigorously as CBN. (On the other hand, weren’t there some freethinking humanists among the founding fathers?) Also, I had already read that Netherlander interview in Bawer’s first book about Islamization.
@ “The problem of course is that most Atheists and Secular Hedonists wage their war not at Islam but at all religion. And as you can see they focus disproportionately on Christianity.”
True, but you must understand that probably all of these people were abused at conservative homes. They can’t speak out about the abuse because of what Miller calls the forbidden knowledge, precisely what happened to poor Nietzsche: he displaced his rage toward Christianity and become mad because he could never identify inwardly the real perps (he had lived in a family of intergenerational theologians). I know Miller is right because I see myself among those fanatics, as I was the past, when I still hadn’t processed the pain.
The task of those who have processed the pain should be to expose this pathological transference, even the transference of close friends, as I did recently with a woman who was abused at a Catholic home as a child and now, at fifty, wants to destroy what remains of her Catholic Spain through mass immigration.
As a Protestand Christian, and otherwise, I have disagreements with Catholicism and the Catholic Church, however I recognize its significance and importance in its building and shaping European and Western Civilization.
And Ill take all the Latino Catholics you can muster, over Islamics. Perhaps Europe should import Latino Catholic immigrants, instead...as a solution to their economic and welfare statist systemic woes.
Just a thought.
Very few freethinking humanists among the Founding Fathers, if at all. Even the British Englightenment philosophers were all Chrsitian. A couple of French Atheists maybe.
A fundamental mistake that most Atheists and Secularists make is that Christians are divorced from rational thought and sicence, that they are anti science and rational thought...which is absurd. Science grew within Christian societies, not as antithesis or forbidden knowledge seeking, but incubated by the Catholic Church itself.
The Protestant Reformation has a lot to do with individuals applying rational thought of there own to their reading of the Bible, which was now widely available in vernacular languages, via the printing press.
This narrative that has developed that Christianity was the enemy of rational thought, science and the Enlightment is dead wrong, and the reason for its prevelance is political.
John Calvin:
Is it faith to understand nothing, and merely submit your convictions implicitly to the Church? -- John Calvin
EscapeVelocity: I doubt we will be seeing Zenster's post edited to remove the gratuitous insults and implied threats of violence against Muslims.
One more time ... Please be so kind as to identify (with verbatim quotes), where it is in my comments that I make any "gratuitous insults" or "implied threats of violence against Muslims".
Additionally, your doubts seem to be misplaced and your ability to read simple English somewhat diminished. For a second time I will ask that you please specify, verbatim, where in my comments I make any "gratuitous insults" or "implied threats of violence against Muslims".
Either that or you may feel free to retract your, apparently, baseless accusations against myself and this Blog.
A fundamental mistake that most Atheists and Secularists make is that Christians are divorced from rational thought and science, that they are anti science and rational thought...which is absurd.
Additionally, please provide some sort of quantitative proof (with appropriate cites and links), for the above statement. While it may be true that some portion of atheists and secularists harbor such misgivings, it is doubtful in the extreme that "most" of them do so. Since you have felt free to make this assertion, along with those about my own comments, I now invite you to substantiate them in a factual manner.
Please also be advised that simply ignoring my request, as you already seem to have done, does your position and arguments no real good.
I thought we should limit our posts to 4,somebody's being naughty.
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