Atheists against postage stamps

Atheists are running out of things to complain about:

An atheist organization is blasting the U.S. Postal Service for its plan to honor Mother Teresa with a commemorative stamp, saying it violates postal regulations against honoring “individuals whose principal achievements are associated with religious undertakings.”

The Freedom from Religion Foundation is urging its supporters to boycott the stamp — and also to engage in a letter-writing campaign to spread the word about what it calls the “darker side” of Mother Teresa.

Atheists are keen to present the appearance of being better people than Christians; perhaps they feel they can’t compete with Mother Teresa and having her photo on a stamp will make them look really bad; poor dears:

He said the Foundation’s campaign stems from concern that the abundance of humanitarian work done by believers will overshadow that done by atheists.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation informs us:

The history of Western civilization shows us that most social and moral progress has been brought about by persons free from religion. In modern times the first to speak out for prison reform, for humane treatment of the mentally ill, for abolition of capital punishment, for women’s right to vote, for death with dignity for the terminally ill, and for the right to choose contraception, sterilization and abortion have been freethinkers, just as they were the first to call for an end to slavery.

This curious concoction of meaningless pap is heartening, in that it reinforces my conviction that those who like to trumpet their freedom from religion are themselves slaves to ignorance and irrationality.

What we really need is a Freedom From Illogical Atheism Foundation.

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Apoplectic Atheists

Atheists seem to get angry easily. They get angry because they think Christians look down on them as Bad, angry because Christians can’t put themselves in their position, angry because they are misunderstood and angry because we Christians don’t agree with them and, after all, atheism is so obvious.

To clear up some of this:

Christians do think atheists are, in a sense, Bad; that is because we think everyone, in a sense, is Bad. To put it into Christian terms, everyone has sinned and needs a Saviour to redeem them from their sins.

Many Christians do understand atheism; that is because some were atheists themselves at some point – I was – and because, since Christianity is attacked from all sides in our culture, Christians have been forced to inspect their basic assumptions and how their beliefs logically follow from them. From the occasional exchange with atheists on this blog, it appears that many atheists have not done the same.

Here are some of the basic assumptions that accompany atheism and some of the unavoidable consequences of those assumptions:

There are some variations in atheism. A negative atheism would claim an absence of belief in God and make it a default position: in the absence of good evidence for God’s existence, negative atheism is the logical choice – the burden of proof is on the theist. Others would argue that this is really agnosticism in disguise and that true atheism is positive atheism which asserts the statement “God does not exist”. I am inclined to the latter view.

Either variety of atheism has some unavoidable consequences:

There is no objective standard for morality. That is not to say that atheists cannot do “good” or be “moral”, using those words in the context of Judeo-Christian ethics; they can. It does mean, though that the “good” or “evil” that an atheist may believe exists has no objective realty: “good” and “evil” are subjective – no one person’s view of what is “good” has any more validity than any other person’s. Dostoevsky summed this with “if God does not exist everything is permitted”

Atheists are materialists: that is to say, they believe that the material universe is all that exists; without God there is no supernatural, nothing outside of the material exerts any influence on the universe. Christopher Hitchens seems to want to dodge this by contending that the numinous does exist, apparently as a by-product of the human mind – most atheists would not go along with this, though. As a result, the human mind is entirely subject to the material. This leads to the following problem for the atheist:

1. If God does not exist, a person’s thoughts are the result of interactions in the material universe.
2. Some people believe the following statement to be true, while others believe it to be untrue: God does not exist.
3. The same material universe produces opposite conclusions on the truth of the statement in 2.
4. If God does not exist, human thought processes are unreliable.
5. If God does not exit, my belief that he does not exist is unreliable.

If human existence ceases at death, life has no lasting objective purpose or meaning. Atheists will protest that they do find purpose and meaning in life; Richard Dawkins goes to considerable length to expound on the beauty and the grandeur of the universe. Without God, though, such perceptions are subjective and, for an honest person, inadequate. Atheistic existentialists such as Jean-Paul Sartre were more direct: Sartre recognised that without God life has no purpose. His solution was to invent a purpose and pretend that it has significance – just to get through life. Sadly, modern atheists are doing much the same thing without the benefit of the introspection necessary to recognise why.

Atheists are evolutionary Darwinists but generally not social Darwinists, preferring instead to adopt the mores of the Judeo-Christian heritage that they despise. The problem for the atheist comes when confronted by a social Darwinist who might advocate, for example, the extermination of the old, infirm, disabled and deformed; an atheist has no convincing argument to offer on why this is a bad thing to do. Without God, values are subjective, one person’s view of what is right is as good as any other’s.

A popular contemporary conceit of atheism is that science has disposed of religion. John Lennox in his book God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? argues eloquently that, far from burying God, science depends on the assumption that the universe has rational laws – rational laws that owe their existence to a rational Creator. Additionally, there is no reason to trust the rationality of the minds of scientists if they are products of a potentially irrational universe.

There; now I expect atheists reading this will become angry.

Pious Atheism

An organisation associated with Richard Dawkins called Non-Believers Giving Aid is collecting donations for Haiti. This is a good thing, of course, since Haiti needs all the help it can get. A side benefit for atheists, apparently,  is that not only will their donations be god-free, but also they will help to dispel the vicious rumour that atheists are a heartless bunch who care only for themselves:

2. When donating via Non-Believers Giving Aid, you are helping to counter the scandalous myth that only the religious care about their fellow-humans.

It goes without saying that your donations will only be passed on to aid organizations that do not have religious affiliations. In the case of Haiti, the two organizations we have chosen are:  Doctors Without Borders (Médecins sans Frontières),  International Red Cross.

This goes to show that these ‘non-believers’ do actually believe in something: that the suffering of their fellow-man should be alleviated. Since atheists are convinced that the universe is one with at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference, I can’t help wondering why they have at least this one not particularly rational belief. And why does an atheist wish to present an appearance of being less callous than the universe that he claims begot him?

Convicted rapist says sharing a cell with a Christian violates his rights

God likes a laugh too:

AN atheist rapist has complained that his human rights were breached by having to share a prison cell with a Christian lag.

Barman Steven Relf, 40, was jailed indefinitely after admitting raping two women he targeted when he served them drinks in a pub.

Police branded him a “sexual predator” and said he could have had as many as 40 victims.

In a letter to an inmates’ magazine, Relf wrote: “I recently had the displeasure of sharing a cell with a Bible-thumping believer.”

A source said Relf was “furious” at having to share at Manchester Prison with the Christian convict and wanted him to be “evicted”.

He said: “He moaned about how the guy wouldn’t shut up about God. He said he wanted to speak to a lawyer about his rights so he could be moved cells.”

Thus begins a new era of crime deterrence: convicted criminals will no longer be incarcerated; instead they will be forced to attend church and listen to sermons.

Atheists can be principled – when it’s convenient

And for Philip Pullman, it isn’t because it is hitting him in the pocket book:

Philip Pullman, crusader for atheism? Not when it might hurt him at the box office.

The problem with Philip Pullman is not that his kids’ books sometimes peddle subversive propaganda but that he seems to shift his position to suit the occasion.

Last week he was all over the papers insisting that the film The Golden Compass, which is an adaptation of part of his series of books, His Dark Materials, absolutely does not attract children to atheism. This despite the fact that he has been quoted as saying on the record that he is “trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief” and that he says currently on his website that he is an “enemy” of organised religion. He is, by the by, a leading light in Humanist circles (although he did read a lesson at one of his children’s church weddings).

The reason for his proclamation that the film doesn’t attract children to atheism isn’t known, but it’s notable that it comes shortly after the news that the rest of his books are not going to be filmed on account of bad box office takings… largely thanks to its boycott in America by religious types.

Back when Pullman was branding himself an atheist crusader, he admitted that he knew the controversy would lead to media coverage and that in turn brings book sales… But now he seems to be trying to have it all un-said when that same controversy leads, as in the case of the film, to a decline in profitability.

Watch out, Philip. You run the risk of appearing simply mercenary: neither a warrior for Humanism nor a simple story-telling artist, but a wind-up merchant and peddler of anything that’ll sell. That can’t be right, can it?

Dostoevsky was right, for atheists anything is permitted; self interest is all there is.

Atheist campaign uses photos of Christian children

An update to Atheist campaign targets children. It seems that the British Humanist Association used photos of brainwashed Christian children for their ads. God has a sense of humour.

The happy smiley children used by humanists in a don’t-label-me-as-religious billboard campaign actually come from an evangelical Christian family.

The images used by the British Humanist Association (BHA), as part of a nationwide advertising drive, were bought from a stock photo library and the BHA had no way of knowing the children’s background.

The children’s father, Brad Mason, said: “It is quite funny, because obviously they were searching for images of children that looked happy and free.

“They happened to choose children who are Christian. It is ironic. The humanists obviously did not know the background of these children.”

Mr Mason added: “Obviously there is something in their faces which is different. So they judged that they were happy and free without knowing that they are Christians.

Philip Pullman re-writes the Crucifixion

From the Telegraph:

Philip Pullman, the author of His Dark Materials, has written his own version of the New Testament in which the story of Jesus is given a “different ending”.
The writer has penned an alternative Bible passage imagining a different fate for Christ, who was executed by the Romans.

“He has written what would have happened if Jesus had had a fair trial,” a friend told The Daily Telegraph’s Mandrake column.

“He knows it will be controversial, but he has some serious points to make.”

Pullman is due to read his “account” of Christ’s last days at the Globe theatre on Thursday as part of an event to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Reprieve, an organisation which campaigns for the rights of prisoners.

Books by Pullman, who is an honorary associate of the National Secular Society, have been criticised by the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. His critics often cite an interview in which he reportedly said: “I’m trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief.”

The fantasy novels His Dark Materials, with their religious allegories, have been seen as a direct rebuttal of The Chronicles of Narnia by C S Lewis, the late Christian author, which have been criticised by Pullman.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has, however, proposed that His Dark Materials should be taught as part of religious education in schools.

There is nothing surprising about this since Pullman is an atheist, supporter of the British Humanist Society and actively pursues an anti-Christian agenda, saying things like, “I’m trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief.”

One does wonder, therefore, why Rowan Williams thinks Dark Materials should be taught in schools as religious education; I can only surmise that Rowan, having not quite managed to single-handedly destroy the Anglican Church, is looking for some help.

To be serious – really – I should have thought that Graham Taylor’s Shadowmancer, which is explicitly Christian, would have been a better recommendation for Rowan to make. Perhaps it hits too close to home: the villain, Reverend Obadiah Demurral, is an Anglican vicar.

Atheist campaign targets children

The idea that a child can be brought up in a belief-neutral setting is nonsense. This new atheist venture is, in truth, a bid to proselytise an anti-God faith message to children:

The group behind a controversial atheist bus-poster campaign is urging parents not to label their children with their own religious faith.

The British Humanist Association (BHA) has launched a series of billboard advertisements in capital cities.

The posters are part of a campaign to challenge state-funded faith schools.

But a representative of the Christian Schools Trust questioned who would “fill the vacuum” if parents did not pass on their fundamental beliefs.

Professor Richard Dawkins, who has part-funded the BHA campaign in London, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, says labelling children as “religious” is a form of brainwashing.

“I hope this poster campaign will encourage the government, media and public to see children as individuals, free to make their own choices, and accord them the liberty and respect they deserve.”

The BHA said the billboards were going up to coincide with Universal Children’s Day on Friday.

Taking Christ out of Christmas has a Nazi precedent

Something to think about before you wish someone a Happy Holidays:

Nazi Germany celebrated Christmas without Christ with the help of swastika tree baubles, ‘Germanic’ cookies and a host of manufactured traditions, a new exhibition has shown.

The way the celebration was gradually taken over and exploited for propaganda purposes by Hitler’s Nazis is detailed in a new exhibition.

Rita Breuer has spent years scouring flea markets for old German Christmas ornaments.

She and her daughter Judith developed a fascination with the way Christmas was used by the atheist Nazis, who tried to turn it into a pagan winter solstice celebration.

‘Christmas was a provocation for the Nazis – after all, the baby Jesus was a Jewish child,’ Judith Breuer told the German newspaper Spiegel. ‘The most important celebration in the year didn’t fit with their racist beliefs so they had to react, by trying to make it less Christian.’

Morality is more about what you should do than what you actually do

And this is why an evolutionist’s attempts to lay claim to a moral framework – as Dawkins and Hitchens are fond of doing – fail. Atheistic morality does not distinguish “is” from “ought” and without cosmic justice, there is no “ought” and no morality.

This article by Dinesh D’Souza is most illuminating on the subject; the whole thing is well worth a read here:

Cosmic Justice
If evolution cannot explain how humans became moral primates, what can?

By Dinesh D’Souza
All evolutionary attempts to explain morality ultimately miss the point. They seek to explain morality, but even at their best what they explain is not morality at all. Imagine a shopkeeper who routinely increases his profits by cheating his customers. So smoothly does he do this that he is never exposed and his reputation remains unimpeached. Even though the man is successful in the game of survival, if he has a conscience it will be nagging at him from the inside. It may not be strong enough to make him change his ways, but it will at least make him feel bad and perhaps ultimately despise himself. Now where have our evolutionary explanations accounted for morality in this sense?

In fact, they haven’t accounted for it at all. These explanations all seek to reduce morality to self-interest, but if you think about it, genuine morality cannot be brought down to this level. Morality is not the voice that says, “Be truthful when it benefits you,” or “Be kind to those who are in a position to help you later.” Rather, it operates without regard to such calculations. Far from being an extension of self-interest, the voice of the impartial spectator is typically a restriction of self-interest. Think about it: If morality were simply an extension of selfishness, we wouldn’t need it. We don’t need moral prescriptions to tell people to act for their own benefit; they do that anyway. The whole point of moral prescriptions and injunctions is to get people to subordinate and curb their selfish interests.

[……]

Now let’s make the supposition that there is cosmic justice after death and ask, Does this help to explain the great mystery of human morality? It seems clear that it does. Humans recognize that there is no ultimate goodness and justice in this world, but they continue to uphold those ideals. In their interior conscience, humans judge themselves not by the standard of the shrewd self-aggrandizer but by that of the impartial spectator. We admire the good man, even when he comes to a bad end, and revile the successful scoundrel who got away with it. Evolutionary theories predict the reverse: If morality were merely a product of crafty and successful calculation, we should cherish and aspire to be crafty calculators. But we don’t. Rather, we act as if there is a moral law to which we are accountable.

Christopher Hitchens vs John Lennox, “Is God Great?”

From the March 2009 debate at Samford University in Birmingham, AL.

T-shirt theology

Now atheists do it:

The war of words between believers and non-believers is being fought in books, on television screens, and even on the front of T-shirts.

Below we have selected 20 of the coolest and funniest atheist tops on the web, for anyone wanting to make a public statement of their scepticism.

We’ve also gathered 20 humorous Christian shirts, so you can decide which side is winning the fashion war.

I must admit, the atheist T-shirts do sum up the atheist position much better than the Christian T-shirts do the Christian position. This, of course, is because the atheist argument is considerably more trite than the Christian argument and is best suited for summarising on T-shirts and bumper stickers.

The insincerity of Richard Dawkins

h/t: Defend the Word

This article by former atheist, Anthony Flew, makes the observation that Dawkins is more interested in ideology than science or truth, is a poor academic and is bigoted. I like Anthony Flew.

The God Delusion by the atheist writer Richard Dawkins, is remarkable in the first place for having achieved some sort of record by selling over a million copies. But what is much more remarkable than that economic achievement is that the contents – or rather lack of contents – of this book show Dawkins himself to have become what he and his fellow secularists typically believe to be an impossibility: namely, a secularist bigot. (Helpfully, my copy of The Oxford Dictionary defines a bigot as ‘an obstinate or intolerant adherent of a point of view’).

The fault of Dawkins as an academic (which he still was during the period in which he composed this book although he has since announced his intention to retire) was his scandalous and apparently deliberate refusal to present the doctrine which he appears to think he has refuted in its strongest form. Thus we find in his index five references to Einstein. They are to the mask of Einstein and Einstein on morality; on a personal God; on the purpose of life (the human situation and on how man is here for the sake of other men and above all for those on whose well-being our own happiness depends); and finally on Einstein’s religious views. But (I find it hard to write with restraint about this obscurantist refusal on the part of Dawkins) he makes no mention of Einstein’s most relevant report: namely, that the integrated complexity of the world of physics has led him to believe that there must be a Divine Intelligence behind it. (I myself think it obvious that if this argument is applicable to the world of physics then it must be hugely more powerful if it is applied to the immeasurably more complicated world of biology.)

Of course many physicists with the highest of reputations do not agree with Einstein in this matter. But an academic attacking some ideological position which s/he believes to be mistaken must of course attack that position in its strongest form. This Dawkins does not do in the case of Einstein and his failure is the crucial index of his insincerity of academic purpose and therefore warrants me in charging him with having become, what he has probably believed to be an impossibility, a secularist bigot.

On page 82 of The God Delusion is a remarkable note. It reads ‘We might be seeing something similar today in the over-publicised tergiversation of the philosopher Antony Flew, who announced in his old age that he had been converted to belief in some sort of deity (triggering a frenzy of eager repetition all around the Internet).’

What is important about this passage is not what Dawkins is saying about Flew but what he is showing here about Dawkins. For if he had had any interest in the truth of the matter of which he was making so much he would surely have brought himself to write me a letter of enquiry. (When I received a torrent of enquiries after an account of my conversion to Deism had been published in the quarterly of the Royal Institute of Philosophy I managed – I believe – eventually to reply to every letter.)

This whole business makes all too clear that Dawkins is not interested in the truth as such but is primarily concerned to discredit an ideological opponent by any available means. That would itself constitute sufficient reason for suspecting that the whole enterprise of The God Delusion was not, as it at least pretended to be, an attempt to discover and spread knowledge of the existence or non-existence of God but rather an attempt – an extremely successful one – to spread the author’s own convictions in this area.

A less important point which needs to be made in this piece is that although the index of The God Delusion notes six references to Deism it provides no definition of the word ‘deism’. This enables Dawkins in his references to Deism to suggest that Deists are a miscellany of believers in this and that. The truth, which Dawkins ought to have learned before this book went to the printers, is that Deists believe in the existence of a God but not the God of any revelation. In fact the first notable public appearance of the notion of Deism was in the American Revolution. The young man who drafted the Declaration of Independence and who later became President Jefferson was a Deist, as were several of the other founding fathers of that abidingly important institution, the United States.

In that monster footnote to what I am inclined to describe as a monster book – The God Delusion – Dawkins reproaches me for what he calls my ignominious decision to accept, in 2006, the Phillip E. Johnson Award for Liberty and Truth. The awarding Institution is Biola, The Bible Institute of Los Angeles. Dawkins does not say outright that his objection to my decision is that Biola is a specifically Christian institution. He obviously assumes (but refrains from actually saying) that this is incompatible with producing first class academic work in every department – not a thesis which would be acceptable in either my own university or Oxford or in Harvard.

In my time at Oxford, in the years immediately succeeding the second world war, Gilbert Ryle (then Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy in the University of Oxford) published a hugely influential book The Concept of Mind. This book revealed by implication, but only by implication, that minds are not entities of a sort which could coherently be said to survive the death of those whose minds they were.

Ryle felt responsible for the smooth pursuit of philosophical teaching and the publication of the findings of philosophical research in the university and knew that, at that time, there would have been uproar if he had published his own conclusion that the very idea of a second life after death was self-contradictory and incoherent. He was content for me to do this at a later time and in another place. I told him that if I were ever invited to give one of the Gifford Lecture series my subject would be The Logic of Mortality. When I was, I did and these Lectures were first published by Blackwell (Oxford) in 1987. They are still in print from Prometheus Books (Amherst, NY).

Finally, as to the suggestion that I have been used by Biola University. If the way I was welcomed by the students and the members of faculty whom I met on my short stay in Biola amounted to being used then I can only express my regret that at the age of 85 I cannot reasonably hope for another visit to this institution.

Richard Dawkins, raving incoherently

Dawkins has a new book:

Richard Dawkins, the author of controversial bestseller The God Delusion, says that people who reject the theory of evolution are as misguided as those who deny the Holocaust.

In his new book, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, the world-renowned evolutionary biologist states that evolution is “beyond reasonable doubt, beyond serious doubt, beyond sane, informed, intelligent doubt… [and] no reputable scientist disputes it.”

He compares creationists, or ‘intelligent design’ proponents to the Holocaust deniers.

“Imagine that, as a teacher of European history, you are continually faced with belligerent demands to “teach the controversy”, and to give “equal time” to the “alternative theory” that the Holocaust never happened but was invented by a bunch of Zionist fabricators,” writes Dr Dawkins.

Richard seems to be bent on trumping prior inanities with yet new Dawkinisms – as evidence of committed glaikery one presumes.

First of all, the fatuous creationist-Holocaust denial comparison: creationists, be they right or wrong, are not about to use their belief as justification for wiping out a race of people. In contrast, for Hitler’s Nazis, Darwinism was an inspiration for their eugenics program, racism and Fascism; even through Dawkins rejects this variety of social Darwinism, it follows easily and logically from Darwin’s theories and Dawkins has little reason to reject it other than English fastidiousness.

Secondly, there are many reputable scientists that are Christians and would dispute the Godless variety of evolution that is the subject of Dawkins’ proselytising.

Thirdly, even though Dawkins works hard to obscure it, the battle that he is engaged in has never been between science and Christianity but between a view of reality that includes God and one that doesn’t. Science itself has nothing to say about the validity of either view and neither – as a scientist – does Dawkins even though he does like to play the theologian-manqué much of the time.

The problem with relativism

A major problem for soft atheists like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens is that they insist on talking in terms of right and wrong in spite of the fact that they have no objective standard by which to measure the morality of a human action.

They both appear to imbue evolution with the ersatz numinous quality of producing a tribal barometer of what is good or evil – but then, by their lights,  Hitler and Stalin were fairly advanced products of evolution and few atheists would claim what they and their followers did was good in any sense. So when Dawkins becomes upset by creationists who, he believes, distort the truth, his reaction isn’t particularly rational since to tell the truth is an ethical imperative which, by his own relativistic standards, is not necessarily better than telling a lie.

There is a similar problem in setting the standard for the kilogram:

More than a century ago, a small metal cylinder was forged in London and sent to a leafy suburb of Paris. The cylinder was about the size of a salt shaker and made of an alloy of platinum and iridium, an advanced material at the time.

In Paris, scientists polished and weighed it carefully, until they determined that it was exactly one kilogram, around 2.2 pounds. Then, by international treaty, they declared it to be the international standard.

Since 1889, the year the Eiffel Tower opened, that cylinder has been the standard against which every other kilogram on the planet has been judged. But that’s creating problems. According to scientists, the cylinder’s mass appears to be changing.

As it stands, the entire world’s system of measurement hinges on the cylinder. If it is dropped, scratched or otherwise defaced, it would cause a global problem. “If somebody sneezed on that kilogram standard, all the weights in the world would be instantly wrong,” says Richard Steiner, a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, Md.

Sneezing on the kilogram standard may blow a flew molecules off and make all the other weights in the world slightly incorrect. Sneezing on an atheist’s ethical framework completely blows it away.