When Atheists Attack (Each Other)

The squabble between Darwin lobbyists who openly hate religion and those who only quietly disdain it grows ever more personal, bitter and pathetic. On one side, evangelizing New or "Gnu" (ha ha) Atheists like Jerry Coyne and his acolytes at Why Evolution Is True. Dr. Coyne is a biologist who teaches and ostensibly researches at the University of Chicago but has a heck of a lot of free time on his hands for blogging and posting pictures of cute cats.

On the other side, so-called accommodationists like the crowd at the National Center for Science Education, who attack the New Atheists for the political offense of being rude to religious believers and supposedly messing up the alliance between religious and irreligious Darwinists.

I say "supposedly" because there's no evidence any substantial body of opinion is actually being changed on religion or evolution by anything the open haters or the quiet disdainers say. Everyone seems to seriously think they're either going to defeat religion, or merely "creationism," or both by blogging for an audience of fellow Darwinists.

Want to see what I mean? This is all pretty strictly a battle of stinkbugs in a bottle. Try to follow it without getting a headache.

Coyne recently drew excited applause from fellow biologist-atheist-blogger PZ Myers for Coyne's "open letter" (published on his blog) to the NCSE and its British equivalent, the British Centre for Science Education. In the letter, Coyne took umbrage at criticism of the New Atheists, mostly on blogs, emanating from the two accommodationist organizations. He vowed that,

We will continue to answer the misguided attacks [on the New Atheists] by people like Josh Rosenau, Roger Stanyard, and Nick Matzke so long as they keep mounting those attacks.

Like the NCSE, the BCSE seeks to pump up Darwin in the public mind without scaring religious people. This guy called Stanyard at the BCSE complains of losing a night's sleep over the nastiness of the rhetoric on Coyne's blog. Coyne in turn complained that Stanyard complained that a blog commenter complained that Nick Matzke, formerly of the NCSE, is like "vermin." Coyne also hit out at blogger Jason Rosenhouse for an "epic"-length blog post complaining of New Atheist "incivility." In the blog, Rosenhouse, who teaches math at James Madison University, wrote an update about how he had revised an insulting comment about the NCSE's Josh Rosenau that he, Rosenhouse, made in a previous version of the post.

That last bit briefly confused me. In occasionally skimming the writings of Jason Rosenhouse and Josh Rosenau in the past, I realized now I had been assuming they were the same person. They are not!

It goes on and on. In the course of his own blog post, Professor Coyne disavowed name-calling and berated Stanyard (remember him? The British guy) for "glomming onto" the Matzke-vermin insult like "white on rice, or Kwok on a Leica." What's a Kwok? Not a what but a who -- John Kwok, presumably a pseudonym, one of the most tirelessly obsessive commenters on Darwinist blog sites. Besides lashing at intelligent design, he often writes of his interest in photographic gear such as a camera by Leica. I have the impression that Kwok irritates even fellow Darwinists.

There's no need to keep all the names straight in your head. I certainly can't. I'm only taking your time, recounting just a small part of one confused exchange, to illustrate the culture of these Darwinists who write so impassionedly about religion, whether for abolishing it or befriending it. Writes Coyne in reply to Stanyard,

I'd suggest, then, that you lay off telling us what to do until you've read about our goals. The fact is that we'll always be fighting creationism until religion goes away, and when it does the fight will be over, as it is in Scandinavia.

A skeptic might suggest that turning America into Scandinavia, as far as religion goes, is an outsized goal, more like a delusion, for this group as they sit hunched over their computers shooting intemperate comments back and forth at each other all day. Or in poor Stanyard's case, all night.

There's a feverish, terrarium-like and oxygen-starved quality to this world of online Darwinists and atheists. It could only be sustained by the isolation of the Internet. They don't seem to realize that the public accepts Darwinism to the extent it does -- which is not much -- primarily because of what William James would call the sheer, simple "prestige" that the opinion grants. Arguments and evidence have little to do with it.

The prestige of Darwinism is not going to be affected by how the battle between Jerry Coyne and the NCSE turns out. New Atheist arguments are hobbled by the same isolation from what people think and feel. I have not yet read anything by any of these gentlemen or ladies, whether the open haters or the quiet disdainers, that conveys anything like a real comprehension of religious feeling or thought.

Even as they fight over the most effective way to relate to "religion," the open atheists and the accomodationists speak of an abstraction, a cartoon, that no actual religious person would recognize. No one is going to be persuaded if he doesn't already wish to be persuaded for other personal reasons. No faith is under threat from the likes of Jerry Coyne.

Christ alone is adequate for salvation. Nothing need be added when forgiveness is given, because when one is forgiven, there’s nothing left to work for or earn.

Man’s problem is that he likes to be in control and that includes of his own salvation and God. Trusting God completely like that is hard for a control freak to give up, but without the unbridled trust in God to do for us what we CAN’T do for ourselves, we can never be free.

That is not freedom in Christ, that is bondage. Bondage to works, bondage to performance based perfectionism, bondage to the enemy of our souls who has us chasing after the wind trying to earn something that God has freely given and freely offered to all mankind, just for the asking.

God is not a harsh task master, waiting up in heaven for us to make one little mistake so he can zot us to hell and then demand that we come back groveling and whining for His pardon. He is a loving heavenly father, something that I know was NOT conveyed by the Catholic church, not with the continual demand for sacraments, ritual, works, just one more thing, to make us acceptable to God.

Christ is all and in all. He is the final authority in all. He is the beginning and the end and every knee will bow to Him one day.

Better to recognize our inadequacy now and do it before we die, then vainly trust in ourselves to work out our own salvation, which we can never do.

There is freedom in Christ, not bondage to any one or any thing or any church.

Once the works are required for salvation, then life is nothing more than a marathon course of performance based perfectionism, a constant striving to be good enough. If you just do one more thing, and just do it well enough, then maybe, just maybe that will make the grade. That is not freedom in Christ, that is bondage. Bondage to works, bondage to performance based perfectionism, bondage to the enemy of our souls who has us chasing after the wind trying to earn something that God has freely given and freely offered to all mankind, just for the asking.

Indeed! I think that the main obstacle for "religious" people is letting go of the pride and the feelings of false piety that happen whenever we rely upon our own goodness and righteous acts to make us worthy of Heaven with God. How many times did God say in his word that all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags? That the price of our sinning against him is death? That he provided a complete and sufficient sacrifice for us? That he demands faith in order to please him? That he saves us by his grace and we receive that gift - that unspeakable gift - by believing in him whom he hath sent, we receive Jesus as our Savior, our redeemer and deliverer?

I wonder about why there are still so many people, who after hearing the Gospel, still insist on doing it all for themselves. Sure, they may say they believe in Christ and that God saves us by grace, but they then still hold onto their own deeds to add to their faith because they have been deceived into believing that faith is not enough. That God still expects us to work for it - not even getting the point that if we are saved by grace then it cannot be also by works because then grace would not be grace.

I genuinely worry about people like my Mom who think they must earn their place in heaven. Sure, she believes in Jesus as the Savior, that he died for our sins and he "opened" the gates of heaven, but that is where it stops - the efficacy of the sacrifice of Christ. He only made it possible to go to heaven but that she must also do all she is supposed to do like not sinning and going to confession when she does and doing penance afterward and going to Mass every week and receiving communion and giving her money and, and, and. There is never anything more than a glimmer of "hope" that she will make it there. Why I worry is because I ask can a person be really saved who says they trust in Jesus as their Savior but that they must also do certain things and not do certain things to go to heaven? Is that really trusting or receiving Christ like we're supposed to when all the other stuff must be added on or else we won't make it? I pray for God's mercy and grace for her and others like her caught up in a works based salvation. I pray that God opens their eyes through the Holy Spirit to hear his words and understand that we all have a precious gift from God and it is available to all who in faith receive it. I yearn for her and others to have assurance of their salvation, to KNOW they have eternal life. To rest in the promises of God and be free from the bondage of sin and death.

God wants us to have assurance of our salvation or He would not have told us we could.

1 John 5:6-15

6This is he who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ; not by the water only but by the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the one who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. 7For there are three that testify: 8the Spirit and the water and the blood; and these three agree. 9 If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater, for this is the testimony of God that he has borne concerning his Son. 10Whoever believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself. Whoever does not believe God has made him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has borne concerning his Son. 11And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12 Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.

13I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life. 14And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. 15And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.

Interesting what the CCC says about Scripture. I’d say the message hasn’t filtered down the ranks, like so much other Biblical teaching.

Looks like some of the FRoman Catholics need to get with the program concerning the adequacy of Scripture.

http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__PO.HTM

103 For this reason, the Church has always venerated the Scriptures as she venerates the Lord’s Body. She never ceases to present to the faithful the bread of life, taken from the one table of God’s Word and Christ’s Body.66

104 In Sacred Scripture, the Church constantly finds her nourishment and her strength, for she welcomes it not as a human word, “but as what it really is, the word of God”.67 “In the sacred books, the Father who is in heaven comes lovingly to meet his children, and talks with them.”68

107 The inspired books teach the truth. “Since therefore all that the inspired authors or sacred writers affirm should be regarded as affirmed by the Holy Spirit, we must acknowledge that the books of Scripture firmly, faithfully, and without error teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the Sacred Scriptures.”72

108 Still, the Christian faith is not a “religion of the book”. Christianity is the religion of the “Word” of God, “not a written and mute word, but incarnate and living”.73 If the Scriptures are not to remain a dead letter, Christ, the eternal Word of the living God, must, through the Holy Spirit, “open (our) minds to understand the Scriptures.”74

124 “The Word of God, which is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, is set forth and displays its power in a most wonderful way in the writings of the New Testament”96 which hand on the ultimate truth of God’s Revelation. Their central object is Jesus Christ, God’s incarnate Son: his acts, teachings, Passion and glorification, and his Church’s beginnings under the Spirit’s guidance.97

132 “Therefore, the study of the sacred page should be the very soul of sacred theology. the ministry of the Word, too - pastoral preaching, catechetics and all forms of Christian instruction, among which the liturgical homily should hold pride of place - is healthily nourished and thrives in holiness through the Word of Scripture.”111

133 The Church “forcefully and specifically exhorts all the Christian faithful... to learn the surpassing knowledge of Jesus Christ, by frequent reading of the divine Scriptures. Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ.112

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.