Posted on 09/27/2001 8:25:15 PM PDT by Brian Kopp DPM
ATHEISTS REJECT COUNTRY'S TURN TOWARD PRAYER
CHAMPAIGN, Illinois, Sep 27, 01 (CWNews.com) - The US' largest atheist group has rejected the public expressions of piety in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, especially those by politicians, according to the student newspaper at the University of Illinois.
Ron Barrier of American Atheists told the Daily Illini that nationally televised prayer services, presidential references to God, and calls to prayer leave atheists feeling forgotten as US citizens. "Nonbelievers were touched by the tragedy just as much as believers were," Barrier said. "All we're doing is asking for a little sensitivity. Just because one does not have religious beliefs does not make one less of a citizen."
"People who want to pray are free to do so, but we don't because we don't understand what they are doing," Barrier said. "It is humans who will clear this debris up, rescue other humans and rebuild the section of New York City. There will be no divine interference involved. People may find comfort in it, but we fail to see what purpose prayer serves."
Shane Taylor, director of the university's Christian Campus Fellowship, proffered an explanation. "It's such a core Christian idea that God wants a relationship with us," Taylor said. "It's like a relationship with anyone else. We're going to communicate with God over matters of the world, and we're hoping the president and other leaders are asking God for wisdom. We've been told we'll receive guidance and answers from God, and that is why we still pray."
As for the claim that President George W. Bush is promoting religion, Taylor said: "Our president is a Christian. His faith is a part of who he is. It's hard to ask the president not to have his faith be a part of how he responds to the attacks."
I would welcome the chance to learn some more things from you, and perhaps, encourage you with a witness of a life transformed. Blessings, and good night.
(Of course, it might be good if I posted that transformation where a lurker could see it...)
Drunk again, huh?
"Ditto."
And another ditto. We ought to have a conservative atheist ping list to make it easier to apologize en masse when twits like this show up.
No one else seemed to have trouble understanding. Sober up if you can and even you may comprehend. Other than that just talk to the voices in your head.
Love it.
I have an early day ahead of me, and was just about to check-out, perchance, to dream. Your post to Storm Orphan on the philosophical basis for G-d's Omniscience and Omnipotence; coupled with the foreknowledge He possessed was nothing short of brilliant.
Hah!! I liberally plagiarize the thoughts of Apostle Paul and Prophet Isaiah, nothing more. But thanks for the good words, I'm glad for any light I happen to shed on Words which were spoken long before mine.
I would welcome the chance to learn some more things from you, and perhaps, encourage you with a witness of a life transformed. Blessings, and good night.
Nothing would encourage me more. Look forward to it.
(Of course, it might be good if I posted that transformation where a lurker could see it...)
(My thoughts exactly [grin])
Ron Barrier of American Atheists told the Daily Illini that nationally televised prayer services, presidential references to God, and calls to prayer leave atheists feeling forgotten as US citizens. "Nonbelievers were touched by the tragedy just as much as believers were," Barrier said. "All we're doing is asking for a little sensitivity. Just because one does not have religious beliefs does not make one less of a citizen."First let me preface this by saying that I think that athesits can be every bit as moral and more so than that of Christians. Having said that, the above quote is just plain stupid.
Heck, I'm an atheist myself, and even *I* think it's stupid.
Yeah, I'm not even sure why the Catholic World News Service would consider this newsworthy.
"Too seriously"? No way.
The Supplicants of Rome are, if they shrink from the fray, cordially invited to take their seats in the peanut gallery.
We IRON CALVINISTS (and here I use Roman apologist Hilaire Belloc's own phrasing to describe us) are ready to rock and roll.
The gauntlet is thrown down:
And the challenge is hereby met.
(the following cribbed from a prior post to Storm)...
You're right, of course, tpaine. It is about the a priori assumption of the Divine.
But this a priori assumption is not, I hasten to add, groundless. It is incontravertibly grounded in an evidentiary Truth-Claim regarding the Facticity of an Historical Event: The Resurrection of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. This grounding in historical facticity may be correct, or incorrect; but it is certainly not "blind faith". Men will either find the evidence satisfactory, or unsatisfactory; but they certainly have evidences which they may examine (excepting, of course, the Body itself...).
And this Truth-Claim enjoys a compelling virtue -- it "ties up" all the philosophical loose ends left unanswered by Pascal's Wager. The Wager alone can only negatively advise a man of the potential danger of atheism (H.L. Mencken, an avowed atheist, once said he had dreamed he was at the gates of heaven and all he could say was, "I've made a horrible mistake." -- Rev. Oren A. Peterson, Unitarian) but it doesn't provide any affirmative direction whatsoever.
Combine Pascal's Wager with the execution stake on Golgotha, however, and the matter becomes logically binary: It's either a "1" or a "0". True, or False. If the Resurrection happened, all else follows. If it didn't, then the whole of Christian religion may be summarily dismissed and other avenues investigated.
Most modern "Christian" preaching would have you believe that Saving Faith consists of jumping straight to the fiducia without ever considering the notitia and consolidating your own assensus!! Not to put too fine a point on it, that's crap. If your fiducia is unfounded on notitia and assensus, then the classic criticism of Pascal's Wager is unanswerable -- there's no grounds to believe that any one fiducia is better than any other!! And it is not what Christianity claims of itself at all. Christianity claims of itself that is is a rationally superior fiducia. It claims that there is Notitia, and that there is rational grounds for Assensus, and that these are the right and proper grounds for subsequent Fiducia -- that if its claims to notitia and assensus be Invalid, it freely acknowledges the Invalidity of its own fiducia. Saving Faith is rational, confident, and honest Faith -- not pious self-deception.
If one claims that their Faith is independent of any Reason, one might as well believe in the Easter Bunny, and I would warn many of my professing Christian brethren that such an "Easter Bunny Faith" is hardly something to be proud of. It is NOT "Faith". It is merely sanctified Ignorance. And it is not how Jesus Christ himself taught. Observe:
And Jesus knew their thoughts, and said unto them, Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand: (Argument from Analogy)
And if Satan cast out Satan, he is divided against himself; how shall then his kingdom stand? (Law of Rational Inference) (Reductio ad Absurdum)
And if I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your children cast them out? therefore they shall be your judges. (Argument from Analogy)
But if I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God is come unto you. (Law of Rational Inference)
Or else how can one enter into a strong man's house, and spoil his goods, except he first bind the strong man? and then he will spoil his house. (Argument from Analogy)
He that is not with me is against me; (Law of Non-Contradiction)
and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad. (Law of the Excluded Middle)
John 2:18-22 -- Then answered the Jews and said unto him, What sign shewest thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things? Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days? But he spake of the temple of his body. When therefore he was risen from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this unto them; and they believed the scripture, and the word which Jesus had said.
John 10:30-38 -- I and my Father are one. Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him. Jesus answered them, Many good works have I shewed you from my Father; for which of those works do ye stone me? The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God. Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken; Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God? If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not. But if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works: that ye may know, and believe, that the Father is in me, and I in him.
John 15:24-27 -- If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin: but now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father. But this cometh to pass, that the word might be fulfilled that is written in their law, They hated me without a cause. But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me: And ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning.
Charles Hodge (Calvinist) -- Nothing, therefore, can be more derogatory to the Bible than the assertion that its doctrines are contrary to reason. The assumption that reason and faith are incompatible; that we must become irrational in order to become believers is, however it may be intended, the language of infidelity; for faith in the irrational is of necessity itself irrational....We can believe only what we know, i.e., what we intelligently apprehend.
Professing "christians" have been doing a mortal dis-service to the Bible for centuries by preaching the Gospel as a kind of "Easter Bunny Faith" and expecting to be taken seriously.
Calvin called that the very "height of absurdity", and I agree. I have no use whatsoever for Easter Bunny Faith and I honestly fear for my "christian" brethren that perhaps neither does God.
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Ok, you can't make sense of it, let me try:
Yes, but by any objective measure, when it comes to government entities, the protections provided to non-believers are far greater than those [protections provided] of {to} believers[,] when it comes to mixing religion and state.
Nope, that still doesn't make any sense as it leaves the 'religion & state' bit hanging there, connected to nothing, depending upon some imagined meaning of 'it'.
--- I give up. It's hopeless bafflegab.
"Hearsay"? No more so than Julius Caesar's The Gallic Wars.
Eyewitness accounts, credited, referenced, and verified by even hostile witnesses, less than twenty years after the relevent facts. About as much "hearsay" as a newspaper account of the Election of Ronald Reagan in 1981.
In other words... not "hearsay"... but rather, history.
OBJECTIVE HISTORICAL FACT.
If you doubt it, you need do but one thing:
Produce the Body of Jesus of Nazareth.
Any amount of money you wish to bet says you can't.
Ever.
Any amount of money you wish to bet says you can't. Ever.
Probably so. Crucifixion victims were left on the cross to be eaten by wild birds and dogs.
Mea Culpa. I was but five years old when Ronaldus Magnus took office...
BZZZZZT. Wrong answer, but thanks for playing.
In this particular case, a prepared Tomb had been willed to the victim in question -- over which Tomb a Roman Guard was posted.
Both Jewish and Roman sources and traditions admit an empty tomb. Those resources range from Josephus to a compilation of fifth-century Jewish writings called the "Toledoth Jeshu." Dr. Paul Maier calls this "positive evidence from a hostile source, which is the strongest kind of historical evidence. In essence, this means that if a source admits a fact decidedly not in its favor, then that fact is genuine."
Gamaliel, who was a member of the Jewish high court, the Sanhedrin, put forth the suggestion that the rise of the Christian movement was God's doing; he could not have done that if the tomb were still occupied, or if the Sanhedrin knew the whereabouts of Christ's body.
Paul Maier observes that " . . . if all the evidence is weighed carefully and fairly, it is indeed justifiable, according to the canons of historical research, to conclude that the sepulcher of Joseph of Arimathea, in which Jesus was buried, was actually empty on the morning of the first Easter. And no shred of evidence has yet been discovered in literary sources, epigraphy, or archaeology that would disprove this statement."
For the New Testament of Acts, the confirmation of historicity is overwhelming. Any attempt to reject its basic historicity, even in matters of detail, must now appear absurd. Roman historians have long taken it for granted. -- A. N. Sherwin-White Classical Roman Historian
According to the only guard narrative, the guard was placed at the tomb the day after Jesus' death.
Besides the blatant anti-Judaic thrust of Matthew, don't you think it's incredibly silly that the priests could buy off the guards afterwards, telling the guards to just say Jesus' resurrection happened while they were asleep on watch, and thus falsely implicating themselves in a capital offense?
You ought to try something: attempt to harmonize the resurrection accounts with each other (and don't forgets 1 Corinthians 15:3-8).
The development of the resurrection myth is incredibly fascinating. But to claim it's fact is pure fantasy.
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