Replies

"She's an Atheist."

I'd be an atheist too, if I'd been "dealt" the cards in life she has. In fact, I AM.

Why do people who don't believe in things (which other decent people believe, blah, blah, blah,) for which there is no scientific evidence, and for which there is ample cause for doubt continue to be belittled?

I am so glad this woman is crusading for (obvious) human rights, but stop mingling the relevant with the irrelevant.

Nobody's ever answered you?

People look down on atheists because most know they're in denial.

It is remarkable in this woman in that meaningful discussion of values, meaning, and ethics on the one hand, and atheism on the other, are mutually exclusive.

There. Now someone's told you.

Dan
Why I Am (Still) a Christian

Arguing about my testimony with you would be completely futile. I was once an atheist, as you are. I was once resentful when people "babbled Jesus" at me and I had to be polite about it. Thank you for being polite.

You're wrong, but only if you take the risk and try prayer on your own, privately, can you adequately test the hypotheses upon which you depend. I was amazed once at the warmth and love that flooded my entire mind when I took that risk and prayed for the first time. He was there the whole time, whether I believed or not.

That knowledge is not something I can give anybody. If you don't pray sincerely to find out, you stay out in the cold, convinced that the universe is void of purpose.

It's interesting that the disability rights movement has found itself unintentionally aligned with religious conservatives. Many of the Not Dead Yet set use the exact same rhetoric as other minority group representatives -- and many are correspondingly quite liberal. When I covered a Not Dead Yet Peter Singer rally for the Trenton Times as a freelance reporter, I interviewed a woman who made a point of telling me she was a feminist and pro-choice. She didn't want to argue that all life was sacred... just that all born human beings are equally valuable under the law. Why, she asked me, would a girl like me who was depressed get counseling and medication, but if she said she was depressed, she'd get Jack Kevorkian? Euthanasia denies the equality of disabled people, and there doesn't need to be a God involved for that to be the case.

I don't think this is logically consistent all the way down the line, however, because ultimately viewing human life as a good in and of itself has its roots in a religious faith -- namely, that a higher power views life as an a priori good. Otherwise, why is living better than not-living, in the grand scheme of things? It can be an awful bother at times.

Here's something I wrote for the student newspaper after my conversation with the Not Dead Yet protester:

http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/Content/1999/04/21/edits/column1.html