Posted on 11/16/2010 10:21:55 AM PST by pastorbillrandles
Did you know that the English-speaking world is in the midst of an Atheistic revival? It is fueled by a small but widely celebrated group of authors and thinkers who call themselves “the Brights”, and who lecture, debate and write best-selling books which have a wide following among young college and University students.
These are not your father’s atheists either. They are articulate, impassioned, and effective at the use of the media, and the internet. The “new Atheists” believe that the old atheists were too tolerant of religion, and not aggressive enough in their attacks upon it. To them, religion is not benign it is a retrograde evil which society can no longer afford to tolerate.
They also insist that one doesn’t need God to be moral, and in fact they posit that morality without a fear of punishment or hope of reward is purer and more virtuous than that which is motivated by religion. “Be good for goodness sake” was the slogan put on atheistic advertising on public transport in London England.
The danger to beware of is not their arguments, which are not much different from the worn out , long discredited talking points of everyone from Voltaire, Hume, Nietzsche, down to the bitter village atheist of yesteryear. All have been and hopefully will be rebutted by Christian apologists for this generation.
The reason I say we should beware of them, is twofold; first because of their suave packaging and sophisticated use of multi media and internet. These people come across like they know what they are talking about.
Secondly, to put it bluntly, the youth for the most part, are all too ill-equipped to think through these specious arguments, and are proving to be vulnerable to these modern sophists. Frankly, the decay in standards of education, the shift from Logos centered thought, antithesis,logic, facts and reason, to consensus and image based education has left many open to these attacks at the University.
Shockingly it is almost a fad for young people raised in traditional christian homes to “come out as atheists” at university, and there are websites and you tube videos that teach them how best to “break it to their parents”.
There are popular you tube videos such as “What if I’m Wrong”, in which young people rationalise that if their choice to become an Atheist turns out to be wrong, they would still reject the christian God on philosophical and moral grounds, marshalling accusations against the God of the Bible, such as His command to slaughter Canaanites, or his statutes against homosexuality.
More shockingly, there is a video “blasphemy challenge” , in which students are offered a DVD of the Atheistic ‘documentary’, called THE GOD WHO WASN’T THERE, to anyone who makes a DVD of themselves “deconverting”- specifically calling upon them to “renounce the Holy Spirit!
Here is the challenge from the website :
The Rational Response Squad is giving away 1001 DVDs of ”The God Who Wasn’t There” the hit documentary that the Los Angeles Times calls “provocative — to put it mildly.”
There’s only one catch: We want your soul.
It’s simple. You record a short message damning yourself to Hell, you upload it to YouTube, and then the Rational Response Squad will send you a free The God Who Wasn’t There DVD. It’s that easy.
INSTRUCTIONS:You may damn yourself to Hell however you would like, but somewhere in your video you must say this phrase: “I deny the Holy Spirit.”
Shocking, isn’t it? I am showing you this not to shock you but to alert you to the reality of the assault upon your children and the naive.
But furthermore I show this to also pull back the covers on the underlying spiritual essence of this movement. There is something more going on here tan just “free thought” and humanism. Here is the given reason for the specific instruction to “deny the Holy Spirit”, by the so-called “Rational Response squad”,
Why? Because, according to Mark 3:29 in the Holy Bible, “Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; he is guilty of an eternal sin.” Jesus will forgive you for just about anything, but he won’t forgive you for denying the existence of the Holy Spirit. Ever. This is a one-way road you’re taking here.
The point is that this movement is spiritual in its essence. This is Satanic,it is an assault on the faith by the Father of lies, designed to blaspheme God and to damn souls. They have free rein on our campuses and places of higher learning. Unfortunately a good many young people are seeing these New Atheists as rock stars, they are emulating them mimicking their arguments, and renouncing their faith. Hopefully these reports will strengthen those who are tempted by this phenomenon, giving them arguments and the answers that have stood the test of countless similar attacks and accusations over the centuries. “Always be ready to give a reason for te hope you have in you with respect and gentleness”(I Peter 3:15) We will be looking next at the so-called “four Horsemen of the Atheistic revival, the Brights” as they call themselves, Christopher Hitchens , Sam Harris,Richard Dawkins, and the lesser known Daniel Dennit.
The Law of the Jungle.
What is your rebuttal to this? That everybody is right? That is not possible. There can only be one true faith.
BTW, as far as atheists claiming they don't need religion to be good, how many of them donate to charity, and in what amount? I haven't seen many hospitals built by atheists to serve the poor and needy. Or even thrift stores.
That is why they have risen as the far left has risen in the US. Soros is god.
The Left is open to Stalin’s, Hitler’s and the Aztec’s “diverse” values.
Atheists are accustomed to Christians being polite as they attack them. I match their energy and they run like wounded dogs. They freak out when a Christian puts down the Bible and looks ‘em straight on. I don’t want to convert activist atheists. I want to crush them.
Which of course is the main reason you almost never see any atheist attack islam.
Sam Harris is an interesting case, because he really doesn’t think science is the end-all and be-all. He thinks we need drugs and Eastern mysticism to fill in the gaps where science doesn’t.
http://www.rationalresponders.com/sam_harris_rational_mysticism
You know, pretty much anything but believing in a real God.
“I don’t understand the need for “New Atheists” to attack religion. If the rest of us are simply worshipping something that to them doesn’t exist, why care SO much about it?”
Because they are self-centered tyrants who want everyone to bow down to them.
That's exactly what Hitler thought too.
“The pro-abortion movement murdered tens of millions of souls already.”
Excellent Point! And to come to think of it, the New Atheists have death panels in store for those of us on the other end of the age spectrum.
So what is the connection between atheism and totalitarian governments? There are no limits to what government can do to people if there is no belief in the sacredness of human life. But those who seek to rule by decree find religious belief to be a pain in the arse, much as the American left goes ballistic when the bitter clingers push-back against reproductive “rights”, gay “marriage”, or health care “entitlements”.
I promise I’ll only butcher the communists and my death camps will only be staffed by non-union labor in right-to-work states :)
Christians need to stand up to them and not with Bible verses.
I noticed that too.
Cheers!
That puzzled me for many years also.
Then I heard a speaker who was as ex-atheist Christian, and he said that there are really very few TRUE athests, most of them are agnostics that hate the idea of an ultimate authority to which we're accountable.
They sense eternity in their hearts, and they also sense their original sin, so they must evangelize, because the only thing that loves company more than misery is guilt.
I prefer to call them "militant secularists."
The messiahs of materialism who are all knowing. LOL
I don't think that Atheists realize that the more aggressive they get the more they prove the Thiests' theory of good and evil.
...same as the old atheists. the new ones speak with more pride & boldness. At one time it was almost a closet issue. No it is like a badge of honor for many
Basically, I might be willing to listen to a theory which required one or two probabilistic miracles in the entire history of the planet, but evolutrion requires a transfinite series of zero-probability events and that just stands everything we know about modern mathematics and probability theory on its head. You can either believe in modern mathematics or in evolution, but not both at the same time.
I mean, the fools who believe in that bullshit even talk about "climbing Mount Improbable", which is the title of one of Dawkins' books if memory serves. It isn't like they don't know the whole thing is fubar.
That makes no sense. All events had some probability. The contention is that the combined probability to reach the current state is too small.
Here's an experiment. Take a fair coin, flip it 10 times. What is the probability you end up with HHTHTHTHHT? The answer is of course 1:2^10, or 1:1024.
Now take the same coin, flip it 10 times with NO predetermined desired result. Let's say you end up with THHTTTHHTH. What was the probability you ended up with that? The answer is the SAME probability that you ended up with any other result, and 1:1 that you would get A result. Get it? Cumulative probabilities only apply if you establish a desired result.
Or, to put it another way, the probability of YOUR numbers being picked in the lottery are very small. What is the probability that A set of numbers will be picked? 1:1 of course. People do win the lottery because there are millions of possible outcomes chosen, a significant chunk of all possible outcomes, so it is quite probable that one of them will be picked occasionally. The odds only stack up against you when you choose ONE of them to be the one you think will get picked.
Creationists falsely think that in natural selection, the current state was the desired end result, but nobody bet the evolutionary equivalent of HHTHTHTHHT or picked lottery numbers before it all started. We end up with what we get, probability 1:1.
This of course completely ignores the fact that natural selection does NOT propose a series of random, unconnected events, throwing that standard probability model creationists like to improperly use out the window.
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