Posted on 03/23/2015 12:59:41 PM PDT by NRx
The New Atheists are not a comfortable group of people. They have scornful contempt for those with whom they differ — that includes religious believers, agnostics and other atheists who don’t share their vehement brand of nonbelief. They are self-confident to a degree that seems designed to irritate. And they have an ignorance of anything beyond their fields to an extent remarkable even in modern academia. They also have a moral passion unknown outside the pages of the Old Testament. For that, we can forgive much.
When asked in Ireland a few years ago about the abuse of children by priests, Richard Dawkins — who, along with Sam Harris and the late Christopher Hitchens, is among the best known of the New Atheists — responded that he was more concerned about bringing a child up Catholic in the first place. You don’t say something like that seriously — and Dawkins is always serious — without a deep sense that something is dreadfully morally wrong. The whole system is rotten, this stance shouts, and corrupting to the core.
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com ...
Quite an article; I’m not sure what to say, except that I had best read it again.
What parts might those be? I am suspecting he means Madison WI, Austin TX, San Francisco CA and similar liberal cesspools.
Homosexual "rights" without reference to morality creates a class of tyrants able to use government force in "anti discrimination" laws to make people accommodate what most would civilly decline in varying degrees on moral grounds. So all, from adoption agencies to landlords to schools to bakeries, become subject to amoral tyranny because they are denied their right to choose morally.
Morality comes from God. The Founders knew it.
Atheists don't believe in God ... I don't believe in atheists! {^)
In a nutshell, the writer seems to be sort of a “deist-agnostic”. He’s open to the idea that there is “something” out there beyond our understanding and that that “something” might have something to do with our existence. But, if there is a “something”, it cannot possibly be the Christian God or the God of Judaism.
His main argument against the Christian view of God is the existence of human suffering. The writer thinks that is the smoking gun that thwarts all belief in a “good” God.
At least, that’s my take on the article’s main points.
the problem of suffering has been refuted to the point where no serious academic uses it as an argument anymore. Bogus tripe
It starts out well, but then the author spews the same hate he complains about. Not much worth reading here.
From where does he get the morality to define what a “good” God is?
“Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion–a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality. I am an ardent evolutionist and an ex-Christian, but I must admit that in this one complaint–…–the literalists are absolutely right. Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today.”
– Michael Ruse, How evolution became a religion
The time has come to take seriously the fact that we humans are modified monkeys, not the favored Creation of a Benevolent God on the Sixth Day. In particular, we must recognize our biological past in trying to understand our interactions with others. We must think again especially about our so-called “ethical principles.” The question is not whether biology—specifically, our evolution—is connected with ethics, but how. As evolutionists, we see that no [ethical] justification of the traditional kind is possible.Morality, or more strictly our belief in morality, is merely an adaptation put in place to further our reproductive ends. Hence the basis of ethics does not lie in God’s will…. In an important sense, ethics as we understand it is an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes to get us to cooperate. It is without external grounding. Like Macbeth’s dagger, it serves a powerful purpose without existing in substance.
Ethics is illusory inasmuch as it persuades us that it has an objective reference. This is the crux of the biological position. Once it is grasped, everything falls into place.
- Michael Ruse and E. O. Wilson, The Evolution of Ethics
Wow. That is an incredibly novel argument. I wonder why no one has ever thought questioning why God allows suffering in His fallen creation before this NYT piece? I mean, that would just shake any person's faith...
except not. See Job. What's amazing about amateur philosophers like this is that like angst filled college kids, they are convinced that they have come up with an unassailable argument that no one has ever thought of before. It's tiring just dealing with the repetition.
re: “the problem of suffering has been refuted to the point where no serious academic uses it as an argument anymore. Bogus tripe”
Totally agree.
But even worse, the writer goes on to say that people who continue to believe in God, after facing this “irrefutable contradiction” that there cannot be a God because suffering exists - their continuation to believe in God is what makes people of the Christian faith dangerous and the “new atheists” justified in their extreme hatred/anger toward Christians.
On what grounds does a non-theist object to anything on “moral grounds?”
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