IRONY -- An atheist juggling fire.
Posted on 11/27/2005 6:32:15 AM PST by machman
Morning Edition, November 21, 2005 ·
I believe that there is no God. I'm beyond Atheism. Atheism is not believing in God. Not believing in God is easy -- you can't prove a negative, so there's no work to do. You can't prove that there isn't an elephant inside the trunk of my car. You sure? How about now? Maybe he was just hiding before. Check again. Did I mention that my personal heartfelt definition of the word "elephant" includes mystery, order, goodness, love and a spare tire?
So, anyone with a love for truth outside of herself has to start with no belief in God and then look for evidence of God. She needs to search for some objective evidence of a supernatural power. All the people I write e-mails to often are still stuck at this searching stage. The Atheism part is easy.
But, this "This I Believe" thing seems to demand something more personal, some leap of faith that helps one see life's big picture, some rules to live by. So, I'm saying, "This I believe: I believe there is no God."
Having taken that step, it informs every moment of my life. I'm not greedy. I have love, blue skies, rainbows and Hallmark cards, and that has to be enough. It has to be enough, but it's everything in the world and everything in the world is plenty for me. It seems just rude to beg the invisible for more. Just the love of my family that raised me and the family I'm raising now is enough that I don't need heaven. I won the huge genetic lottery and I get joy every day.
Believing there's no God means I can't really be forgiven except by kindness and faulty memories. That's good; it makes me want to be more thoughtful. I have to try to treat people right the first time around.
Believing there's no God stops me from being solipsistic. I can read ideas from all different people from all different cultures. Without God, we can agree on reality, and I can keep learning where I'm wrong. We can all keep adjusting, so we can really communicate. I don't travel in circles where people say, "I have faith, I believe this in my heart and nothing you can say or do can shake my faith." That's just a long-winded religious way to say, "shut up," or another two words that the FCC likes less. But all obscenity is less insulting than, "How I was brought up and my imaginary friend means more to me than anything you can ever say or do." So, believing there is no God lets me be proven wrong and that's always fun. It means I'm learning something.
Believing there is no God means the suffering I've seen in my family, and indeed all the suffering in the world, isn't caused by an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent force that isn't bothered to help or is just testing us, but rather something we all may be able to help others with in the future. No God means the possibility of less suffering in the future.
Believing there is no God gives me more room for belief in family, people, love, truth, beauty, sex, Jell-o and all the other things I can prove and that make this life the best life I will ever have.
That's not exactly true. Penn and Teller don't want you to believe what you see on stage is real. They want you to leave never understanding how they did it, which isn't the same thing. They're very up front that it's all illusion and trickery. No real deception on that level at all.
Yes, true. But at least we will have a transcendent system whereby to say, "this is wrong, this is unjust, this is evil" not just because I say so but because the One who created the world says so. We have the means to resist popular or tyrannical will because we know the will of the One who created all things.
What are you trying to say? That you should not expose yourself to different cultures and ideas?
Or quoting his holy book to prove that his god was god, or in this case, to prove there is none. One might as well prove the truth of Communism by quoting Marx.
It is not selling anyone on Christianity to claim this man is a chump or liberal. He's a fine magician and possibly one of the best advocates of skeptical thought and logic today. If that doesn't make him an advocate for limited government, I don't know what does. This is, after all, a man who co-hosts the program 'Bullshit!' and used that bully pulpit to demolish PETA. He used it to tear apart the false god of recycling. And he used it to savage the fools that be in environmentalist causes.
Those who can't see that calling someone "chump" or "idiot," or falsely tagging them as a liberal isn't Christian, I pity ,for their empty, false claims expose their inability to even approach practicing what they preach.
I've noticed over the years that those (such as the author of this article) who feel it necessary to run around spewing their athiest beliefs have 2 issues-
1. Most often, they really believe in God but are VERY ANGRY at God, usually due to the tragic death of a loved one, or
2. They CRAVE attention.
Most of the REAL athiests in the world just want to be left alone.
For what it's worth, they've never claimed they can heal the sick if you just send them a check.
History tells me that you are living an illusion. If you think that removing a transcendant source for right or wrong is going to settle the world's disputes, you are living in la-la land.
Reminds me of the South Park episode where a bus unloads its cargo of souls in hell and the people protest that they were "insert religion here" only to be told sorry that was the wrong religion.
Too funny, That's a good one ... Do you also you think that Christians are the most 'Intolerant' of them all?
Here's a news flash for you: he's more on the political right than left. And he's had plenty of good things to say about America.
That was reshown last week; everyone newly arrived in Hell was at an "Orientation" session and a bunch of them complained "I was a devout Catholic, why am I here? "I was a devout Buddhist, why am I here?" etc....so they finally asked who was right, and the orientation leader said "The Mormons, the Mormons were right." And then they cut to Heaven filled with a bunch of Mormons in ties...hilarious.
I believe that God has infinite understanding, patience and compassion, and that He loves us all, no matter how arrogant we may be. But God is not mocked, and I'm not sure how He will deal with being willfully denied, especially in the presence of so much evidence to the contrary, which anyone can see did not just ooze out of some random weather event.
As a former atheist, you have no idea what you're talking about. You're trying to ascribe a particular motive to atheists, for reasons I do not know, but the agenda to assign the motive is clear.
IRONY -- An atheist juggling fire.
And the fool hath said, "let's use a 2,000 year old nomadic philosophy in the 21st century!"
Well, I'm unaware of Penn ever being seriously injured in a trick (he may have but obviously it can't have been that bad) and they do a ton of dangerious stuff.
My brone-age beliefs are better than *your* iron-age beliefs!
Stating this on Nation Public Radio is no surprise, it's the opinion of the majority of its listeners. If someone of faith was given serious time on NPR, then I would be surprised.
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