Posted on 06/22/2009 5:33:32 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Do you believe in God? Really? And you're willing to admit it in public?
Oops. Sorry, for a moment I slipped back into the arrogant Atheism of my youth.
Before my parents had children, they decided to raise their kids in a secular home. We had gifts at Christmas time and chocolate covered matzoh during Passover, but there was no religion and certainly no God.
When I was in grade school, God was just a kind of nondescript character who popped up in Little House on the Prairie books from time to time. He seemed like a decent enough fellow, but was more or less a bit player who didn't have much to say.
After my grandfather died when I was seven, his Baptist minister lifted me up in his arms and told me, "It's all right, Grandpa's with God now." At that moment, I could feel my dress was hiked up in the back and all I could think about was pulling it back down. But later, I asked around and discovered that God was our Heavenly father, whatever that was supposed to mean.
I figured, who better to ask about my Heavenly father than my earthly father, but when I did he laughed.
He wasn't amused in a "kids say the darnedest things" kind of way. He was laughing derisively at the idea that my mother's family believed in God. And thus began my introduction to Atheism.
There are people who call themselves atheist who are simply nonbelievers, and then there are the big "A" Atheists for whom Atheism is almost a religion. This quasi-religious doctrine isn't neutral on the existence of other religions; rather, Atheism is a virulently anti-theistic creed characterized by sneering contempt for religion and a profoundly dogmatic bigotry toward people of faith.
Want to know how Atheists see the rest of us?
I grew up learning from my father that Atheism is rational, and therefore, religious belief is irrational; Atheism is defined by logic, religious faith by fantasy; and science is real while religion is make believe. Faith, I was taught, requires a willful stifling of reason.
The Torah, the Gospels, the Qur'an? All woefully inaccurate, laughably inconsistent fictions used to encourage belief in an illusion for the purpose of social control.
My curiosity in religion surfaced again in seventh grade when several of my friends were planning Bat Mitzvahs. Surely my friends weren't ignorant enough to actually believe in God, were they? The answer was no. For most of these Reform Jews, this celebration marked the official end to the tedium of Hebrew school. Most of their families were Ethical Culturists with a recreational interest in preserving their Jewish cultural identity. In other words, they too were Atheists.
By the time I reached high school, having had little contact with religion, I was convinced that people of faith were credulous and unenlightened. They gravitated toward soothing tales of God and afterlife to help them deal with their own mortality. At best, I considered belief in God an anachronism, a quaint vestige of days gone by, on par with superstitions about wicked thoughts causing birth defects.
At my extremely liberal college, I was exposed to even more militant Atheism. It was there that I learned the mere whiff of religiosity is worthy of denigration. Many of the people I met approached religion with something between disdain and loathing, and considered all religious belief a form of fanaticism. Christians in particular were characterized as knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing fundies (and that was in polite company.)
Fortunately my mother taught me enough manners that I kept my bias to myself.
In this new environment, my Atheism was more than evidence of good reasoning, it was a socially desirable badge of intellectual superiority. Make no mistake: Atheists think they're smarter than you. Atheism isn't simple skepticism. It is a certainty that believers are wrong, and by extension, intellectually inferior. Religion, especially Judeo-Christian religion, is nothing more than a crutch for dupes.
But Atheists aren't content to leave religion as a mere object of ridicule. They want it cleansed from public life. And enlightened as they are, they've come up with quite the pretense for justifying the righteousness of their bigotry: they are defending the vision of our Founding Fathers from a dominionist conspiracy to establish Christianity as the state religion.
You see, for liberal Atheists, the only thing worse than religion is the Religious Right, a term they use to encompass all Christian conservatives. And what better way to siphon fuel from the Religious Right than to convince Americans that the government is perpetually on the verge of becoming a theocracy?
And so, they accuse local governments of trampling the Constitution in the name of God and they find subliminal Christian iconography in political ads. They wring new meanings from Thomas Jefferson's notion of separation between church and state, and condemn our country's motto and the status of Christmas as a national holiday. But above all, Atheists stoke fear among religious and nonreligious alike that conservatives view government as a tool to force religion down your throat.
Pope-slandering buffoon Bill Maher, something of a patron saint among Atheists, has called religion "the ultimate hustle." Last fall, Maher's fellow liberal Chris Matthews, a self-described Catholic, roundly criticized Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for talking about prayer in a "secular environment" and complained that she made the Republican Party look more like a church tent than a big tent. In March, Matthews complained, "Why does everything sound like the '700 Club' with this Party now?" Such examples of anti-religious bias can be found every day on cable news, network television, and in the pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post.
As my politics strayed right of center after college, I realized I wanted no part of that Maher/Matthews worldview based in elitism and the ridicule of others. I made the transition from Atheist to atheist to agnostic, and have since discovered why it is often said that religion is experiential.
There was a time when I would have preferred any manner of torture to admitting the possibility of a higher power. These days, I'm proud to say I lost my faith in the Atheist creed.
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Jenn Q. Public writes about news, politics, and the seedy underbelly of liberalism at JennQPublic.com.
I think if Atheists really, truly believed in their own atheist ideals, they would set up totalitarian regimes to crush religious belief and criminalise dissent.
Oh wait, my bad, they did that already.
Which has been done many times on this forum, to no avail.
People don't believe because they choose not to believe, not because they can't.
The excuses they offer are just justifications for that decision.
>>Your “advice” to Christians comes across like the advice of hardcore Leftist Democrats who keep telling the RNC that they need to be more like them.<<
Ooooooo, spot on!!!!!
Great analogy -
pushing against a door to keep someone out that you deny is even at the door.
Hmmm... seems that this analogy has been made before...
Rev 3:20 Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.
Give an example.
I’ve concluded the same.
They don’t not believe because of the reasons they give.
They don’t believe first, and come up with “reasons” to justify that rejection of belief.
Kinda like activist leftist judges. Come to the desired conclusion first, then seek justification wherever it can be found.
>>They are both convinced that they can overthrow the Vatican in less than an hour after their plane lands in Rome.<<
LOL!!!
I’m so sorry. It amazes me that “Christians” like this act so, well, Un-Christlike.
One of the FReepers Sandyeggo, calls it “Slash and Burn Evangelization” I think that fits.
Evangelicals believe that not all are called to go. Some are called to pray, some are called to give. Some are called to go overseas, some are called to go in their workplace, some are called to go in their neighborhoods.
What matters is that one is doing the part God called each one to do.
In my mind, he has been told. I have no need to “convince” him, rather I will live a Holy life and show him. That is my witness and I am about as faithful as you get.
That is also how most evangelicals feel.
I thought Christ's instruction was to spread it and risk life and limb so that others may be "saved", too, not just yourself...
Thus far, you have merely declared that you are willing to make an effort for your own "salvation" alone... was Christ that, ahem, selfish?
You just revealed how much you'd be willing to risk for your faith, and as far as it can be measured, it's not much.
This happens every time leftists gain power. And leftists tend to be atheists, their god is the State.
Also, you are to work within your spiritual gifting.
Some are not gifted in evangelism, and attempting to “force” it will not have positive results.
>>That is also how most evangelicals feel. <<
Seriously?!?
Because we were told by the mod that FReepers are allowed to slam the RCC because it is part of their ministry to do this.
I’m so sorry if I offended you. Seriously, that’s what I was told.
I would and will risk everything for my God. Risk does not always come in grand ways standing before boards of inquisition, although some are called to do that.
Everyday I risk rejection by friends and family, by co workers and my job, etc for my God.
I risk nor taking that really good business deal because I know it is shady, and wrong. I risk my job by speaking out when necessary. I risk a friendship because I won’t tell that one little lie for them.
Life is risky to a true Christian. We are beset by risk all the time. Sometimes the easier risk is to pack up and go overseas, the harder one is to be true to your Lord right in the community where you are.
But dont get me wrong. If asked with a gun in my face if I were a Christian, with Gods grace I would answer yes. I would hope the rest of my family (and Im pretty sure they would) would do the same.
You mean, like in the Inquisition? LOL! Just imagine if they had machine-guns, mass-manufacture technology and nuclear weapons at their disposal, instead of single-loading muskets and primitive swords...
>>I thought Christ’s instruction was to spread it and risk life and limb so that others may be “saved”, too, not just yourself...<<
LOL! Hon, you need to study up more.
We are told to lead by example. We live a Christian life and others see that. You, by free will, chose what you want.
If you ask, I will witness to you. But we were not told to force anything down your throat. That mistake was made hundreds of years ago by the Catholic Church.
Come on into this century.
So, for the atheists out there, know this - I cannot prove what has happened to me by any scientific method known to man, but it was as real as the keyboard I'm typing on or the monitor I am looking at. I know without a doubt the holy spirit, and by extension God, is real - something I am most thankful for.
>>You mean, like in the Inquisition? LOL! Just imagine if they had machine-guns, mass-manufacture technology and nuclear weapons at their disposal, instead of single-loading muskets and primitive swords... <<
You mean like in Communist countries?
I belong to a Slovak parish. What you are speaking of happened, only it was the atheists doing it.
A misunderstanding of Scripture seems to come part and parcel with being an atheist.
Again, one is a Christian because of who one believes, not whether or not they fit into your distorted view of what a Christian should be.
Like I said before, what you are willing to risk for your faith is directly indicative of how much you truly believe in your god-entity.
If you are willing to do only so much as to be able to use faith merely as a psychological salve, then it doesn’t speak much for your faith, or the lack, thereof.
Atheists continue to mass slaughter people.
Christians? not so much anymore, eh?
It’s funny that the antitheists (like Islamists) _always_ bring up the Inquisition as “proof” that Christianity is false and evil.
It’s as predictable as a leftist bringing up fire/police protection and roads as justification for socialist programs.
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