Not So 'Bright'

COMMENTARY: The Wall Street Journal ^ | October 6, 2003 | DINESH D'SOUZA

[OESY]

"We have always had atheists among us," the philosopher Edmund Burke wrote in his "Reflections on the Revolution in France," "but now they have grown turbulent and seditious." It seems that in our own day some prominent atheists are agitating for greater political and social influence. In this connection, leading atheist thinkers have been writing articles declaring that they should no longer be called "atheists." Rather, they want to be called "brights."

[Conservative Me]

"The atheist foolishly presumes that reason is in principle capable of figuring out all that there is, while the theist at least knows that there is a reality greater than, and beyond, that which our senses and our minds can ever apprehend."

How foolishly presumptuous. A theist "knows" as much as an atheist does, but may "believe" differently.

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[ontos-on]

Thanks for the post. The author tackles a difficult topic. That is whay such "brights" so often operate with impunity and such perfect self-delusion. It will be interesting to see what reception it receives.

[Petronski]

The atheists believe that their five senses can perceive all that there is to perceive...another way of saying "if I cannot perceive it, it cannot exist." Thus is laid bare the arrogance of the atheist: either arrogance, or childishness.

[martin gibson]

Western civilization (Dead White Male) bump...

[Petronski]

BTW, great post bump!

[maryz]

OESY, great column -- thanks for posting!

Ping list -- more on "brights"!

[Pest]

Bump

[aruanan]

How foolishly presumptuous. A theist "knows" as much as an atheist does, but may "believe" differently.

How ridiculously reductionist.

[Tribune7]

A theist "knows" as much as an atheist does, but may "believe" differently.

No, if God exists then the theist knows infinetly more than the atheist. It's just that the atheist refuses to believe it.

[RinaseaofDs]

Precisely the point. An atheist HAS a belief system. They believe there is no God. When an atheist goes to court and asks for the ten commandments to be removed from a court house in order to promote religious freedom, its disingenuous. He is asking for the state to adopt his religious worldview, that there is no God, and any acknoledgement by the government that there may be a God is and infringement on the atheists religious freedom.

On the contrary - every time we censor a prayer, every time we take down a religious historic monument, we give up both our religious and our free speech rights, and we acknowledge atheism - a world without God - as our national religion. We endorse it explicitly.

[Conservative Me]

"If God exists..." Short of God appearing before me, I have no actual proof that He exists. It is a matter of belief, not knowledge. That was my point.

I mean no disrespect, unlike the article posted which is full of condescention.

[Conservative Me]

Not true. When an atheist asks for the Ten Commandments to be removed, he/she is asking that the state acknowledge that not everyone finds their moral code from the Bible, and that the state acknowledge that not everyone believes that our laws stem from the Biblical Ten Commandments.

[Fraulein]

Terrible and misguided -- and in many places, just flat-out wrong -- representation of even the very basics of Kantian thought. Embarrassing even to read.

[CatoRenasci]

Well, of course, part of the problem is that many of these "brights" have simply not really read Kant seriously (The Critique of Pure Reason is notoriously difficult, in German or in English translation), but have a knowledge of Kant's works filtered through third rate interpreters. Some of the best work on Kant hasn't been translated: Ernst Cassierer's Kant's Leben und Werke. Cassierer was a serious philsopher in his own right (The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms and other works) as well as a leading Kant scholar. Most of the have not read Pascal's Pensee either, and know "Pascal's Bet" only from popular accounts.

What many modern academic philosphers fail to do, and this bozo sounds like one of these, is take the philosophical questions about the existence of God (or whatever name one wishes to put forth for the divine) which have troubled thinkers for over two thousand years of recorded philosophy, with the seriousness they deserve.

[laredo44]

The atheists believe that their five senses can perceive all that there is to perceive...another way of saying "if I cannot perceive it, it cannot exist."

Nonsense. I've never "perceived" the core of Pluto but that doesn't mean I don't believe it exists.

[Tribune7]

"If God exists..." Short of God appearing before me, I have no actual proof that He exists. It is a matter of belief, not knowledge.

But, God has made his existence clear to me. I can't, of course, make God appear to you in a controlled experiment. Rationally, what other explanation makes more sense than the Biblical God to explain reality?

I mean no disrespect,

I understand.

[Jason Kauppinen]

"Nonsense. I've never "perceived" the core of Pluto but that doesn't mean I don't believe it exists."

You could concieveably dig to the core of a planet and use other tests to prove it's existance.

The notion of God isn't subject to empirical verification by it's very nature.

As for the "if I cannot perceive it, it cannot exist" quote.... it's a misinterpetation of the atheist position. The real position is: "if I cannot perceive it WHY should I recognize it exists?"

[Conservative Me]

Your proof is not proof to me, however. If the existance of God could be proven, everyone would believe.

IMO, there is plenty of proof that God does not exist. It is all in perception, I guess.

Christianity is not the only belief system that exists. To others Buddhism makes the most sense to explain reality, or Islam, or Hindu, etc. All the believers of their individual faiths believe their god(s) explain their existance.

Science explains most of what I see everyday. That is not to say that I believe science has explained everything. I believe there is much out there that I will never understand, or could ever be explained to me. I just do not believe that there is a God(s) behind it.