Posted on 03/14/2008 9:54:07 AM PDT by dinasour
In What's So Great About Christianity, Dinesh D'Souza is skeptical of skepticism and enthusiastic about the faith.
There are two types of Christian apologetics. One makes the positive case for faith; the other responds to critics. Dinesh D'Souza's delightful book, What's So Great About Christianity, falls into the second category. It sets out to rebut recent exuberant atheist tracts, such as Christopher Hitchens's God Is Not Great and Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion.
[Snip]
This leads us to perhaps the strongest argument against atheism, which D’Souza makes only indirectly—the argument from experience. Atheism cannot reach our hearts. A rigorous atheist cannot console in a time of grief, cannot explain love, cannot sigh in happy wonder at life’s endless surprises. He can only utter, “What is, is.”
(Excerpt) Read more at christianitytoday.com ...
Just curious - what consolation could an atheist offer when a loved one has died?
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Exactly the same consolation as you would offer.
Is empathy now a uniquely Christian trait? Sorry, I completely disagree.
So an atheist would tell a person who is grieving that they will see their loved one again in heaven? Interesting.
:::sarc tag in case it is needed:::
Probably the same thing to many people.
I once attended the funeral of a young girl who had died of leukemia. She was a beautiful, intelligent homeschooled teenager who had so much promise. But her family were atheists and her funeral was so full of secular readings, etc., and nothing of faith or hope or even eternal life. This couple had no comfort, had no faith or even hope of seeing their loved one again. It was the saddest funeral I’ve ever seen because it was devoid of hope. The parents are now divorced.
Around the same time, a young girl near us, Sarah Ann Wood, was kidnapped and murdered. They have never recovered her body. But her parents were able to go through this praising God in spite of it all. He was a pastor and they both had a great relationship with their Lord. They KNOW they will see their child again. That’s the difference.
DMZ,
Read the whole thing, as they say. Of course atheists feel pangs of emotion. They grieve, they laugh, they cry, they show up to hug and console. But when it comes to having something substantive to say, something that would provide consolation — that life has meaning; that one doesn’t simply occupy space for a time and then decompose; that there are great overarching principles that give life its depth, joy, texture and purpose; and that those principles arise not from artifice or practice, but from a Creator whose central principle is love — when it comes to making these arguments and more, the atheist must remain mute. They still can and do hug and cry. But they cannot argue that life is anything other than an accident and death, the end of everything...
Thank you, dinasour, for posting this little ray of sunshine.
Are you saying, that if one is an atheist, they cannot believe in something after death? If so, why?
Such as ‘He lived a good life, in his next he will have an easier time of attaining enlightenment.’
The post WW II saying about the Japanese is that they are born as Shintoist, married as Christians and die as Buddhists.
Not buying the death and rebirth stuff myself, I can only report from afar that folks who do find Buddhist doctrines consoling at the time of death and at the death of a loved one.
You might observe that modern Western atheists almost to a man also deny mind-body dualism or the existence of the soul, and regard mind, emotion, will, indeed all the attributes of personhood as epiphenomina of chemical reactions in the brain.
Buddhists are atheists, and don’t deny something after death: rather they are trying to escape from what they think comes after death—rebirth.
I guess the best thing would be to poll the atheists here on FR. How would a Buddhist try to escape something they believe will happen? Maybe some FR Buddhists would answer also.
Let me place the challenge in your lap. Tell me how atheists would believe in life after death. I’m unaware of any who profess to believe in such a thing, but would be interested, if there are such folks, in hearing what they have to say.
Pretend my child just died. Now, from an atheist's point of view, console me in my grief.
As I said in #18, not being an atheist, I cannot comprehend how or why they believe what they do. I too, would like to know what they have to say.
I am incapable of accuratedly knowing what an atheist would say. Perhaps something like..’be thankful that your child is at peace, or is no longer in pain’...something like that. Although, an atheist may not care how you feel, as they know it is the child that died, and you have to deal with these things in your own best manner.
An athiest would be incapable of saying such a thing without betraying his atheism. As to "no longer in pain" who said anything about pain? What if the child just dropped dead or was hit by a car or drowned in a pool?
Logically with an attitude like that, the Atheist should be walking through hospital wards with a AK-47.
Exactly why would an athiest would be incapable of saying such a thing without betraying his atheism? Is being at peace impossible for them? As you must have read, I said ‘something like’, not anything specific. Why is it logical, that an atheist should be walking through a hospital with a weapon? That doesn’t make any sense at all.
You can’t do it, can you?
Can’t do what?
Doesn't seem hopeful to me. "You just gotta keep living over and over and over and over and over until you get it perfect. Then you get to die for the lasttime and then it's over."
Amen.
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