Posted on 05/03/2015 5:00:52 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Way too many of us believe in a magic book negated by science and peppered with all manner of misanthropic myths.
A lawyer and an associate dean at Liberty University, a columnist for Glenn Beck’s The Blaze, and the founder of WND’s Christian fundamentalist site Barbwire.com, Matt Barber might seem like an evangelical fringe character, but, clearly, he means to have his voice heard and his pronouncements taken seriously: his work appears under the portentous slogan RELATIVISTS BEWARE: TRUTH TOLD HERE.
Yet he is affiliated with Glenn Beck, so, in pursuit of Truth-Telling, he sees fit to publish such essays as “You Won’t Believe What the Devil Said to Me!” and “Sympathy for the Devil” — a Means to Destruction, in which the authors, in complete earnestness, write of a horned-and-dangerous Beelzebub as an existent being looming over their daily lives. One would be tempted to dismiss such scribblements as ridiculous, but six out of 10 Americans do believe in Satan. Christianity, that multilevered vehicle for the dissemination of “blind and naked ignorance,” has warped the minds of a majority of Americans, and Barber’s blog reflects (sadly) mainstream religious convictions.
By a tragicomic process of inversion, thus, we have to take Barber seriously, precisely because we would be inclined to disregard him as deeply un-serious, and thereby fail to appreciate the increasing threat that Christianity poses to our Constitutionally godless Republic. The latest reification of this faith-based menace: the proliferating “religious freedom restoration acts.” Nor should we forget the already shockingly successful stealth campaign underway to circumvent Roe v. Wade and deprive women of rights over their own bodies. Both RFRAs and restrictions on abortions are the products, largely, of evangelicals whose names should go down in infamy, but who, like Barber, at least out in the red states, bask in the light of benevolence as “people of faith.”
On April 26, in response to my recent Salon article denouncing the rancid mire of superstitious gobbledygook in which our presidential candidates are wallowing, Barber published “Will Christians Be Fitted with Yellow Crosses?” The arguments he makes against my exposé are as foolish as they are grounded in widely held misconceptions regarding atheism and the nature of reality itself, and so merit rebuttal – a task I find both pleasant and entertaining.
After a desultory prolegomenon in which Barber inveighs against “the secular left’s utter disdain for both our Creator Christ and His faithful followers,” fumes over long-overdue progressive challenges to various discriminatory laws he supports, and warns about “America’s cultural Marxist agents of ruin” and the “acidic bile” of “unfiltered ‘progressivism,’” he labels me a “God-denying goose-stepper” and “paragon of paganism” who “ably puts the ’bigot’ in anti-Christian bigotry.”
Accusations of “bigotry,” trotted out with the intent to silence, should still the tongue of no outspoken atheist. We attack not religious folks as people, but the irrationality inherent in their religion, which is nothing more than hallowed ideology, and therefore is, or should be, as much fair game as, say, socialism. Would Evangelicals heed calls to “respect” Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders (who has just announced his candidacy for 2016) and avoid engaging in “anti-socialist” bigotry with regard to his political views? Of course not. Nor should they, necessarily, if they disagree with him. Being a socialist, just like being a Christian, is a matter of choice, save one important fact: at least socialism constitutes a coherent ideology to which nothing resembling the benighted principle of “Credo quia absurdum” (I believe because it is absurd) has ever applied.
All those who, in the public arena, advance Christianity’s bizarre supernatural propositions about our world and our origins, and worse, use them to justify legislation, should expect relentless demands for evidence from rationalists. But before Barber or other faith-addled folks take to their keyboards and type out what is usually their first argument against atheism, I’ll dispense with it myself. Yes, we atheists freely admit that no one can epistemologically prove there is no God. But the strength of our convictions should match the validity of the evidence on which they are founded. Shelley put it succinctly: “God is an hypothesis, and, as such, stands in need of proof: the onus probandi rests on the theist.” Verse and chapter cited from a potentially unreliable translation of a supposedly holy book composed millennia ago by unknown humans cannot pass as “proof.” But if there is no real evidence to support belief in God, there’s plenty to assume He is nothing but a figment (if a vengeful and despotic one) of our overactive imagination — a product, mostly, of our fear of death. Again, it’s up to believers to justify themselves, not atheists.
But back to Barber’s blog.
Barber takes issue with my statement about “The electorate’s gradual, relentless ditching of religion.” This has been well documented in surveys, to which I link in my essay. Unable to refute them, Barber reminds us that that “over 80 percent of Americans identify as Christian” (which I had acknowledged), and then goes on to claim that “the vast majority of those who don’t . . . nevertheless acknowledge[e] the transcendent reality of a Creator God.” A Gallup poll conducted last year blows apart this contention: 42 percent of all Americans now believe God created the universe, down from 47 percent in 2000, with 19 percent (up from 9 percent in 2000) of all Americans holding that God had nothing to do with it. So even among those purporting to believe in him, the “God as Creator” idea is losing out.
Barber then chooses to embarrass himself with a declaration that confirms he should stick to batting in the Little League of modern-day thinkers:
Every man, woman and child understands through both general revelation and human reason that this unfathomably intricate, staggeringly fine-tuned universe didn’t create and fine-tune itself. It’s a tiny minority of angry, self-deluded materialists like Jeffrey Tayler who deny this self-evident truth.
Many believers might indeed find such a boner-studded profession of ignorance credible (and surely Barber does, given that he earned all three of his degrees at religious institutions), but secularists who read grown-up books will immediately see how it contradicts what physics and biology tell us about the cosmos. The universe, we now know, did create itself, arising out of a quantum event – a “singularity,” when time and space were wrapped into one — some 13.7 billion years ago, exploding from a tiny speck of unimaginably dense, hot matter to its present dimensions. (And it’s still expanding.) Some four billion years back, it is postulated that a still-unexplained chemical occurrence gave rise to the first self-replicating biological molecule from which began life on Earth and from which we evolved according to the (eminently comprehensible) process of Natural Selection. This renders God, as Richard Dawkins put it, “an excrescence, a carbuncle on the face of science,” unnecessary for any phase of “creation.” (For more information, Barber might wish to set aside his magic book and delve into the oeuvre of the theoretical physicists Lawrence Krauss and Stephen Hawking, and, of course, Dawkins’ own “The God Delusion.”)
Scientists are working hard to plug the lacunae in our knowledge. Answers will come from physicists and biologists and empirical observation, not preachers ranting about the “revelations” bespattering their “sacred” tome. Barber’s Creator God is nothing more than a shopworn deus ex machina, whose mysterious emergence poses its own obvious question: what created Him? And so on, ad infinitum.
Barber then cites my description of the “faith-deranged . . . unwashed crazies” in red-state primaries whose “religious beliefs would (or should) render them unfit for civilized company anywhere else.” This he terms “hubristic elitism” and “so 1939,” comparable to Jews being forced to wear yellow stars in Nazi Germany. “Shall we Christians,” asks Barber, “be fitted with yellow crosses, Herr Tayler?”
I chose the term “faith-deranged” with care. I meant it literally, lest there be any doubt that I intended to be merely incendiary. Derangement is clearly rampant across large swathes of America. Citizens of one of the most technologically advanced nations on earth who opt, of their own volition, to believe in a magic book negated by science and peppered with all manner of bilious behests and misanthropic myths cannot be esteemed to be thinking sanely. Given the extreme nature of the delusions of these citizens and the resulting behavior – for example, petitions whispered to an invisible celestial tyrant with the goal of securing favorable outcomes, otherwise known as prayer, and hallucinated responses from said invisible tyrant – only one conclusion presents itself: faith has disrupted their mental faculties and is producing symptoms that, were they not sheltered under the adjective “religious,” would qualify as pathological.
I do consider Barber’s addressing me as “Herr” inapt, since it raises Hitler’s overworked ghost and implies that I think that I’m carrying out the Lord’s work. Those who would dispute me might wish to consult volume one of “Mein Kampf,” in which Hitler announced: “I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator,” and “I had so often sung ‘Deutschland über Alles’ and shouted ‘Heil’ at the top of my lungs, that it seemed to me almost a belated act of grace to be allowed to stand as a witness in the divine court of the eternal judge and proclaim the sincerity of this conviction.” They might also check the next chapter, in which Hitler predicted that “inwardly armed with confidence in God and the unshakable stupidity of the voting citizenry, the politicians can begin the fight for the ‘remaking’ of the Reich as they call it.” They surely would wish to know that Hitler’s Wehrmacht soldiers launched themselves into battle wearing belt buckles emblazoned with the motto “GOTT MIT UNS” – God is with us. This was all, really, par for the course. Throughout history, self-sainted barbarians have pressed their imaginary deity into service and used him to justify their lust for bloodshed.
Barber then accuses me of “knifing twixt the shoulder blades, the richly diverse, 100 thousand-plus student body at Liberty University” by calling their school a “bastion of darkness” that should be subject to “immediate quarantine until sanity breaks out.” This is the equivalent of, in his words, my “consigning all faithful Christians to a constructive encampment beyond the margins of functional society. That’s their end-game. That’s the way their boxcars roll.”
I actually like Barber’s use of “twixt” – the only instance of elegance in his otherwise pedestrian prose. But according to its own site, Liberty University has 13,800 students, not a “100 thousand-plus.” “Boxcars” — that’s Barber’s extrapolation. Atheism has no “holy book” of any sort that could serve as a manual for repression (as, say, the Bible did for the Inquisition). Furthermore, my suggestion of “quarantine” was, besides being obviously facetious, quite charitable and open-minded. After all, to earn their release into society at large, Liberty University students would be free to redeem themselves by renouncing fealty to their bogus deity and de-matriculating.
Barber says my phrase “fanatical homophobic cult” describes his “papist friends,” when I was, in fact, referring to Christ Fellowship (which Sen. Marco Rubio attends on Saturday nights). Christ Fellowship is indeed a “fanatical homophobic cult,” one so extreme it demands that employees certify their straightness. Presumably, Barber errs tendentiously, and hopes to spark the ire of the errant Catholic who might stumble upon his blog. In any case, he closes with a dull jab at President Obama: “Russia had its Stalin and China its Mao. Who needs an ‘invisible tyrant’ when we can elect one at the ballot box? Or didn’t we already do that.”
Such a statement only bolsters the point I made above, if in other words: faith deranges, and absolute faith deranges absolutely.
Barber’s blog is but a symptom of the seemingly incurable malady of faith. In fact there is a remedy — free speech, applied liberally to infected areas. Rationalists must resist all calls to show respect for religion, be it Christianity or Islam or any other faith with universalist pretensions. Recall the damage these stultifying ideologies of control and repression have done the cause of progress throughout history. And remember the stakes now, with so many of our presidential candidates flaunting their belief, and seats on the Supreme Court likely to free up, especially post-2016. We either fight back by speaking out now, or we may end up living in a Christian-theme-park version of Iran, with Ted Cruz as our ayatollah.
Yet do not despair! In the United States the winds of reason are blowing more strongly than ever: since 2012 alone, 7.5 million have abandoned religion. We atheists have the momentum. Finally, finally, we can make out religion’s “melancholy, long, withdrawing roar.”
Those sleeping the slumber of faith hang DO NOT DISTURB signs about their minds.
No rationalist should feel obliged to comply.
*****
Jeffrey Tayler is a contributing editor at the Atlantic. His seventh book, "Topless Jihadis -- Inside Femen, the World's Most Provocative Activist Group," is out now as an Atlantic e-book. Follow @JeffreyTayler1 on Twitter.
“It can’t be proven or tested as false or true that God exists the same way one can test gravity and its properties... The question at best must be left open, in terms of applied method, reasoning, or analysis.”
Sorry, but I must disagree with your argument as much as that of the atheist. I reject the premise entirely.
We do not need to speculate, hypothesize, or theorize about the existence of the sun. We just need to look up. We know the sun is there through observation (though we may not touch it lest we be consumed, nor look at it directly lest we damage our eyes).
We test theories not facts. We do not test the existence of Abraham Lincoln. He is a historical figure. We do not test the existence of Congress. It is observable. Their existence is not theoretical, it is factual. It is the data. We use theories to make sense of data and then validate the theories by testing.
The idea of testing the existence of God is categorically wrong. God has been observed. For those who have first-hand experience, and have encountered God, there is no need for speculation. For those who have not, the question is more of the credibility of the witnesses.
I am enjoying the smell of fear emanating from Salon.
5.56mm
The United States Supreme Court has never determined whether atheism qualifies as a religion.
OR the Masons, Elk, Moose or even the Boy Scouts..
BUT to some .......... they are...
Sheep pens are indeed sheep pens...
over looking the metaphorical- Lion, Vulture, Pig and Rat PENS...
Some peoples “GOD” is not a god at all... except in a “designer” way... in their imagination..
Water seeks it’s own level... in that way..
lol....
But the 7th Circuit has determined atheism to be a religion, and if their ruling has been challenged, then the Scotus declined to hear the challenge, generally taken to mean they had no problem with it.
So, the legal system sees atheism as a religion in that it deals with ‘ultimate issues’. This is evident in Betty Boop’s post in which she quotes an atheist who tells us where we came from, where we’re going to, our purpose, our meaning, and the values accompanying those positions.
The demon queers are restless at Salon...
She can be (Yoda) a Jedi warrior.. fighting the "Sith".. (spit)
What an interesting post betty boop.....thank you so much. I enjoyed the read greatly!
What is interesting is God never attempts ‘to prove’ that He is. Rather states so...”I am that I am” ...the great “I Am”.
We should undertake a compilation of the “Essays of Betty Boop” found on the millions (?) of pages of threads of Free Republic past.
They would probably make an excellent sequel to her and Alamo’s “Timothy”.
It would take a considerable search engine to pull them all out. We’d have to seek assistance from the NSA. LOL.
I would agree with you in part for as the scripture says...”For we know in part and we prophecy in part, we see thru a glass darkly then face face(from 1Corinthians 13).
I was speaking more to the dead end proofs the skeptics demand but even when you show them they move the goal posts. Real reason posits that that we must acknowledge God as real based on the evidences seen thru out creation; but the stubborn hearts of men still refuse to acknowledge him, inventing in their darkened imaginings more reasons to deny the things of God AS the things of God!
The Bible says it is with the heart we believe unto righteousness and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation, so even reason itself is not enough to seal the deal,,,there must be a personal encounter and submission
to Jesus Christ.
“What is interesting is God never attempts ‘to prove’ that He is.”
Actually, He does provide proof. This is in contrast with scientific theories which cannot be proved. Theories are either simply well-supported, or untested, or falsified.
Don’t surrender to the secular definition of faith as believing something apart from or against the evidence. Faith is reasonable. It is based on real experience, logic and evidence.It is based on what has been seen, heard and touched. Take the resurrection, for example:
Acts 1:3
[The apostles] to whom He [i.e. Jesus] also presented Himself alive after His suffering by many infallible proofs, being seen by them during forty days and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.
The apostles who witnessed Christ’s death and resurrection, recorded what they saw, heard and touched:
1 John 1:1
That which was from the beginning, which we [i.e. the apostles] have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life...
Faith is based on reason:
Isaiah 1:18
“Come now, and let us reason together,”
Says the Lord,
“Though your sins are like scarlet,
They shall be as white as snow;
Though they are red like crimson,
They shall be as wool.
“The Bible says it is with the heart we believe unto righteousness and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation, so even reason itself is not enough to seal the deal,,,there must be a personal encounter and submission
to Jesus Christ.”
I agree. See my post #92 above, for further comments on this subject.
Looks just like me! LOL!!!
The bible(NT) is looked on by many as “Jesus Lore”
actually it is.. just opinions of some people.......
Much like “The BIG BANG”.... no proof of that either..
some good suppositions true, but merely science LORE.. i.e. theories..
Others say there’s “proof”... but it is debatable.
Fact remains, “What do you know for sure”.. IS relevant..
takes “faith” to believe something that happened 2000 years ago or even longer..
Are BIG BANGERS religious?... There seems to be many PREACHERS.. of Big Bang Lore..
If eternity future is possible, eternity PAST must be ALSO..
Presently I don’t have enough faith for that... i.e. BANGism
There seems to be more believable lore for Jesus.... AND eternity past.. i.e. GOD..
You know- God making angels and the War of the Angels.. and the emergence of Satan(demons) and all that.. “whatever they are”...
It’s always something... -Roseanna Dana..
Roseanna Dana- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5BKAaZrqgE
.....” Faith is reasonable. It is based on real experience, logic and evidence. It is based on what has been seen, heard and touched. Take the resurrection”.....
Yes, of course God reveals himself in the person of Christ. But many seek God apart from Christ and proof that He is. We often hear people say ...”if your real show yourself to me”. They desire a face, an encounter, an experience.
The evidence they might find might point to God but doesn’t prove God is, rather it ‘points to’. That is what evidence does. Points.
‘By faith’ we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command,... so that.... ‘what is seen was not made out of what was visible.’...... Heb.11:3
Creation cries out that there is the Creator......the evidence points to that....but HE does not show Himself creating....especially since he commands and it IS. It is by faith then we believe where the evidence points to.
Yes, dear brother in Christ; I noticed that, too.
Still, we can reasonably ask: Is atheism a “religion,” as the Plantiff insists in James J. KAUFMAN, Plaintiff, v. Gary R. McCAUGHTRY and Jamyi Witch, Defendants?
This seems to be a question of the same type as the question: Is gay marriage a “marriage?” The answer depends on how one defines “religion” and “marriage,” respectively. What is disturbing is the involvement of the federal courts in making such determinations at all.
Anyhoot, in the lawsuit you cite from U.S. District Court, W.D., Mr. Kaufman — who was trying to establish an “atheist study group” at a Wisconsin correctional facility on “free exercise” grounds — defines an atheist as <>
…someone who does not believe in the supernatural or in any gods, does not believe in rituals and prayer, basically believes in what you can see and test through science or through your own observations. He believes that atheism is a ‘communal type thing,’ with no hierarchy or power structure. Plaintiff believes that atheists have ethics derived from society, history and personal experience that help believers determine what is right and wrong.Let’s have some fun and “deconstruct” atheism. As you noted, dear xzins, it has many outward features of religious commitment and practice. Certainly, it is a belief system, faithfully, passionately adhered to. It has its own “holy writ,” and “prophets” and “evangelists.”
Here’s the “holy writ” part — which also names a person who qualifies as an “evangelist” of the faith (this from Jeffery Tayler in the article at the top):
The universe, we now know, did create itself, arising out of a quantum event – a “singularity,” when time and space were wrapped into one — some 13.7 billion years ago, exploding from a tiny speck of unimaginably dense, hot matter to its present dimensions. (And it’s still expanding.) Some four billion years back, it is postulated that a still-unexplained chemical occurrence gave rise to the first self-replicating biological molecule from which began life on Earth and from which we evolved according to the (eminently comprehensible) process of Natural Selection. This renders God, as Richard Dawkins put it, “an excrescence, a carbuncle on the face of science,” unnecessary for any phase of “creation.”My problem is, if you analyze this holy writ, you find that it is based on certain thoroughly unexamined (it seems to me) presuppositions: (1) That everything in the universe “supervenes on the physical” (i.e., on matter in its motions). (2) There are only two causes that operate in Nature: the material and the efficient. There are no formal (specifying) or final (purposive) causes in Nature. (3) Rather, the Nature we humans experience and observe is, at any given point in time, merely the outcome of purely random events. The only constraint operating on this randomness is Natural Selection, which itself is based on “accidental” events (random mutations).
To me, the most significant take-away in all of this is the complete denial of any and all metaphysical, cosmological, religious, or spiritual extensions of the natural world. That little maneuver deftly rids one of God; but it also seems to rid one of the human soul, not to mention the very foundations of human reason and human consciousness itself.
But if, as I believe, what we call “religion” is an encounter between God and human souls, then how can atheism be a religion, since it abolishes both?
Atheists tend to brag that they’re just being “scientific.” And since there is no “proof” of God to their satisfaction, it is therefore senseless to impute to such a fiction any role in the creation and unfoldment (evolution) of the universe.
At which point, I’d like to interject an observation that seems to lay out our present quandary very well, indeed:
The enormity of the differential between non-anthropic [i.e., non-life-supporting] and anthropic [i.e., life-supporting] values of our universe’s [fundamental] constants may be likened to a monkey typing out Hamlet (without any recourse to the play) by random tapping on the keys of a typewriter. Needless to say, it requires belief to explain this occurrence by pure chance.In conclusion, it seems to me that, given the above considerations, atheism is not a religion, for all that it may want to be recognized as such.
If one were to come into a room where such a monkey had been typing randomly for a month, and were to discover twelve sheets of perfect Shakespearean prose, one could reasonably and responsibly believe that someone intelligent (possessing a fine knowledge of Shakespeare) had snuck into the room and helped the monkey. Alternatively, one might believe that the monkey had a random stroke of luck that allowed a conspiracy of coincidences unimaginably remote [see Penrose’s number] to occur by pure chance. In one case, one believes in an intellect that one did not see. In the other case, one believes that an unbelievably improbable occurrence took place by pure chance.
…I leave it to the reader to ascertain which kind of belief is more reasonable and responsible. — Robert J. Spitzer, S.J., New Proofs for the Existence of God: Contributions of Contemporary Physics and Philosophy, 2010; p. 65f.
To love God is to love Truth. It seems atheists do neither.
Cheer up, atheists! Though the atheist may not be covered by the Religion clauses of the First Amendment, they are still fully protected by its guarantee of Free Speech, not to mention Free Association….
The case law you cite, dear brother in Christ, did not reach to such sublime considerations; rather, it was decided on pretty narrow, technical grounds that found the Plaintiff's argument "moot" WRT the decision reached — which probably exasperated, frustrated the “activist” or evangelizing Plaintiff to no end....
Thank you ever so much for writing, dear xzins!
I didn't even get into the "fine-tuning" aspects — the dozens of universal physical constants, each of which is not only "fine-tuned" in itself, but — more importantly — are seemingly designed to interact/interface with all the other universal constants, so to produce an anthropic universe....
I find it highly doubtful to suppose that any element of this arrangement is the product of "accident," of pure chance, let alone their combination....
Thank you so much for writing!
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