Oct 24 2006
New Atheism–Declare your position.
Where do you stand on God? According to the “New Atheists” it is time to declare your position. This is the challenge posed by the New Atheists.
The New Atheists will not let us off the hook simply because we are not doctrinaire believers. They condemn not just belief in God but respect for belief in God. Religion is not only wrong; it’s evil. Now that the battle has been joined, there’s no excuse for shirking. Read about it here.
They have a point that believers should take note. It is time believers declare their position! Atheisim is evil! In fact anything that goes against Christ is evil. I’m not saying that the people who believe in Atheism and other religions are evil, they are deceived and misled.
We believers need to see what is out there. Our battle isn’t with other believers, it is with Satan!
What do you think?
10 responses so far
I have been thinking about that for a while, that our battle is not with each other but against evil. And yeah we should take a stand and do all for the glory of God through Christ
Bless ya!
You are right…..our battle isn’t with flesh and blood but powers of the dark world. (eph 6:12)
Thanks for bringing it up. You are so good at always getting everyone thinking & talking. I love coming over here!
If it is a battle we are in then where is it fought? If it is spiritual then how does it involve us? You are right, the battle isn’t against believers, athiests, humans, flesh…..but the powers of darkness that have a grip over their lives keeping their soul in bondage.
I think one of the big issues where the enemy of the Light is experiencing victory, is Christians. When it all comes down to it, often times, we really in the core of who we are don’t care enough to be broken for souls in bondage (atheism, indifferentism, meism, someothergodism).
Thanks for your consistant clarity!!!
Kansas City
I wonder how many Christians are equipped to engage people like this in discussion? I know that I sure wasn’t, even after coming out of seminary. And let me tell you, the younger people among us, our high school and middle school kids, who are going to encounter this in the classroom the moment they walk on to a state college campus, are not prepared at all.
We should be teaching apologetics like there is no tomorrow. Because there may not be.
As an atheist ( which means that I believe in one less god than you do) I can say that I would never dream of being disrespectful of those who believe in a god- any god. I do NOT condemn belief in any supernatural being. I am interested in WHY people believe what they do, as much as WHAT they believe. I’m currently studying Sufism, and treat my teacher with respect. It doesn’t mean that I have to adopt his beliefs as my own.
If I’m a “soul in bondage”, then I must say that I’m a happy one! No demons to fear, no god to terrorise me with threats of fire, no absurd myths to smother my reasoning faculties, no dread of the afterlife at all. This was my choice. It wasn’t foisted onto me. I read a lot, I analysed, I weighed up the pros and cons and eventually concluded that it would be dishonest of me to go to church when I honestly could not believe in the stuff that was being spouted every week. The hypocrisy of some of the “believers” was another spur. Mumbling their prayers to god on Sunday, and bashing their wives and kids the rest of the week- not an inducement to believe in an all-seeing and punitive deity.
The onus is on the ones who make the claims to prove that their claims are true. So far, I’ve not come across any believer who could do this. Hence, why should I believe them?
A question- why does it grieve so many believers that there are people like myself on this planet? It doesn’t give me any pain or sorrow that some believe in the supernatural, so why should you get upset with those of us who choose to treat the supernatural as another fairy tale?
Lees1975, there WILL be a tomorrow! As long as humans don’t blast themselves out of existence with nuclear devices, we’ll be here for a very long time. All species are doomed to eventual extinction and our turn will come in due course. But it won’t be tomorrow. It may not be until the sun finally self-combusts, and that’s going to be in about 5 billion years, so don’t panic. But we will eventually cease to exist, as all things are fated to be.
Christians have been focusing on “the end of the world” for a very long time. I wonder why. With the earth so full of wondrous things to delight the senses, why would anyone waste their life waiting for it all to end, in the hope of a “heaven” which nobody can prove exists? Folly, it is all folly, said the Philosopher.
Kevin:
God said He’d send strong delusions in the end times. At least I think I read that. This, IMO, is just another of them.
I read a sign somewhere that God is in the business of rewarding those who diligently seek Him … He described how that process goes … but He’s not into convincing skeptics they’re wrong.
Personally, the only things I’ll ever discuss with a “non-believer” are the things God promised they could comprehend … namely that He is, from the creation, and about sin, death & righteousness. He said the Holy Spirit would convict of those things. As to arguing the existence of God, I cannot do a better job than the creation.
Francoise,
The day will come for both of us when there is no tomorrow. Where will you go from there?
It is impossible to prove that God doesn’t exist. In order to do that, you would have to possess the infinite knowledge of the universe because as long as you do not have the ability to do so, you cannot prove that there is no God. He may well exist in some part of the universe of which you do not have knowledge.
If you possessed the infinite knowledge of the universe, wouldn’t that make you God? It would be impossible not to believe in your own existence, then, wouldn’t it?
That’s pretty much the same argument you are using to claim God doesn’t exist, isn’t it?
Lees, I didn’t say that God doesn’t exist. I don’t try to prove that God doesn’t exist. I said that the onus of proof is on those who make claims.
I am saying that I have never heard or read anything to convince me that the God of the Christian Bible is what I should be worshipping. I am more interested in what and why people believe what they do- the variables which affect their belief or lack of same. I’m constantly astonished that believers find the existence of atheists something to be sorrowful about, particularly when quite a few atheists have been humanitarians and benefactors of their own species.
Yes, one of these days there will be no more tomorrows for me. After that, I go into the earth, there to decompose and provide food for something else. And that’s the end of it. Nobody has ever returned form the dead to tell us what the after-life is like. In the absence of any evidence to the contrary , I choose to believe that death is the final curtain. It doesn’t bother me one iota, and is an inducement to live every day to the max. It’d be nice to believe that some loving, supernatural father-figure is awaiting me, but it’s wishful thinking.
I’m afraid that I have lived too long to believe in any God who cares at all about human beings.From what I’ve read on this blog, it appears that “God” is able to do the odd jobs here and there for his believers- but when it comes to his big chance to show everyone just how wonderful he is, he’s nowhere to be seen. Like the tsunami which killed 500,000, and Hurricane Katrina, and the 9/11 atrocity. Where is he when he’s most needed? Nowhere at all. If he’s all powerful, then he would be able to prevent such hideous suffering. If he’s all good - ditto.
But he DOESN’T.
This is all very unfortunate, and as a subscriber to Wired, I’d seen this earlier.
There have always been, and probably always will be, intolerant sects of every faith, every political position, every philosophy, and even every sports club. As certainly as there are followers of Islam who disrespect other faiths, there are Christians who disrespect other faiths, and of course there are atheists who disrespect faith itself.
As a Christian, I find lees1975’s position no less deplorable than Mr. Wolf’s. I believe in Christianity because the Sermon on the Mount inspires me. When someone asked Dr. Martin Luther King Jr what he thought of the KKK’s protest against him he said, “I condemn their actions but I cannot condemn another human being.”
The Dali Lama, who by his actions is indeed a Christian in my book, said that what is important is to respect other faiths and beliefs, even if we don’t adopt those beliefs.
And frankly, fundamentalism doesn’t help the Christian cause. Although misguided, Mr. Wolf correctly identifies religious fundamentalism as a great cause of human suffering in the world and he’s right to attack it as such. His understanding that faith and religious tradition always equivocate to intolerance and the lack of a secular society however, is incorrect. Or at least I hope it is.
If anything, you all are proving Mr. Wolf right — by attacking atheism as “evil”, you are indeed proving that your own religious tradition is intolerant.
Enough with this “I’m right and you’re wrong” nonsense. Enough with proving faith — you do not prove a religious tradition any more than you prove a culture.
Francoise, I could tell you were a good egg. Keep up “the faith”! Tee hee.
Seriously tho, faith scares the bajesus (can I say that here?) out of me. It leads to craziness like Christians supporting Zionists, who they fundamentally disagree with, because they believe it will hasten the end times, conveniently allowing them to, for example, continue burning petroleum like there is no tomorrow. (Ha ha.) The idea that the President of the United States thinks in terms of a world that could end any day now is utterly terrifying. How must that inform his decisions?
I try to believe as little as possible. I don’t believe that SiddhÄrtha Gautama transcended this realm of existence, that Marshall Herff Applewhite was picked up by an alien space craft, or that there was an omnipotent being slumming among we worms 2000 years ago. I suppose in the estimation of many readers here, that makes me an atheist. (Also in my own, I was just being dramatic there.) I just don’t see a reason to assume those things when more mundane explanations work just as well and provide me with a better understanding of “the true nature of reality”.
But, like everyone, I am still forced to make important decisions on a constant basis with imperfect information. To that end, I still find some of the teachings of Buddhism, Christianity, and other religions useful. (Not so much those of Heaven’s Gate…) I think I am able to make better decisions than either the fundamentalist or the hardcore anti-religious type because above all, I try hard not to abdicate reason. Wisdom can be tested, you don’t have to believe blindly. And, not everything that is written in a holy book is wise. (I know, I know, “God says.” God says a lot of things.)
These views aren’t offered to offend, and I hope none is taken. After all, our host did decide to publicly discuss atheism, it can only help to hear from some actual atheists.
Geekwad, What convinced you that I’m a “good egg”??:-) I can only speak plainly and truthfully.
George Bush- yeah! That’s one helluva scary dude!! How many Iraqi and American deaths do there have to be before he realises that the WMDs have always been a figment of the imagination? Ooops, sorry. I forgot that he has a direct line to God. Well, that makes it all OK. Seriously, the man is a bipedal scourge on the planet. The Buddha was a myth, but Siddhartha Gautama probably existed as a human being. He laughed at efforts to deify him, wise man, and left it up to the individual to make their own decision to worship or not. Jesus turns me cold- with his ever present threats of hellfire and demanding that we “hate” our families to prove our love for him. What egocentricity is that!? Do any Christians practise this? I bet they do not.