Too Hot to Handle: Rainbow Unicorns and Cosmic Heat Death

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Ship of Fools, or The Titanic Arrogance of Postmodernity

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Visceral Atheism

Atheists contend their position is so intellectually robust as to be unassailable.

In Psychology Today, Satoshi Kanazawa makes the argument that atheists are more intelligent than religious people because “humans are designed by evolution to believe in God”, meaning that those who have become aware of this are smarter than those who have not.

That view makes atheism the red pill and the rest of us benighted Matrix-dwellers, if you’ll excuse the metaphor.

Why Are We So Easily Shaken?

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Inbox: Richard Carrier’s Moral Philosophy

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Too Hot to Handle: Faith in the Crosshairs

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Something Worth Dying For

So I’m lunching in my favourite café.

You will forgive me for eavesdropping, I’m sure. If you’ve ever done the lunch thing in a major metropolis on a main street, you know that bodies are close together and overhearing one another is usually unavoidable.

Well, forgive me or don’t, but a group of five a few feet away are discussing a friend who, after all their best efforts to cure him, remains “religious”. Poor benighted fellow.

And I’m thinking … where does this come from, this compulsion to strip others of the comfort of faith?

The Big Gamble

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What Should We Think About Death?

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The Evil Nature of God

What’s the argument inside the argument?

Over at the Friendly Atheist, Michael Runyan, a former Catholic and retired risk analyst lists 40 problems he sees with Christianity, one of which he calls the “evil nature of God”.*

After doing a little Old Testament math with rather broad strokes, he says this:

“The case can be made that God killed or authorized the killings of up to 25,000,000 people. This is the God that Jesus looked up to and of whom he was allegedly an integral part. That is to say: Jesus himself was an accessory to these massacres. Therefore, Christianity cannot extract itself from these atrocities; it must own them and admit that their God is in fact a serial, genocidal, infanticidal, filicidal, and pestilential murderer.”

Hmm. Let’s think about that a little.

Inbox: Breeding Atheism

Mac Pier, head of a parachurch organization in Manhattan called The New York Leadership Center, is calling for unity in the church.

Fox News thinks Pier’s “confessions” on behalf of the church are important enough for Bill O’Reilly to spend five minutes quizzing Charles Krauthammer about the church and how its longstanding divisions are alleged to encourage atheism in the world.

Our reader Qman asks, “What’s your take, is it valid?”

522 Inept Logicians

Fritz von Uhde imagines Mary’s
encounter with “the gardener”

The debate as to whether Jesus actually rose from the dead stands at the centre of Christianity. As the apostle Paul pointed out, “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins”.

That being the case, the doctrine of the resurrection could not be more important.

Amy Hall at the Stand to Reason blog has been regularly fielding challenges from the atheistic 522 Reasons Christianity is False website (apparently the name changes daily; they are at 522 reasons and counting). Still, after reading today’s challenge from atheism, I propose we rechristen their blog 522 Inept Logicians.

Another Exercise in Subjectivity

I just read an extimony.

An extimony, I am reliably informed, is sort of an anti-testimony. It’s the story of how a person un-converted from Christianity, becoming an atheist, agnostic, freethinker or Pastafarian, depending on their particular circumstances and bent.

Short version: I was not overly impressed with the arguments of the gentleman who wrote this one.

Too Hot to Handle: How We Live and What We Believe

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Quote of the Day (6)

“The earth, O Lord, is full of your steadfast love,” said the psalmist.

It may be argued that in a fallen creation the “steadfast love” of God that fills the earth is easier to recognize at some moments than at others. But contrast that with a materialistic universe, where genuine love is absent by definition.

Someone got Catholic novelist John C. Wright going on the subject of the atheistic vs. the theistic worldview and their respective implications, in particular for the possibility of love as opposed to mere sentimentalism.

Too Hot to Handle: My Favourite Atheist

In which two or more of our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

Pat Condell*

Tom: My favourite atheist is a cranky Irish comedian named Pat Condell. He’s fearlessly pro-Israel, anti-Islam … and, sadly, more than a little ignorant about what the gospels actually say.

Here’s a sample of what he thinks about Jesus, for instance:

“I don’t reject Jesus, I reject religion … the early church capitalized on [supernatural nonsense about Jesus] and exploited it enthusiastically because they needed Jesus to be a god so that they could use him to generate fear — which, of course, is the only level they know how to operate on — and also so that they could claim supernatural authority through him, which is the best kind of authority to have when you’re bluffing. As a mere man, Jesus was almost useless to them. All he could offer were words of compassion and wisdom, and what earthly good would they be to the men who run the church?”

Too Hot to Handle: Atheists in Foxholes

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Quote of the Day (5)

Last week, Tertius and I discussed the first chapter of Romans, comparing its language to statements about faith in Hebrews. Specifically, we were interested in how much about God may be known from nature, and how that knowledge is different from what may be known by faith.

Paul says in Romans, “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.”

Tertius and I agree that “eternal power and divine nature” takes in quite a bit.

Why Are We So Easily Shaken?

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Too Hot to Handle: Generation Z and Unbelief

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Content-Free Christianity

Christianity ... without all the nasty Christian bits.

Watch out: it’s catching on.

I mean, I thought Gretta Vosper was impressively brassy. (For those unfamiliar with Gretta, she’s the atheist United Church minister and author who doesn’t believe in the historical Christ. She has a congregation of less than 50 and thinks things are great. And don’t forget, you can have her new book Amen delivered to your door for just a little over Cdn$45 if you suspect she might have something profound to say about ... not believing.)

But though she’d be content to amend the word “God” to read “good” and carry on with many of the traditional forms tweaked only slightly, at least she seems to understand that she is not a Christian.

Too Hot to Handle: The New Atheists are Scared (or Angry)

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Inbox: Unreceptive Hearts

Qman comments on Spiritual Treachery:

“The most obvious reasons are that, being omniscient, both the Father and the Lord Jesus are well aware when men and women have receptive hearts and when they don’t, and they tend not to entrust valuable truth to those who care nothing about it.”

With regard to the above point, I have not yet seen you deal with the argument below (maybe I missed it) which is a typical, but fairly valid, response to the above from the Ag[nostic]/Atheist crowd. I think IC may have dealt with it in a different forum but I forgot.”

Inbox: Richard Carrier’s Moral Philosophy

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Get a Cat, Richard

Not my cat, but close enough

I’m feeling inadequate today, for a number of reasons.

One is age. Okay, fine, relatively speaking I’m not all THAT old. Still, when you get out of bed in the morning and creak all the way to the bathroom and don’t feel like yourself until you’ve had your morning coffee (assuming you are still allowed by your doctor to drink coffee and of course always assuming that alcohol is not involved), you start to think about how much worse it may get.

Someone at the midweek prayer meeting I attend recently offered up thanks for the life of a fellow believer who just reached 110, more than twice my age. That is, to me, a daunting prospect.

Head to Head: Theism and the Skeptics [Part 1]

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The Atheist’s New Clothes

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Contemplating Evil

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Lies, Myths and Misinformation: Smart People Are Atheists

Are more intelligent people atheists? Bill Maher certainly thinks so:

“We are a nation that is unenlightened because of religion. I do believe that. I think that religion stops people from thinking ... I think religion is a neurological disorder ... I am just embarrassed that it has been taken over by people like evangelicals, by people who do not believe in science and rationality.”

So does Richard Dawkins, unsurprisingly:

“By all means let’s be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.” 

And of course the atheists network calls itself “the Brights”, presumably in contrast to those who are not.

So this is intriguing.

The New New Atheism

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Atheism and Logic

I’ve read numerous books on the subject of whether the Christian faith is “reasonable”.  Most of these were consumed as a young adult, when the question seemed more urgent and I was considerably less equipped to argue it.

While some books were better than others and all made some valid points (most if not all of which are now lost in the sands of time), I do not recall many staking out the intellectual Christian position as aggressively as John C. Wright does in his latest “Wright Perspective” column.

By aggressive, I don’t mean nasty or mean-spirited. But, Lewis and Chesterton aside, the more modern books seemed primarily concerned with mounting a satisfactory intellectual defence of Christianity from accusations of unreasonability, illogic and incoherence. They were, if not on the ropes sucking air, perhaps a little over-occupied with avoiding the knockout punch.

Wright, on the other hand, comes out swinging and keeps moving forward.

An Apple for Mr Dalrymple

If a godless totalitarian government ever takes over and forces us all to celebrate Take an Atheist to Lunch Day, I want dibs on Theodore Dalrymple. Mind you, that’s assuming he’s still available at that point, and not locked up as a traitor to the State.

On the Unfair Maligning of Atheists

It occurred to me that a paragraph in Friday’s post probably warrants a disclaimer or two:

“What sort of miserable, twisted personality seeks to rob another human being of all the emotional and lifestyle benefits that come with the Christian life for … for what? So the successful converts to atheism can hit the bars, brothels and the casinos and ‘eat and drink, for tomorrow we die’? So they can swell the ranks of the overweight, the suicidal and the terminally miserable? So they can help bankrupt the health care system? So they can cheat their employers, slack off and go on welfare because, hey, why not? So they can scream and wail and fall on coffins at the weddings of loved ones because that’s all, folks? So they can camp out in the cold with the Occupy gang and resent the rich and powerful because their only hope is in this life?”

I’m not for a second suggesting that all those who are not believers in Christ end up abusing drugs, alcohol, food or the welfare system, are extra-grief stricken at funerals, hate the rich or kill themselves.