Showing posts with label faith. Show all posts
Showing posts with label faith. Show all posts

Monday, February 20, 2012

In Response to Thoughtlessness (or—The Atheist Mind)

The following is an excerpt taken from the transcripts of a lecture given by the famous philosopher, Mr. Billy Brightish, at the equally famous policy institute, WHATTHINKUM U, in the great Southwestern village of Albuquirky. The extract actually comes from the question/answer portion at the end of the talk (but before the widely reported police intervention) when one particular young man (and aren't they always young) came to the mic to challenge Mr. Brightish. The lecture presented an analytical breakdown of the spurious inferences and irrational suppositions of the atheist mind presented in its varied art forms today with a particular emphasis on television and film.

"You in the pink muscle-shirt and sandals. What is your question?"

Q: Sir, I'd like to know what gives you the right to criticize writing in film, television, or anywhere else? It's interesting to me when people who don't work in a particular field criticize the craftsmanship of an artist.

A: Hmm...(pause). I fail to see anything at all interesting in it. I don't make cars, but, like most people, I can easily tell you everything that's wrong with mine. I'm not a barber, but, I know perfectly well when my hair is cut right or when it's uneven; when it's been left too long or cut too short. You don't seem to know this, but I actually am an author. It wouldn't matter, however, if I was not. I would still be a conversationalist. I have thoughts and theories. I'm a philosopher. I'm a metaphysician. I'm a logician. I'm a dreamer. I am every man. And like most men, I know poor dialog when I hear it or see it. I know poor logic, poor sentence structure, whining, cliché's, theoretical impracticalities, a priori arguments, baseless conjecturing, opinions established on mere sentiment along with the vulgar sophistry that is so much a part of the atheistic mindset in the world of art.

Picasso used a fair amount of symbolism in his work. Unfortunately, his paintings and sculptures seldom said anything when reconstructed. Even a poor logician like Freud would agree that sometimes a nude is just a nude and a beggar just a beggar. Unless a work of art tells a story, it fails as art, but may please as mere esthetic. I find over and over that atheist artists either fail to say anything useful, or they say something worse than useless, and that is an untruth.

Let us consider the recent web series The Confession. You may think important questions are asked in the show. I say that the queries are childlike and the responses inconsiderate. Our doltish gunman played by Kiefer Sutherland posed a surmisal a few episodes back that came wrapped in the kind of irreality this series will be known for (if it's to be known for anything at all) when he suggested, no—declared—that there were more murders done in the name of religion that anything else. Even during the crusades Christians only killed 100,000—a drop in the bucket compared to atheists. Atheists have killed more people during the past hundred years than all the religions of the world combined during the past two thousand. Mao killed 70 million; Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev killed 66.7 million; Brezhnev 900,000; Mussolini 300,000; Pol Pot 1,700,000 for starters.

Q: People do not kill in the name of atheism. If an atheist communist kills a large number of people, he did not kill them because he was an atheist but because of ideologies.

A: What's in a name? How about if I say they kill in the spirit of atheism? What all those mass murderers had in common was atheism and Social Darwinism. Genocide is the logical outcome of Social Darwinism carried out to its conclusion. I've yet to see a genocidal Social Darwinist who was not an atheist. Some might argue that Hitler was one, but I would counter with the fact that he would claim to be a Pagan to one group of people and a Christian to another group down the road. It seems fairly obvious to me that he didn't really believe in anything but his own selfish desires.

Q: But atheism is not a belief. It doesn't tell you what is right or wrong, it doesn't have a moral conduct, and it doesn't tell you how to live your life. It is ONLY a rejection of a specific belief.

A: I disagree. It is no mere a negation. The only people it isn't a belief for are those who have never heard of it, nor of concepts of God. That might entail a few tribesmen in a remote village who have had no contact with the rest of the world. A person like that can be an atheist without knowing it. It's doubtful, however, that this would include anyone anywhere since every single known language in the history of the world has a word for God. At any rate, for anyone who has heard of a God concept, atheism is of course a choice, and you cannot make a choice without forming an opinion, which in this case is what you mean when you say belief.

Further, atheism is the worship of self. Its code of conduct is selfishness. And this is why every single known genocidal Social Darwinist has been an atheist. Both ideologies are completely egocentric.

You also cannot be an atheist without being an adherent of naturalism, empiricism, and humanism among other cockamamie beliefs. Atheism is an entire belief system. Naturalism, incidentally, makes no room for free will. And of course, since free will is obvious to all mankind, atheism is foolishness. Or do you really think that the reason people all over the world stop at a red light is because the random particles of the universe just happened to make them all do this?

Q: "It is an absolute failure of logic at best to suggest atheism kills people."

A: Atheism is a worship of self interest at the expense of all others. It's a philosophy that says, "Do what thou wilt." It's a philosophy that says, "Nothing matters." It's a philosophy that says, "There are no consequences for my actions." Atheism is nothing short of a recipe for murder and insanity.

Q: "I suggest you have an irrational hatred of atheism."

A: This is the way a child argues. He lies. He calls dislike—hate. He calls the rational—irrational. And it's exactly what I expect from an atheist. Atheism is the most childish and thoughtless of all metaphysical suggestions. It abhors science, and it abhors reason. Therefore it must lie to make even an artificial point.

Q: "Claiming atheists kill more people than anyone else is equivilant to...."

A: I gave a verifiable list of genocidal events carried out by atheists that amounted to well over a 100-million murders in the last hundred years alone. If there is a similar verifiable list of anywhere near that amount in a hundred year period pertaining to a religious person or group, I've never come across it, and you haven't offered one. Is there any chance you'll say something truthful at some point?

Q: "Social Darwinism is directly contrary to evolution"

A: Hogwash. Evolution is about natural selection in conjunction with survival of the fittest, part of which is the fighting to the death of organisms and animals. A Cuckoo Bird pushes eggs from other birds such as Warblers, out of their nests, and places her own eggs in it. After the chick hatches, it will push any remaining eggs and/or hatched Warbler chicks out of the nest and then spend its remaining days, before fledgling, imitating the call of Warbler chicks so that the Warbler parent will feed it. This kind of killing is a part of Darwinism. This is exactly what Social Darwinists do.

Q: How'd you like me to kill....

End of extract.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Holy Synchronicities

One point I've been trying to drive home with people for nearly twenty years now is that God doesn't care what your opinions about him or the bible are. That's not what's meant when Christ talks about believing in him or having faith. Belief and opinion simply do not equate. He didn't say that if you believe he exists you can gain entrance to Heaven. When he uses terms like belief and faith, what he's always talking about is something along the lines of putting your hope and trust in him.

Well either someone's been listening to me, or what is more likely the case, God plants seeds in several people simultaneously for the sowing. I've always thought the latter to be true. That is, God plants certain notions and inclinations in people here and there the world over when he wants to make a point or bring about a change rather than relying on just one person to do it alone. Besides, if only one person was given the message it might swell his head and make him think he's special or better than others. God's too good a parent to set someone up for moral failure (except for on certain occasions when he's trying to teach us our shortcomings).

I'm finishing up on Orson Scott Card's Ender Quartet. Now there are some things I have a great aversion to in Card's writing style. He's a stream of consciousness writer, and that generally means (and certainly means in Card's case) an author constantly telling you exactly what his characters are thinking instead of allowing you the satisfaction of figuring it out yourself. But regardless of writing style, Card does make some potent points now and then, and in the final book of the series, Children Of The Mind, he writes the following:

"I certainly do too believe in God," said Ender, annoyed.

"Oh, you're willing to concede God's existence, but that's not what I meant. I mean believe in him the way a mother means it when she says to her son, I believe in you. She's not saying she believes that he exists—what is that worth?—she's saying she believes in his future, she trusts that he'll do all the good that is in him to do. She puts the future in his hands, that's how she believes in him. You don't believe in Christ that way Andrew, [Ender]. ... You aren't leaving anything up to God. You don't believe in him."

Card says it better than I ever did. This in fact is exactly why I've taken to writing fiction and is also the reason Christ taught short stories known as parables to his followers. You can set up situations between characters to express a moral truth in such a way as to make the reader see it more clearly, make it seep in more deeply. It's what writing's all about, expressing the things God places within you to others, and doing it with the best clarity and simplicity you can muster. Simplicity has been the key to what God's been trying to bring out of me as of late. Oddly, writers tend to think that filling pages with indecipherable terms and six syllable words will gain them respectability in their profession, but it seldom works out that way. We have a whole genre of literature called Literary Fiction which is devoted to exactly that, and the amount of memorable works that have come from that field are infinitesimal. It's all just lofty words with no heart in them more often than not. If you're expressing something from God, you should want as many people as possible to understand and learn from it, and that means clarity and simplicity. God will bless that.

And pay attention to those holy synchronicities when they crop up in your life. It usually means you're on the right track.