Letters to the Editor
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AJCalhoun
I find that the great majority of theists have little understanding of atheism and I always welcome the chance to enlighten people.
You have to understand why so many atheists come across as shrill and attacking. For many of us "coming out" as an atheist in America can have negative consequences in our lives, including but not limited to, job loss, losing friends, vandalism of ones' property and sometimes severe conflict with one's family possibly leading to a sundering of family ties.
When many atheists get in a situation where they can safely reveal their atheism they tend to lash out from frustration. It isn't something I condone, but I do understand it and I think it is a normal human reaction to do so.
To a lot of theists, particularly the more fundamentalist ones, just letting them know that you do not believe in God is considered an attack on their faith and they will immediately go into full offensive mode against you.
I think the health of the planet has been pretty high on my list of ponders recently, tied in with wondering where the line exists between what is excessive materialism and what is reasonable (given that we do live in a material world). Like, how do we persuade people to live sanely in an America where "he who dies with the most toys wins"?
We are already deep into the Holcene extinction event and over the last fifty years or so the pace of extinction has accelerated dramatically. I suspect that we are in truly deep do do environmentally speaking.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction_event
The "canary in the coal mine" might just be honeybees. It seems that bees are dying off in great numbers which has profound implications for many natural systems as well as food production.
http://www.voanews.com/english/2007-03-29-voa60.cfm
I find it quite ironic that the most vociferously Christian nation on the planet is also the most materialistic. Jesus the Christ taught that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. It seems that the majority of Christians in the US have either forgotten or never read that passage of scripture.
Unfettered capitalism is a destructive force, IMO. I'm no socialist, but capitalism needs to be fairly tightly regulated in order that it not become predatory since corporations are immortal and amoral entities that only bear responsibility to their shareholders to maximize the return on the shareholders' investments.
I think I shall toddle off to bed in a few minutes. It's nice talking with you.
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Lloyd Little
Why should we believe anything that's written in a Gospel written by Judas?
Another issue this article raises is the custom of laying all the violence of the world on religion's doorstep. After all, Africa's genocide is getting along just fine without Christ.
The gospel of Judas was not written by Judas, as is made abundantly clear in the interview.
Just because the Africans involved in genocide are not Christian, that doesn't mean they aren't religious. There are many other religions beside Christiantiy.
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Jonathan- atheists 'lash out'?
Pointing out that there is no evidence whatsoever for a God is not 'lashing out'.
Nor is it hate-speech or persecuting Christians (not that you said that).
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Wow, don't they teach history any more?
Look at the four worst mass murders in history: one was committed by Nazis, who concocted some pseudo-scientific pseudo-mystic mumbo jumbo behind their racism but were for the most part against all organized religions, and three were committed by Communists who were avowedly atheist.
Maybe religion isn't true but I'll take a Christian over a Communist any day of the week.
I suppose the Communists did give atheism a pretty bad name, what with their artificial famines and their mass social engineering and their forced labor camps and their bloody executions and their purges and their political reeducation camps and all the other neurotic controlling things they did to make life literally unlivable for anyone who didn't see things their way.
Oh yes and invading Afghanistan in 1979 -- another dumb f*cking thing we can blame on atheists -- one that we get to pay for over and over and over again as the consequences of that oppressive and idiotic decision continue to play out on the world stage.
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No-name-given
You win the award for the first (but not the last) equating of atheists with Nazis on this letters page.
Jerk.
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"Go and sin no more."
Jesus the Christ taught that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. It seems that the majority of Christians in the US have either forgotten or never read that passage of scripture.
In addition I think what's happened is many Christians appear to believe that what they are taught is that they can do pretty much anything they want in mortal perpetuity in this world, and that all they have to do to pay for the transgression is to utter Jesus's name. And they'll continue to do that.
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cherry picking the intelligence
the biggest point of all these forbidden, misplaced, or not quite good enough gospels is that people picked and chose what part of the religion they liked and ditched the rest. this clearly cannot be passed off as the word of or the work of god, but rather, the editorial judgement of church leaders who were not only trying to sell their religion, but sell a religion that wouldn't keep getting them all killed, oppressed or harrassed.
they weren't above incorporating some of the native religion's elements in order to make for a better sell either.
so what we have as our core intelligence about this religion is a heavily edited and censored fabrication codiefied many centuries after the fact from sources that are at best written down more than a century after the facts.
let's see you write down the facts of the battle of antietam? how accurate would most of our accounts be? and this is with the benefit of books, movies and the history channel. back then people told stories as entertainment and passed them around from one to another and things always get changed when you do it that way.
even though the religion is based on shaky and sketch grounds, it still does work. it is software. people like to believe.
there is something very special about some of the software that got kicked out.