Letters to the Editor
-
Rob Anderson and Myself - the only gorillas still slugging it out.....
<<While it is true that there is much invective directed at "unbelievers", "heathens" and so forth, why pay any attention to it? When I wrote that the screeds of radical atheists seem to be everywhere, I meant it. Hence my title and its reference to too much NPR. But should I really have to listen to Top 40 Radio, watch "American Idol" and read the funny papers just to escape such vitriol? I can tune out 99% of the cultural noise that passes for religiosity in this country. Why can't you?>>
Oh, I can and do, but – why should I have to? Truly, I’m having trouble taking your complaint seriously. I feel the same way I do at church (I’m a catholic church organist, if you can believe that – one of the zillions of atheists in my line of work) when the priest starts whining about how “They are trying to stamp out Christian traditions and the expressions of our faith!” and my eyes roll around in my head and I can barely stay on the organ bench. I mean, you have GOT to be KIDDING! Christianity in this country is like putting on a pair of lavender-colored glasses – it colors EVERYTHING. Atheism doesn’t hold a candle. And, well, if the more informed, intelligent (NON-top-40, NON-American-Idol) sites you go to in order to find relief from all the ‘religiousiness’ tend to keep interviewing Richard Dawkins – what does THAT tell you??
<< Excepting 9/11 and unfortunates like that nun in Somalia and Daniel Pearl, jihadis are killing each other, not blowing up Lutheran temples or conducting raids on Sunday afternoon Bingo at the local parish.>>
Well, and excepting the train bombings in Spain and the subway and bus bombings in London and….wait a second. How many thousands of people are we ‘excepting’ by this point?? Thousands of people IN THE LAST 6 YEARS! I’m not seeing this as much of an exception at all.
<< I was disappointed that you deployed Dawkins's outrageous canard that those who are moderately faithful and pious somehow "enable" the lunatic fundamentalists. Are you not aware that we're number one on their death lists?? Look at Muslim fundamentalists. Sunnis see Shi'ites as apostates worthy of death, and vice-versa.>>
But, looking at that paragraph from a slightly different perspective – what, at their most basic, do all these ‘moderately faithful and pious’ and ‘lunatic fundamentalists’ and ‘Muslim fundamentalists’ and ‘Sunnis’ and ‘Shi’ites’ have in common?? What is the most basic cause for all the strife? RELIGION! Different interpretations of different fantasies, not ONE of which has a GRAIN of evidence to support its beliefs! And people dying every day over this! Now I’m starting to ‘screed’ like some of the radical atheists you refer to, but – do you not see WHY?
<< Genuine religious faith - and here you reveal your woeful ignorance - does not spring from the dogmatic teachings of this or that church or cleric. It comes from lived experience.>>
Well, you have certainly hit on one of the biggest themes that separates the theists from the atheists – the nature of Religious Faith. As an arguer for atheism, I always feel that, when a theist plays the “faith” card, he is basically capitulating – the second he says “Faith,” he loses the argument. I completely understand that Faith “does not spring from the dogmatic teachings of this or that church or cleric.” OK, that’s one of the many things Faith is NOT – but what IS it? It IS the belief in something despite a complete lack of supporting evidence. Many ‘religious’ carry this as a banner – it looks to me to be Religion’s crushing weakness; Atheism’s coup de grace. Or, if you’ll indulge me, the Emperor’s New Clothes.
<< Only an atheistic thinker like Stalin could come up with a line like "One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic.">>
There is nothing demonstrably ‘atheistic’ about that line. Indeed, there is nothing demonstrably “atheistic” about Stalin’s whole reign of terror. Atheism is the lack of a belief in God. ‘LACK of belief’ has to be, I’m sure you will agree, a very poor motivator. It seems to me impossible to assign Stalin’s atrocities to his LACK of belief in ….anything! No no – it was his strong BELIEF in something – an ideology – that motivated him to his millions of murders.
<< Communism was very scientific, in fact it banished religion everywhere it gained power, thereby creating societies founded on "rational, reality-based ideology.">>
No, Communism was not scientific. It was, at best, an ideology that many hoped could work as a government, but, being bound-up in a cult of personality [Stalin, Lenin] as so much of human society IS, it seems to have ended up either as another type of dictatorship or, if you will, another type of religion. Isn’t it clear in hindsight that Stalin tried to eradicate religion primarily so that there would not be a COMPETING power in the land? Communism could only be considered “scientific” in the sense that it was a single experiment in governance - that failed. (And I just noticed another blog along the same 'cult of personality' lines!)
<< Rationalist, scientist ideologies invariably do come to view people as an undifferentiated mass of meat puppets, easily disposable.>>
Do they? Invariably? EVER?? What on earth are you talking about? Precisely what ARE these “Rationalist, Scientific ideologies”?? (I do like ‘meat puppets’ though. Colorful!)
<< I don't mean to suggest that religious extremists are guiltless, but that they are no worse or better than the alternative.>>
That’s a big statement which you would need to support. And what IS the ‘alternative’ anyway??
<< There must be a return to the socio-political agnosticism with which this country was governed for most of its existence. Let every man and woman be as religious as they want to be, but in PRIVATE.>>
A statement with which I absolutely – and passionately – agree.