Letters to the Editor
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Emotional Reasoning
I eagerly read this article hoping to read about one's substantial search and discovery of the truth. Instead I found emotional reasoning based on vague and ambiguous notions about the Bible and the existence of God. I should have seen it coming and saved my time.
Don
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DZ
The only real hater and fascist here appears to be you.
Don't be silly. Pointing out the hypocrisy/bigotry of anti-Christian hysterics, noting your political incompetence and noting the similarities to your brethrens of intolerance in the Christian right is fair game.
If you don't want your true colors exposed than don't post your bigoted tripe on a public message board.
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no name
you might not be aware of how you come across in your postings. It probably sounds very clear and rational inside your head. But let me enlighten you: you sound like you are foaming at the mouth right now. and it's not pretty. I just thought you should know that.
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Shining Light on Traditional Prejudice
Apologies to S. McNulty:
I'm not grateful that Salon published this piece because, frankly, it doesn't bring anything new to light, and in its wrong summaries of what "liberals" believe it reinforces the strong prejudice against non-deism that is felt throughout "mainstream" America. I frankly am tired of defending my atheism. I am tired of being compared to Stalin and Hitler and Mao. I experience such prejudice whenever I make my atheism known; indeed, even in the heart of "liberal country" -- like the letters section of Salon -- I experience the same ignorant comments about my non-belief.
I don't quite understand why so many Christians cannot see that it is THEY who are making the claims that require proof. I don't understand why they cannot respect that Atheism - which is most often coupled with strong Humanism - can add meaning to someone's life in a strongly positive way. How conveniently they forget the role of non-deists in the civil rights movement. Or that humanists of all kinds were among the first protesters against the Iraq war, as they have been against all wars. Christians even claim that terrible things have been done in the name of Atheism -- a claim that is trivially easy to refute -- but despite them knowing that the real evils were Nazism and mutated Communism, and the fact that Hitler was religious and wrote extensively about being an instrument of God in his books, Christians still trot out Stalin, Hitler, Mao and Pol Pot, as examples of how evil a world would be without religion! I guess they've forgotten the "don't bear false witness" bit.
Ironically, I have never attended a "meeting of atheists" -- whatever such a thing might be called. But perhaps because I had a religious upbringing, I can identify the problems with Christianity, and also recognize a bogus "conversion story" when I see one. And so we come to Sara Miles. If she, personally, finds meaning and happiness in going to an Episcopal church, then I don't see why anyone should have a problem with that. But if portions of her memoir appear to be simply made up from whole cloth, then surely questions must be asked, by both believers and Atheists alike.
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Shallow philosophy?
"Believing it is completely illogical, and no matter how many mental acrobatics you do, there will never be any concrete evidence for believing it."
Nor will there ever be conrete evidence for believing that Sara Miles exists, yet you still accept this notion on the basis of reasonability. There still exists the element of faith however due to the nature of our senses to sometimes decieve us. As a matter of fact, you cannot even justify the belief that your senses are sometimes reliable without invoking circular reasoning. One cannot prove God exists. He can demonstrate the concept to be a logically justified concept, but proof is out of the question. You can't prove God's existence any more than you can prove mine.
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re: Maybe for your next quest, you could try Bio 101.
jeffrey said:
How did these perfect little machines known as cells come to be
If you think cells are "perfect" then you have not taken enough biology classes. Cells break down and can get fucked up in so many different ways.
Anyone who thinks this is all one big accident or luck of the dice just never studied science - it's all to perfect and amazing to be mere chance.
You're saying this as someone who's not yet taken Bio 102?? I agree that the machinery of life is "amazing" but it is far, far from "perfect."
--Bio Ph.D.
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Obscurantist Bullshit
"The entire process of human reproduction... sounded just as weird as the claim that God was in a piece of bread you could eat. And yet it was true."
Dear Sara,
You've got to realize that this stuff causes actual harm. Young people devalue the honest inquiry and desperate search for truth that is science because simple-minded idiots substitute blather and claim equal weight for their opinion. Science is not about opinions. There is no mystery anymore in human reproduction. Or in disease. Or hurricanes. Or the plague. God is not in a piece of bread. There is no evidence to suggest that god exists outside of the human imagination.
There are many mysteries still about the universe, but the answers are in our future, not in any multi-authored collection of verses coalesced over hundreds of years, between 1500 and 2000 years ago. We will get to that future if we stop killing ourselves over religion and inspiring a few more communications majors to take up hard science.
If you take the good from the Bible and ignore the many misogynistic, intolerant and just plain weird pronouncements, you are being a hypocrite. As any work, it should be judged in its entirety -- which is pretty cool, considering when it was written, just like tools made by stone age men are cool.
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We're special, so special ...
The thing that I find the most curious about the religious is their incomparable hubris. For example, where do humans go *after* death? Supposedly heaven or hell, depending on prior conduct. Are there mice in hell too, and cockroaches in heaven? No, of course not. Eternity is reserved for humans, for we have "souls." Mice, cockroaches, cows, and horses don't quite measure up when it comes to "souls," I fear. Only humans, because we are so special.
Man, supposedly, is made in God's image. Not newts and hamsters, or trouts and sea slugs. Only Man, the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals. We even rate the constant attention of The Supreme Being. Not, mind you, merely a superior being, but the Maximum Boss, the very Creator of the Universe himself, the Omnipotent. Nothing but the best for humanity. Everything around us may seem to die, animals, plants, cities, civilizations, planets - even suns. Only Man, in his incomparable splendor, has the chance for "eternal life."
Pretty hubristic for an apelike species that hasn't even made it off the planet to opine about who or what created the universe, let alone kill each other over the issue. But reality has always played second fiddle to the self-aggrandizing fantasies that rattle around in the human cranium.