Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Knock one down, another will get up

It is ironic that theists consider knocking one atheist commentator down means that all of atheism is defeated. I have often knocked down the Pope on various issues but am told that does not defeat christianity. Why the hypocrisy?


(Above): Cult leader reflects on poor choice of career

The fact is that, in accordance with the holy statements of Brian, "You are all individuals". This is a statement that cannot be more true of atheism. The reason is that atheists are bound together by a single characteristic - lack of faith in a personal God. Thus, all the other characteristics of a person can manifest in complete variation to another atheist standing next to him. For instance, take Christopher Hitchens following statement regarding the war in Iraq:-

Coexistence with aggressive regimes or expansionist, theocratic, and totalitarian ideologies is not in fact possible. One should welcome this conclusion for the additional reason that such coexistence is not desirable, either. If the great effort to remake Iraq as a demilitarized federal and secular democracy should fail or be defeated, I shall lose sleep for the rest of my life in reproaching myself for doing too little.


(left) Chris Hitchens - fat and loving it!!!


Personally, I consider the war in Iraq to be an abhorent act based on personal prejudices from a regime in the United States that won power through deception and not democracy. I am not within the atheist community to differ from Hitchens, Richard Dawkins consider the following:-

Whatever anyone may say about weapons of mass destruction, or about Saddam's savage brutality to his own people, the reason Bush can now get away with his war is that a sufficient number of Americans, including, apparently, Bush himself, see it as revenge for 9/11. This is worse than bizarre. It is pure racism and/or religious prejudice. Nobody has made even a faintly plausible case that Iraq had anything to do with the atrocity. It was Arabs that hit the World Trade Centre, right? So let's go and kick Arab ass. Those 9/11 terrorists were Muslims, right?And Eye-raqis are Muslims, right? That does it. We're gonna go in there and show them some hardware. Shock and awe? You bet.

Wait a second, if they are both atheists - they why do they have different points of view? Simple, atheists are individuals. We are sufficiently capable of making our own decisions and accordingly, we can come to different conclusions on different issues, except by definition, on whether we believe in God.


The road that we take to atheism is also different (although this should be returning to atheism, after all, no-one is born a theist). Some arrive here because evolutionary biology is inconsistent with the Garden of Eden, some can see the traditional use (and misuse) of power, some dispute the historical origin while others dispute the results. Most of us, though, can see that it is just a scam.

No comments: