Posted by
Arturick on Friday, November 02, 2007 3:35:43 AM
Certain kinds of people just get under my skin. These include (but are not limited to):
-People who stop and have a conversation in a doorway or at the end of an escalator.
-Environmentalists with air conditioners.
-Wiccans.
-Atheists who babble about how we should "love" each other and not interject Supreme Beings into the matter.
Look, atheists, if you're right, then we don't have souls. If we don't have souls, 100% of our feelings and experiences are just electro-chemical stimuli. Given that premise, a pill or machine will one day be made to simulate any
experience or emotion. Therefore, a call from an atheist for universal love is the equivalent of said atheist saying, "We should all be heavily sedated before we hurt someone."
From a Christian perspective, love is a wonderful emotion that brings us closer to the all-loving nature of God and Jesus. From an atheistic perspective, love is a hormonal rash spreading through the brain meats of an addled chimp. Love, especially the sort of unconditional love and forgiveness a Christian is supposed to feel, is irrational and a liability.
Islam was never "hijacked" by terrorists. Atheists, however, keep trying to "hijack" Christian morality and claim they are the sole arbiters of morality. Arrogant pricks love patting themselves on the back while spewing hollow mockeries of Christian doctrine and pretending they made it up themselves. "Hey, I'm the first human in history to realize killing is wrong!"
"Well," says the atheist, "Can't we agree with the philosophical premise that love is good without the religious parts? Jesus had some good ideas."
No, Jesus did not have
good ideas. Jesus had God's ideas. In America and Europe, the culture was shaped by people who believed in God and His goodness, so they taught the ideas of God. Love is only good because God says that He loves us and wants us to love each other. Without God, love is just one of many impulses that make you, an individual, feel good. And no, Western, Christian concepts of love are not universal human impulses. A Hindu who beats his wife for having a girl, sets up said girl in an arranged marriage, and arranges that marriage with someone of the appropriate caste does NOT have the same attitudes towards romantic, familial, or brotherly love as me.
Heck, romantic love is essentially a Christian heresy that attempts to find spiritual enlightenment in the heat of lust over the restraint and patience required to maintain a long term relationship. That's why romance novels end with the death of one or both lovers, or the first sign of commitment. The romantic ideal is forever shattered by the first argument over who has to do the dishes. At least you get the momentary feeling of spiritual fulfillment as you unite with your "soul mate," instead of viewing your sex partner as the random target of your bestial, hormonal impulses.
"But," says the atheist, "We want to remove the faith elements that lead to war and misery."
Ri-ight... All the wars in history have been about ideology, power, and resources. Of course Christians and Protestants have warred with each other. They wanted to put different people in positions of secular authority and differed on philosophical issues that shaped their culture. Since we don't live in an infinitely large Garden of Eden, the option of just going off in separate directions and leaving each other alone wasn't on the table. Removing the religious overtones probably wouldn't have saved a single life after factoring in the subsequent removal of the same Christian virtues that allow us to now condemn those actions. From an atheist perspective, the near constant presence of war in human history is a perfectly natural expression of how pack carnivores compete for territory. Where a Christian must accept that everyone has a basic human dignity granted them by the Creator, an atheist has no intrinsic reason to not kill a few million people if it would advance his plans.
"Now look here," objects the atheist, "We can be virtuous! We know the difference between right and wrong."
Yes, an atheist can follow what he thinks are virtues. An atheist knows the difference between his
opinions of right and wrong. But, at the end of the day, it's all his opinion. Every moral judgement an atheist makes boils down to "because I said so based on my feelings at the moment." The only standard of morality that would ever survive in a purely atheistic world is "Might makes right." I sure wouldn't waste my time on diplomacy with a group of people who reject the idea of objective, universal moral truths.
"Well," sniffs the atheist, "At least we have science on our side."
Not really... Science revolves around facts. Facts are truth. The search for truth is revered in Western society because of religious teachings that Jesus was a manifestation of truth and that truth is the ally of righteous men. An atheist may become a scientist, or may subscribe to the notion that reality is subjective to the viewer. A Christian may believe that men can perceive reality because this world was made for us, while an atheist may think that the universe has no set rhyme or reason.
Being an animal lover, I at least understand the liberal atheist. They are the self-appointed zookeepers of Earth, trying to create a controlled habitat for the confused monkeys. Conservative atheists scare me. They tend to be Ron Paul supporters who want their home state to become a Mad Max style anarchy run by biker gangs. "Ya, I vote for Ron Paul! Hand over your women and petrol! *machine guns fire*"