And that is what atheism is. Its adherents call it “free thinking” but it is a new theology with man at the center of its orbit.
According to the UK Telegraph, atheism in the US is on the rise.
Atheism, in my opinion, is the ultimate in human arrogance. It is not only the denial of God but the denial of natural law.
I think that is at least a part of the attractiveness of atheism for some – the ability to ignore basic right and wrong and to assume that humans have the ability to supplant natural law with human law. When you can do that, you can justify anything – that is where I see atheism tying itself up in a ribbon of post-modernism.
What separates us from herd animals is the fact that we have that little unexplained extra – a soul – through which God’s standards of right and wrong are transmitted, to deny that when God cannot be reduced to a mathematics equation is folly.
Immanuel Kant – who, according to Monty Python, was “a real pissant who was very rarely stable” – actually asserted that, due to the limitations of argumentation in the absence of irrefutable evidence, no one could really know whether there is a God and an afterlife or not. For the sake of morality and as a ground for reason, Kant asserted, people are justified in believing in God, even though they could never know God’s presence empirically. He explained:
“All the preparations of reason, therefore, in what may be called pure philosophy, are in reality directed to those three problems only [God, the soul, and freedom]. However, these three elements in themselves still hold independent, proportional, objective weight individually. Moreover, in a collective relational context; namely, to know what ought to be done: if the will is free, if there is a God, and if there is a future world. As this concerns our actions with reference to the highest aims of life, we see that the ultimate intention of nature in her wise provision was really, in the constitution of our reason, directed to moral interests only.”
And furthermore, he hedged his bet by saying that if we can’t disprove it, logic would demand that we act as if it is proven:
“If one cannot prove that a thing is, he may try to prove that it is not. And if he succeeds in doing neither (as often occurs), he may still ask whether it is in his interest to accept one or the other of the alternatives hypothetically, from the theoretical or the practical point of view. Hence the question no longer is as to whether perpetual peace is a real thing or not a real thing, or as to whether we may not be deceiving ourselves when we adopt the former alternative, but we must act on the supposition of its being real.”
Atheism just seems to be such an intellectual cop-out to me. It is lazy scholarship, simply refusing to believe the wonders and miracles of creation before our own eyes because we don’t have the intellectual capacity to comprehend or explain them.
The Rio Norte Line 
Michael: As Jesus said about the poor, atheists will always be with us, and they will always, it appears, comprise about 2% of the US population. Yes, it is a form of religious belief, insofar that religion concerns itself with the questions of ultimate reality, who we are, why we are here and is there a greater power that created and sustains the reality we perceive, or not. Atheists have always answered those questions with an arrogant confidence, as if they can somehow prove that no higher power or God resides anywhere we can perceive or even someplace we cannot perceive. In point of fact, atheism proceeds from the ridiculous postulate that there is nothing that is that human beings cannot perceive with our very limited sensory organs. This of course represents a tautology, which amounts in the absurd statement that God cannot be because I, a limited human being, cannot see, hear, smell, taste or touch Him or Her. By this atheistic construction, sounds outside the frequency capacity of human hearing do not exist. We could could go on to guffaw at the endless contradictions that atheists must embrace in order to sustain their odd commitment to the idea that they can prove the non-existence of any higher power than humanity itself. Even Richard Dawkins did not begin to accomplish that feat in his somewhat pathetic book, THE GOD DELUSION. Neither did Christopher Hitchens, a writer and thinker who I really enjoyed, come close to disproving the existence of God!!!
Those believers who are at risk to the clever but barren arguments of the atheists are those well-meaning souls who think they can prove that God does in fact “exist,” usually through somewhat labored “logical” arguments or by making their case from inside the belief structure of a specific religious faith. The Dawkins and Hitchens of the atheistic world view can devastate the arguments of Anselm and Abelard and centuries of religious proofs for the “existence” of God. But that is easily explained, since as Einstein observed, no argument can be resolved by the level of consciousness that created it. No human being can “prove” or “disprove” the “existence” of God or any higher power, because the very tools at his or her disposal are human creations and developments…language, logic and rational argumentation. Can sub-atomic particles prove the existence of the human race??? Please let me know how that works out!!!
Faith is by definition the belief in “things unseen.” Kierkegaard rightly compared faith to a leap in the dark. Any god that created all that is would by definition be unproveable by the weak and pathetic intellects and sensory organs of a race that remains in its developmental infancy. I personally would have little interest in any god that I could explain or that I could actually understand. That would be a God that actually cares whether I eat milk and meat at the same meal or maintain a thousand little requirements that made complete sense in a Bronze Age tribal culture, but have little applicability today. As Uncle Albert stated, “My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.” So from my perspective, I know longer spend my time defending the Almighty with my feeble intellect to people whose actual issues are unresolved mother-issues or a stern and unapproachable father who was emotionally remote.
As to the supposed “growth” in atheism in America today, the most reliable numbers I’ve seen, which came from the Pew Foundation or some other fairly reliable source, indicate not a growth in the number of professing (how does one profess atheism? Is there an atheistic catechism?) atheists but rather a manipulation of the research methodology. In the past those those who indicated no regular affiliation with an established religion were counted as what they generally are…people who have a vague belief in the existence of God or some other Higher Power, but who prefer to play golf on Sunday (or Saturday) mornings and to sleep in during colder weather. These people are not atheists in the Dawkins/Hitchens “need to attack other people’s beliefs” variety, any more than they are all Methodists or Hasidim!
What is interesting is that academics, the American Media and Progressives, who often think they are atheists in their cramped little brains, have been engaged for several decades in changing the perception of American culture to a set of understandings that they prefer, on the assumption I think that if American citizens believe America is vastly different from their personal experiences, our country will eventually fit the Progressives’ hilarious, ideological caricature of who we are. Hence the meme that most Americans are really atheists fits rather well with their other myths, like the notion that most Americans are not descendants of European ancestors (Wrong, as upwards of 70+% of Americans have family roots in Europe), favor government solutions to problems (Wrong, as most Americans remain self-reliant, even after enormous government expenditures of taxpayer funds to create government dependency), that homosexuals comprise 10% of the US population (actually closer to 2%) and that Muslims have made great contributions to the growth and development of our nation (Wrong, but too bizarre to even bother addressing).
To conclude, atheists are a small and not particularly growing faction, less than 2%, within American society. Most are not particularly cognitively gifted, and they frequently confuse freedom of religion with freedom from religion. The promulgating of the bilge that Americans are somehow becoming an atheistic bunch of Western European wannabes is part of the narrative that Obama and his intellectually challenged co-conspirators have been trying to foist on the American public. My observation is that the Obamites have only succeeded in preaching to their own sycophantic choir, which is looking more like a trio every week. America is a profoundly religious nation, with most of our governing values drawn from Judaeo – Christian traditions. Despite the Liberal/Progressives attempts to tell us otherwise, that tradition remains strong among American citizens. That’s a good thing!!! CDE
The atheists don’t even know they are the polar opposites to those they Hate….( and it ISN”T about disagreement….it is hate the atheists have for all those different from them.
I believe in God….. I don’t believe in God
I Know there is a God…..I know there is No God.
These are “oppo-sames” NOT opposites……in other words the atheists are exactly as the post above describes. They are engaging in “religion” whether they choose to admit it or not . Except in their version They ( Man ) are the center of the Universe……what they, the atheists think and believe about Morality, Science and indeed the entire Universe is what matters……and is ONLY what matters.
From this social Decay and ultimately Tyranny ultimately arise …… when a culture loses its moorings.
Don: As someone who has debated atheists in public forums, most are not the cool, hyper-intelligent intellectuals they enjoy posing as. Many are smart, but in an idiot savant kind of way. Dawkins is a classic in that regard…a brilliant evolutionary biologist who fancies himself a philosopher. Unfortunately, many religious people do not really understand the difference between “belief” and “knowledge” and so fall prey to weak but seemingly impressive arguments. Also, many atheists today seem to be driven by their reactions to overbearing and authoritarian religious parents, especially fathers who beat a particular religion into them as children. I don’t know how one deals with that issue. CDE
I don’t want to go off in too much a tangent….. But your last point re: “fathers” and “reactions to overbearing religious parents” sounds suspiciously like Freudian neuroses doesn’t it… :- ). I know you will know of what I speak.
SO…..this makes this post link in a way with Joe’s Post on “Insane Liberals”. And supports the fact that Mal-adjustment is a KEY part of being a liberal.
Don…I lived among these people everyday, during my academic period and had, and still have, some wonderful friends who are aggressive Liberal/Progressives…the kind who would blackball a colleague in a tenure decision because he or she was a libertarian or an American Conservative. Very often the early age parental conflict, or Freudian neurosis, seems to lurk in their background. Hey, we all have our quirks and one of mine (and all my kids,’ thank God!!!) has always been to have real issues with authority…institutional or individual!!! But my commitment is always to deal fairly and honestly with people, and to try to understand their views where we differ.
That’s problematic with Lib/Progs because they choose to live in an ideologically distorted world doing the intellectual equivalent of rocking a dead baby…Collectivism/Liberalism/Progressivism is the oldest form of authoritarian philosophy on the planet, and it has never, ever worked anywhere!!! One has to sustain a detachment from reality to remain a Liberal/Progressive today in America, and Our Dear Leader is Exhibit A. CDE
It would seem every atheist owns a time-traveling Lamborghini. If you say there are snakes in the grass, I believe you. We can only warn the atheists of the perils that the long grass entails. Free will; they must decide.
Atheists come in all stripes, and I believe it was Augger who posted Carl Sagan’s wise saying to the effect that God can never be completely disproved. But neither can the myths of the Bible be validated in any way, shape, or form. Even Pat Robertson admits that when Christians insist on 6000 years as the age of the Earth, they make themselves look like fools.
“Look, I know that people will probably try to lynch me when I say this, but Bishop Ussher wasn’t inspired by the Lord when he said that it all took 6,000 years. It just didn’t. You go back in time, you’ve got radiocarbon dating. You got all these things and you’ve got the carcasses of dinosaurs frozen in time out in the Dakotas.
They’re out there. So, there was a time when these giant reptiles were on the Earth and it was before the time of the Bible. So, don’t try and cover it up and make like everything was 6,000 years. That’s not the Bible.” —Pat Robertson
First, it was reported that Mother Teresa had serious doubts about the existence of God, now this. The atheist church remains open 24/7, ready to receive the shell-shocked and stunned who may have lost their moral underpinnings.
I hope that everyone is having as good a year as I am, seeya around!
“It is lazy scholarship, simply refusing to believe the wonders and miracles of creation before our own eyes because we don’t have the intellectual capacity to comprehend or explain them”.—It is because you lack intellectual capacity that you believe in mythology, Utah. All the sophistry in the world cannot change the fact neither of us knows the answers, but only one of us pretends to
But you pretend to as well with your denial.
The Lady Bees Smart !!
I admit to a similar lack, despite my non-theistic leanings, I cannot imagine my consciousness just winking out, I cannot get a feel for nothing, I feel that there Has to be something else, I just feel that the passage to that something is one-way, and we are only meant to guess as to its constitution.
“….I cannot get a feel for nothing,….”
I think I can help you out on that one….at nothing upstairs …. :
LOL! Thanks, Don! She brings to mind Kelly Pickler’s astonishment when she learned that Europe wasn’t a country, but that France was!
Well ………….. given its recent history….I surprised France is STILL a country.
Bada Bing!