"You know, for an athiest you sure talk about God and religion a lot."

Ricky Gervais hates the God he doesn't believe exists.

Moron.

Why people love atheists.

Who couldn't love joy-killing, fundamentalist, puritanical pimples on the collective ass of humanity?

Atheists cry foul over "Charlie Brown Christmas."

Good grief.

Civil War in the Leper Colony.

New Atheism is going through schism. Apparently, the left leaning doyens of New Atheism - P.Z. Myers and Richard Carrier and others - have decided that it is not enough to be merely socially autistic; now they've decided that they have to be politically correct and socially autistic.

Will their quest for acceptance spurred by being given "swirlies" in high school gymn class never end?

Here's the article:

In the passionate world of American atheism, the venom usually directed at believers has now been turned against the wrong kind of atheists.

The cause of this freethinking furore? A new movement called Atheism+. According to its website, "Atheism+ is a safe space for people to discuss how religion affects everyone and to apply skepticism and critical thinking to everything, including social issues like sexism, racism, GLBT issues, politics, poverty, and crime."

A+ was born when Freethought blogger Jen McCreight (the mind behind Boobquake) made a passionate call for a "third wave" of atheism, one that extends atheist activism into progressive politics and calls for a part of the movement to be one where women can exist free from the harassment that has plagued women publicly involved in the atheist movement.

The founders of Atheism+ say clearly that "divisiveness" is not their aim, but looking through the blogs and voluminous comments in the two weeks since A+ was mooted, trenches have been dug, beliefs stated, positions staked out and abuse thrown. A dissenting tweeter is "full of shit", while, according to one supporter, daring to disagree with Atheism+'s definition of progressive issues and not picking their side makes you an "asshole and a douchebag".

It took 700 years from Constantine renaming Byzantium in his own honour to papal legates circulating letters of anathema that split the Roman and Orthodox churches. Atheism, in its public, online life, has started exchanging internet anathemas – perhaps we should call them inathemas – in little more than a decade.

People are being told to wipe the spittle off their chins, take their heads out of their asses. The Life of Brian's lines about the various fronts for the liberation of Judea are being oft-recycled. 140 character brickbats are being thrown on Twitter under #atheismplus.

PZ Myers, soft-spoken in person but trenchant in print, said of A+ critics:

"It really isn't a movement about exclusion, but about recognising the impact of the real nature of the universe on human affairs. And if you don't agree with any of that – and this is the only 'divisive' part – then you're an asshole. I suggest you form your own label, 'Asshole Atheists", and own it, proudly. I promise not to resent it or cry about joining it. I just had a thought: maybe the anti-Atheist+ people are sad because they don't have a cool logo. So I made one for the Asshole Atheists:
A*"

Fellow Freethought blogger Richard Carrier goes further. When one commentator suggests "atheism does not have the luxury of kicking people out of its movement", Carrier gives him a rare old quilting in most splendid prose:

"Yes, it does. Atheism+ is our movement. We will not consider you a part of it, we will not work with you, we will not befriend you. We will heretofore denounce you as the irrational or immoral scum you are (if such you are). If you reject these values, then you are no longer one of us. And we will now say so, publicly and repeatedly. You are hereby disowned."

How like Pope Leo's letter to the patriarch of Constaninople in 1053 accusing him of "many and intolerable presumptions, in which if – as heaven forbid – he persist, he will in no way retain our peaceful regard". Even at this most serious moment for the future of Christianity, the pope managed to resist the urge to call the patriarch immoral scum, an asshole and a douchebag.

Here is the "safe space" for these people.

It's weird that they think they need a safe space. Usually, when they are on other people's blogs, they act like a group of Visigoths with OCPD.

Atheists - continuing to build goodwill among the 99% of the community that aren't socially autistic dicks.

Atheist group sues school because football players ate meals prepared by local church.

Atheist Morality - a morality suitable for silverback gorillas and tenured professors of the public knowledge of Science.

Richard Dawkins defends the idea of having a mistress and lying about it.

Atheist morality is either utterly confusing as a matter of reason or entirely transparent as a matter of original sin. Thus, sometimes atheists want to explain morality as a matter of evolution and natural selection, such as when people do good things for each other altruistically. In such cases, you see, people have no choice because it is to their evolutionary advantage in some wider sense to lay down their life for a complete stranger.

On the other hand, sometimes atheists want us to "rise above" our evolutionary programming, such as when they advocate atheism when it seems obvious that there is a "religious sense" built into human nature. What it means to rise "above" or to "progress" beyond our nature is unclear because such words of directionality imply, well, a direction, and, of course, atheist materialism denies that their is any metaphysical entities such as "above" to rise to. On the atheist account, "progress" and "above" are just arbitrary words selected to indicate the idea that "I, Richard Dawkins" approve of this."

And, then, there is this account, where Dawkins rails against monogamy and telling the truth as if those ideals were an ingrained feature of human nature, rather than the tenuous result of social conditioning:

From a Darwinian perspective, sexual jealousy is easily understood. Natural selection of our wild ancestors plausibly favored males who guarded their mates for fear of squandering economic resources on other men's children. On the female side, it is harder to make a Darwinian case for the sort of vindictive jealousy displayed by Mrs. Tarrant. No doubt hindsight could do it, but I want to make a different point. Sexual jealousy may in some Darwinian sense accord with nature, but "Nature, Mr. Allnutt, is what we are put in this world to rise above." Just as we rise above nature when we spend time writing a book or a symphony rather than devoting our time to sowing our selfish genes and fighting our rivals, so mightn't we rise above nature when tempted by the vice of sexual jealousy?

I, for one, feel drawn to the idea that there is something noble and virtuous in rising above nature in this way. I admit that I have, at times in my life, been jealous, but it is one of the things I now regret. Assuming that such practical matters as sexually transmitted diseases and the paternity of children can be sorted out (and nowadays DNA testing will clinch that for you if you are sufficiently suspicious, which I am not), what, actually, is wrong with loving more than one person? Why should you deny your loved one the pleasure of sexual encounters with others, if he or she is that way inclined? The British writer Julie Burchill is not somebody I usually quote (imagine a sort of intelligent Ann Coulter speaking with a British accent in a voice like Minnie Mouse) but I was struck by one of her remarks. I can't find the exact quote, but it was to the effect that, however much you love your mate (of either sex in the case of the bisexual Burchill) sex with a stranger is almost always more exciting, purely because it is a stranger. An exaggeration, no doubt, but the same grain of truth lurks in Woody Allen's "Sex without love is an empty experience, but as empty experiences go it's one of the best."

So, jealousy, which presumes fidelity, covenant-keeping and integrity, is a evolutionary appendix that has to be "risen above." But cheating and lying somehow are unaccountable by Darwinian selection?

This is nonsense on stilts. G.K. Chesterton once said it is surprising that people have rejected the doctrine of original sin because it is the only doctrine that can be empirically verified. It is an amazing tribute to the autistic worldview of Dawkins that he doesn't see this.

But sin makes you stupid. Perhaps it is not so surprising that a person with celebrity and groupies and fans, such as Dawkins, finds an attraction to a morality that excuses infidelity and lying. We might say that is a convenient morality.

We might also say that is the kind of morality you get when you appoint yourself the arbiter of morality.

Poor Atheists. Not only are they doomed to extinction because evolution selects for the religious...

...but atheist chicks think atheist dudes are grabby dorks.

James Taranto summarizes the low-attendance of women at the big annual atheist conclave as follows:

Also, the "skeptic community" is a self-selecting group, and it may be that the behavior the RNS story notes is a product of this selection. One hypothesis is that male skeptics are less socially adept than believers, because the former group either missed the socialization that comes with a religious upbringing or rebelled against it. And, as the RNS article notes, women are generally more religious than men. That would be consistent with the hypothesis that female skeptics tend to be more masculine than the average woman.

If our hypotheses are correct, then The Amazing Meeting is a confab of socially inept guys competing for the attention of a smaller number of unusually masculine women--and being rebuffed most of the time, to judge by the report.

Fortunately for the atheist community, there is a nearly inexhaustible supply of poorly socialized teenagers.

Dawkins v Pell Debate.

Dawkins' unfortunate social autism is on full display.

A few old, liberal celebrities and a small crowd of people who found time off from watching old episodes of "Mystery Science Theater" in their parents' basement indulge in a "two minute hate."

Charles Spiering at Crisis appears to have earned many years off of purgatory by suffering through the "Rally for Reason" event:

“God if you’re there, we’re here in Washington, come down now,” atheist Comedian Eddie Izzard shouted mockingly during Saturday’s Rally for Reason. “If you’re there, this is a pretty good time to show up. I’m sure folks here would love it.”

“He never comes down,” Izzard added with a laugh before launching nearly an hour long comedy sketch mocking God, the bible, and religion for a soggy crowd of about 8,000 – 10,000 people who stood on the National Mall in the rain.

“This weather isn’t from God,” added Izzard. “If God was the judge of the weather, what was all those tornadoes that go down the Bible Belt? What does that mean? Weather is just weather ladies and gentlemen.”

Saturday, secular atheists met in Washington D.C. for a rally billed as “the largest gathering of the secular movement in world history.” Organizers insisted prior to the event that the rally was to encourage each other, to dispel stereotypes, and seek “legislative equality.”

But as gloomy rain clouds hung low over the Washington Monument, the rally quickly degenerated into open mockery of religion and people of faith.

“F— the motherf—-, f— the mother—- pope,” sang Musician Tim Minchin as he played profane songs on the piano for a laughing and cheering crowd.

Few religions remained unscathed while cruel spokesmen of reason roundly ridiculed Mormons, Buddhists, Christians, and Muslims.

As the event continued, it became clear that the leaders of the movement were not clamoring for equality, but rather superiority.

“When it comes to religion, we’re not two sides of the same coin and you don’t get to put your unreason on the same shelf as my reason,” HBO’s Liberal comedian Bill Maher said to the crowd via a video monitor. “Your stuff has to go over there on the shelf with Zeus and Thor and the Kracken.”

The audience then cheered loudly as he began a mock ritual that “un-baptized” Mitt Romney’s father-in-law out of the Mormon faith.

But even the laughs turned into malaise as the event drew to a close. Famed atheist headliner Richard Dawkins labored through a speech that quickly grew bitter.

“Do you really believe that when a priest blesses a wafer, it turns into the body of Christ?” he said, ridiculing Catholics. “Are you seriously telling me you believe that? Are you seriously saying that wine turns into blood?”

Hawkins challenged his fellow atheists to expose people who still cling to their faith in spite of their doubts.

“Mock them, ridicule them in public, don’t fall for the convention that we’re far to polite to talk about religion,” a frustrated Dawkins continued, “Religion is not off the table. Religion is not off limits. Religion makes specific claims about the universe, which need to be substantiated. They should be challenged and ridiculed with contempt.”

Saturday’s rally provided a rare look into the secularism that is pushing its way into the public square.

The speakers that drew the loudest applause were not the people who praised reason, but persecuted faith. Unchallenged and in like-minded company, the cultural and political leaders of the atheist movement freely mocked and dismissed people of faith.

The brash superiority preached by atheists such as Hawkins shows that they are not content with a right to “unreligious freedom,” but seek suppression of religious expression.

If people of faith allow themselves to be bullied into silence, we can expect this sentiment to grow in our society. The existence of such a society requires submission from people of faith.

This rally demonstrates something that the Nazis knew: hating a scapegoat can be emotionally satisfying.

File under "Scratch an Atheist, find a Fundamentalist."

The author of this article at "Gather" states the problem with Dawkins' speech at "The Reason Rally":

It would not be offensive to have a gathering of like-minded people to engage in secular discussion and activities relevant to their non-belief. What is offensive is actively encouraging hatred for people who believe in something greater than themselves. Why would any speaker encourage anyone to mock and show contempt for people that they do not even know? Is this not akin to racism? Is it a "Reason" rally? Or an anti-religion rally? According to a recent article, "this rally is not simply about protecting the rights of non-believers, but about the inferiority of religious belief."

Is there not an irony in speaking out against intolerance while being intolerant? Richard Dawkins' foundation's mission is in part, a "quest to overcome religious fundamentalism, superstition, intolerance and suffering." Perhaps the atheists, by encouraging "ridicule and contempt" for believers, are closer than they think to those who may invoke God to bring wrath upon those with whom they disagree.

"Shut up! You are a stupid-head, and we are going to beat you up," explained the atheist claiming to be committed to reason.

This exchange between Tom Gilson, who politely inquired about setting up a debate at an atheist "Reason Rally," and the atheist president of American Atheists says a lot about the ethos of the two sides:

American Atheists are having a rally this Saturday in Washington D.C., so Christian apologist Tom Gilson sent them a message asking if they would be interested in hosting a debate at their “Reason Rally” between a theist and an atheist.

He wrote this:

Dear Mr. Silverman,

Greetings to you… [mention of mutual friend],

I’m writing to ask if you would be interested in sharing sponsorship with me in giving Richard Dawkins and William Lane Craig one more opportunity to share a stage together in debate, while Dr. Dawkins is here in the U.S. later this month. I’m leading the True Reason project, which, as you may or may not be aware, is bringing Christians to the Reason Rally for respectful dialogue with attendees there. Additionally, this morning we released an ebook that has already climbed to best-seller status in the atheism category at Amazon.com, and has attracted enough notice that I’ve been asked to write an op-ed on it for the Washington Post.

I mention these things simply to give you some confidence that I’m representing a legitimate potential debate sponsorship partner to work on this with you and American Atheists. Dr. Craig is again wiling to meet Dr. Dawkins in debate. I have a contact at Georgetown University that would work with us to provide a venue for debate. Would you be open to joining me in inviting Richard Dawkins?

I’ll look forward to hearing you.

Regards,

Tom Gilson
www.thinkingchristian.net

And the American Atheists President David Silverman replied with this:

Mr. Gilson,

The Reason Rally is an event by and for the nonreligious population and their supporters. It is not an opportunity for Christians to push themselves into other people’s lives (yet again). I would never support infiltrating a Christian event with atheists on some kind of recruitment mission – that would be horribly rude.

Make no mistake – you are not welcomed guests at the rally. We are not going to DC for ‘dialogue’ with people who believe ridiculous things – we are going to have fun with other like-minded people. Those who proselytize or interfere with our legal and well-deserved enjoyment will be escorted to the 1st Amendment pen by security, which will be plentiful, where you can… shout yourselves hoarse.

Spreading out among the crowd is not a substitute for a permit. Indeed, I will be meeting with the Parks Commission on Thursday to discuss how to handle your infiltrative permitless counter-protest.

Dr. Dawkins has made it clear that he doesn’t want to debate Mr. Craig. I am not sure how much clearer he (or I) could be.

Sincerely,
David Silverman
President
American Atheists, Inc.

American Atheists doesn’t seem to be in favor of having conversations and debates with those who disagree with them, do they? In fact, it doesn’t sound like they are interested in hearing any reasons for other people’s views, or giving any reasons for their own views.

And people think that atheists are loud-mouthed, socially autistic jerks with narcissistic personality disorders.

Where would they come up with evidence to support that view?

Silly atheists and their superstitions.

Florida atheists spend hours attempting to wash the "blessing" of a road:

A group of atheists in Florida spent part of their weekend washing away a blessing placed upon a local highway by a religious group.

Armed with brooms, mops and "unholy water," the atheists gathered Saturday to symbolically clean up holy oil that Polk Under Prayer put down on Highway 98 near the Pasco-Polk county line last year, Bay News 9 reported.

"We come in peace," Humanists of Florida director Mark Palmer announced before he and members of other atheist organizations launched their cleanup. "Now that's normally what aliens say when they visit a new planet, but we're not aliens, we're atheists!"

According to the report, Palmer said Polk Under Prayer's blessing "sends a very bad signal to everyone in Polk County, and [anyone] who travels through Polk County who doesn't happen to be Christian."

The unblessing project, he explained, was "not about atheist rights" but about "welcoming everybody into Polk County."

What a stupid way to spend part of the weekend.

Particularly, when you are not supposed to believe that blessing a road has any effect.

The silly episode puts me in mind of G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown story "The Blast of the Book." A book is introduced into the story with the fable that anyone who opens it disappears under mysterious circumstances. People begin to mysteriously disappear. Much suspense occurs until Father Brown unravels the mystery. The story ends with Father Brown and a professor of the empirical sort discussing the book. The final chapters of the story go as follows:

There was another long silence and then Professor Openshaw laughed; with the laugh of a great man who is great enough to look small.

Then he said abruptly: ‘I suppose I do deserve it; for not noticing the nearest helpers I have. But you must admit the accumulation of incidents was rather formidable. Did you never feel just a momentary awe of the awful volume?’

‘Oh, that,’ said Father Brown. ‘I opened it as soon as I saw it lying there. It’s all blank pages. You see, I am not superstitious.’

Chesterton, G. K. (2008-10-13). The Complete Father Brown (Father Brown Mystery) (Kindle Locations 12283-12287). Old LandMark Publishing. Kindle Edition.

The truth about some atheists is that they don't just happen not to believe in God...

...but they actively hate the Catholic Church.

I observed this correlation on a Philosophy forum where I noticed the correlation between "atheist" and "anti-catholic" and "people with peculiar personal habits that the Catholic Church defines as sinful."

Exhibit "A" as to the correlation of the first two categories is this screed from Annie Laurie Gaylor, Co-President of the Freedom From Religion Foundation that calls on liberal and nominal Catholics to leave the Church because it has, you know, moral teachings that do not conform to the way she thinks the world should work.

It's nothing new - adherents to the Latest Great Thing have been making this pitch for the last two thousand years. In fact Ms. Gaylor's screed is nothing more than a warmed-over pitch made by the Nazis about the Catholic Church's reactionary resistance to permitting the State to get involved in the Very Best Secular Medical Policies, which in 1930s Germany was euthanizing the disabled.

And we all know how that worked out, don't we?

Let's look at Ms. Gaylor's shallow diatribe:

Dear 'Liberal' Catholic:

It’s time to quit the Roman Catholic Church.

Well, certainly, freedom of conscience, adherence to the truth and all that. No one is making anyone stay.

It's your moment of truth. Will it be reproductive freedom, or back to the Dark Ages? Do you choose women and their rights, or Bishops and their wrongs? Whose side are you on, anyway?

Because, obviously, prior to three weeks ago, we were living in the Dark Ages, when women were sold like chattel and forcibly made to have sex, get pregnant and bear children.

The nightmare world of January of 2012, before the Obama HHS Mandate.

It is time to make known your dissent from the Catholic Church, in light of the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops’ ruthless campaign endangering the right to contraception. If you're part of the Catholic Church, you're part of the problem.

Jeez, hysterical much?

The Bishop's ruthless campaign consists of (a) supporting Obamacare (stupid idea) and (b) arguing for a conscience exemption (good idea.)

I remember when liberals were big on "freedom of conscience." They would get together in these big herds and whinny about how wrong it was to make people sign "loyalty oaths" promising that they woudln't support a violent revolution against the United States.

And remember burning the flag and putting a crucifix in urine? That was the most important thing once upon a time.

But Catholics adhering to a teaching that you can find continuously taught from the First Century, that isn't nearly as important as giving Stalinists the right to become teachers.

Why are you propping up the pillars of a tyrannical and autocratic, woman-hating, sex-perverting, antediluvian Old Boys Club?

Can't have a reasoned conversation without a bunch of name-calling, can we?

Why are you aiding and abetting a church that has repeatedly and publicly announced a crusade to ban contraception, abortion and sterilization, and to deny the right of all women everywhere, Catholic or not, to decide whether and when to become mothers?

"Crusade to ban"?

Where? When?

Evidence please.

And "to deny the right of all women everywhere, Catholic or not, to decide whether and when to become mothers?"

Huh? The Catholic Church doesn't teach that people have to exercise prudence in determining whether and when to become parents? It seems it does.

It's like this woman doesn't know what she's talking about.

When it comes to reproductive freedom, the Roman Catholic Church is Public Enemy Number One. Think of the acute misery, poverty, needless suffering, unwanted pregnancies, social evils and deaths that can be laid directly at the door of the Church's antiquated doctrine that birth control is a sin and must be outlawed.

Think of what "acute misery, poverty, needless suffering, unwanted pregnancies, social evils and deaths" can be laid at the door of the Catholic Church when it stands in the way of "retroactive abortion" and defines the soon to be widespread practice of murdering children one year old or younger - who really aren't people, to some folks - the test balloon for which is now being floated by the Journal of Medical Ethics.

A backer of the Roman Catholic presidential candidate says that if women want to avoid pregnancy we should put an aspirin between our knees? Catholic politicians are urging that the right to contraception should be left up to states? Nearly 50 years after the Supreme Court upheld contraception as a privacy right, we’re going to have to defend this basic freedom all over again?

All she can say is "Jew! Jew! Jew!" (In other words, Catholic-baiting instead of Jew-baiting.)

But, seriously, guilt by association much?

Also, evidence please for the buried claim that the "Roman Catholic presidential candidate" has ever said he intends to lobby for outlawing contraception?

There isn't any.

So its back to yelling "Jew! Jew! Jew!"

You’re better than your church. So why? Why continue to attend Mass? Tithe? Why dutifully sacrifice to send your children to parochial schools so they can be brainwashed into the next generation of myrmidons (and, potentially, become the next Church victims)? For that matter, why have you put up with an institution that won’t put up with women priests, that excludes half of humanity?

No, liberal Catholics, send your kids to a secular school where they can become "myrmidoms" for the liberal welfare state and be molested by public school teachers, which is far, far more likely than facing a similar issue with a Catholic priest in that (a) the rate of molestation by Catholic priests was always lower than any other occupation and (b) is far, far lower than any other institution today because, unlike, say, public schools, the Catholic Church has been required to reform itself.

No self-respecting feminist, civil libertarian or progressive should cling to the Catholic faith.

Actually, no self-respecting Catholic would be a feminist, civil libertarian or progressive insofar as those terms have been defined to means "secular deniers of God who make the murder of people the summum bonum of society."

As a Cafeteria Catholic, you chuck out the stale doctrine and moldy decrees of your religion, but keep patronizing the establishment that menaces public health by serving rotten offerings.

"Stale," "moldy" and "rotten," but it "menaces public health."

Hey, the Jew-baiting analogy just got clearer, except the Nazis would have thrown in "diseased" and "poison" somewhere.

Keep working on it!

Your continuing Catholic membership, as a "liberal," casts a veneer of respectability upon an irrational sect determined to blow out the Enlightenment and threaten liberty for women worldwide. You are an enabler. And it’s got to stop.

Interestingly, this one comes right out of the Liberal German Kulturkampf, when the Prussian nobility aligned with liberals to deny Catholics basic civil rights after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. See my review here.

What is it about "progressives" that causes them to re-work historic bigotries and ancient cliches time after time?

If you imagine you can change the church from within — get it to lighten up on birth control, gay rights, marriage equality, embryonic stem-cell research — you are deluding yourself. If you remain a “good Catholic,” you are doing “bad” to women’s rights. You’re kidding yourself if you think the Church is ever going to add a Doctrine of Immaculate ContraCeption.

Har, har, har...Doctrine of the Immaculate Contraception...get it?!?!?!?!

Now, she's beginning to sound like some lunatic fundamentalist anti-catholic bigot.

*Sigh* That schtick never gets old.

It is disgraceful that U.S. health care reform is being held hostage to the Catholic Church’s bizarre opposition to medically prescribed contraception.

If they have to give in to the "papists," health care will be set back to the a time long-forgetten....about two months ago!!!

No one can resist! Ein Volk! Ein Reich! Ein Fuhrer!

Dayum...that stuff gets your blood stirring!

No politician should jeopardize electability for failure to genuflect before the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

And now we dust off 19th Century Know-Nothingism.

(Question to ask your Bishop: Does he hold up an umbrella against the rain? Isn’t that just as “unnatural” as using a condom or diaphragm?)

Don't. Just don't.

You'll embarass yourself even further in your obvious lack of any understanding of Natural Law or teleology.

Your Church hysterically claims that secular medical policy is “an assault against religious liberty.”

No, it claims that coercing people to do or subsidize things that are an anathema to their religious principles is an "assault on religious liberty."

Weird, but there was a time when liberals claimed they were concerned about freedom of conscience.

You are savvy enough to realize that the real assault is by the Church against women’s rights and health care.

Because, obviously, by doing nothing, such as not paying for something, that's really assaulting "women's health care."

So, this woman is assaulting me by not paying my bar tab?

This is just the weirdest reasoning ever.

As Nation columnist Katha Pollitt asks: Is it an offense against Jehovah Witnesses that health care coverage will include blood transfusions?

I don't know. Maybe we should ask them.

The Amish, as Pollitt points out, don’t label cars “an assault on religious liberty” and try to force everyone to drive buggies.

And we force the Amish to pay for other peoples'cars...when exactly?

The louder the Church cries “offense against religious liberty” the harder it works to take away women’s liberty.

The louder that people cry "theft," the more they work against other peoples' ability to take their property from them.

The point is what? That if you define the other person's inactivity as an assault, then that inactivity is an assault?

Obama has compromised, but the Church never budges, instead launching a vengeful modern-day Inquisition. Look at its continuing directives to parish priests to use their pulpits every Sunday to lobby you against Obama’s policy, the Church's announcement of a major anti-contraception media campaign — using your tithes, contributions and donations — to defeat Obama’s laudable health care policy. The Church has introduced into Congress the “Respect for Rights of Conscience Act, ” a bill to place the conscienceless Catholic Church's "rights of conscience" above the rights of conscience of 53 percent of Americans. That the Church has "conscience rights" to deny women their rights is a kissing cousin to the claim that “corporations are people.” The Church that hasn’t persuaded you to oppose contraception now wants to use the force of secular law to deny contraceptive rights to non-Catholics.

How dare Catholics expect to use democracy for their protection!

Ein Volk! Ein...well, you get the drift.

But is there any point in going on? After all, your misplaced loyalty has lasted through two decades of public sex scandals involving preying priests, children you may have known as victims, and church complicity, collusion and coverup going all the way to the top. Are you like the battered woman who, after being beaten down every Sunday, feels she has no place else to go?

Lady, you don't know the half of it. I have a government that turns a blind eye to pedophile teachers, takes half my income for taxes and runs trillions of dollars in deficits and ....

Oh, wait, you weren't talking about that.

But we have a more welcoming home to offer, free of incense-fogged ritual, free of what freethinker Bertrand Russell called “ideas uttered long ago by ignorant men,” free of blind obedience to an illusory religious authority. Join those of us who put humanity above dogma.

Kill young children!

Kill the disabled!

Prevent Catholics from exercising their democratic rights!

Ein Volk! etc., etc.

As a member of the “flock” of an avowedly antidemocratic club, isn’t it time you vote with your feet? Please, exit en Mass.

It's a free church. The door is that way.

By the way, we Catholics are the winning side.

We faced down the Roman empire, Attila the Hun, Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, the French Revolution and a thousand other petty tyrants.

We survived.

We're here.

They are not.

Have fun with your new friends.

We will still be here when they are long-forgotten.

Another reason that Dawkins is a tool.

According to the Telegraph:

Richard Dawkins: I can't be sure God does not exist

He is regarded as the most famous atheist in the world but last night Professor Richard Dawkins admitted he could not be sure that God does not exist.

He told the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, that he preferred to call himself an agnostic rather than an atheist.

The two men were taking part in a public “dialogue” at Oxford University at the end of a week which has seen bitter debate about the role of religion in public life in Britain

And:

There was surprise when Prof Dawkins acknowledged that he was less than 100 per cent certain of his conviction that there is no creator.

The philosopher Sir Anthony Kenny, who chaired the discussion, interjected: “Why don’t you call yourself an agnostic?” Prof Dawkins answered that he did.

An incredulous Sir Anthony replied: “You are described as the world’s most famous atheist.”

Prof Dawkins said that he was “6.9 out of seven” sure of his beliefs.

“I think the probability of a supernatural creator existing is very very low,” he added.

He also said that he believed it was highly likely that there was life on other planets.

And everyone should agree with Dick to the Dawk's probability estimates, which is why he has argued that teaching children a faith is a form of "child abuse" and children should be taken away from people who have reached a conclusion on an open question. See e.g. Peter S. Williams' article quoting Dawkins as follows "In a recent editorial for the secular humanist magazine Free Inquiry, entitled ‘Religion’s Real Child Abuse’, Richard Dawkins opined that: ‘Odious as the physical abuse of children by priests undoubtedly is, I suspect that it may do them less lasting damage than the mental abuse of having been brought up Catholic in the first place.’"

How dare anyone reach a conclusion when Dawkins says "I don't know."

After all "He's Dick to the Dawk to the Ph.D. He's smarter than you because he's got a science degree."



The revealing part of all this is that it demonstrates the totalitarianism of secularism. There is no role for freedom of conscience in a world composed of mere "molecules in motion." In Dawkins' world everyone should reach the same conclusions - the probability of the existence of God is very low, "around 6.9 out of 7" - and they should derived the same conclusion from that calculation - that believing in the existence of God - based on that .1 out of 7 probability estimate - is irrational because Dick to the Dawk "says so."

What a tool.

Don't worry. When his fanboys cry out in agony from their own "long, dark night of the soul," based on empirical observation, the odds are low - probably 6.9 out of 7 - that Dawkins will NOT explain that he was misquoted.

I repeat, what a tool.

The problem for the New Atheists when they are dealing with real theists - rather than easily smashed strawmen - is ...

...that the real believers can bite and otherwise spoil your triumphal march into the Godless utopia of the future:

Richard Dawkins refuses to be interviewed by someone who is "religious":

A rotten week for Richard Dawkins in his battle against God. He began it by being kebabed on the Today programme by the former Dean of St Paul’s, Giles Fraser and ended it skewered by Camilla Long in an interview (£) for The Sunday Times. Long cannily exposed his shrillness, his monumental arrogance, his tetchiness.

It is a huge shame in a way, because he is a clever chap who has done an awful lot to popularise science; he has been far more a force of good than ill and it would be nice if we could remember him for his contribution to science. But we won’t. We will remember him less as Charles Darwin, which he would like, than as, ironically, Samuel Wilberforce, which he would not. Someone whom history remembers primarily for a hapless flailing.

Remarkably, Dawkins stipulated that his Sunday Times interview must be carried out by someone who is ‘not religious’. This reinforces the suspicion I’ve always had that he wishes only to preach to the converted and sneer at the rest. There is no real attempt to engage; like so much of the evangelistic, atheistic, liberal left it is simply fashionable attitudinalising and means less than a handful of dust.

The refusal to interact - the demand that the world accept the sneering attitude with defense - is so utterly typical of the "evangelistic, atheistic, liberal left."

It's a matter of character and "fashionable attitudinalising" and not reason or principle.

It appears that Dawkins has "jumped the shark."

When he's facing difficulty Richard Dawkins turns to ...

...God.

Such as when he can't carry out his brag that he knows the name of that Darwin fellow's book:

For once, Richard Dawkins is lost for words," Stephen Pollard crowed recently in a widely read column in Britain's Daily Telegraph. "Atheists' arrogance is their Achilles' heel, as cringe-making radio performance has proved."

The performance in question has Dawkins stumbling, uncharacteristically, when pressed to give the full title to Darwin's major treatise "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection" (1859). His awkward attempt quickly lit up the Internet, not least because it took place on national radio, with millions of Britons listening. Not that many people off-the-cuff would likely recall the full title of Darwin's book, including its contentious subtitle: "or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life." But it is surprising that Dawkins, of all people, would forget the part of the title that captures Darwin's key argument, his emphasis on "natural selection."

The transcript of the interview -- which quickly went viral -- has Dawkins floundering: "On the Origin of Species...Uh... with ..., oh, God, On the Origin of Species. Um. There is a sub-title ... Um ... with respect to the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life."

Oh...who?

That's right up there with Dawkins' comment that we "weren't put here" to be made happy by fairy tales.

Put here???

By who?

Then Dawkins does his typical tendentious dance to explain away his embarrassment at being hoisted by his own petard:

On his website, Dawkins declared that he'd been "ambushed" by the question. And, granted, the full title is a lot more difficult to recall than the name "Matthew" for the opening Gospel to the New Testament, as Dawkins was trying to convey. He was seeking more broadly to imply, from the fact that so many Britons call themselves "Christian" without remembering that author or consistently attending church, that their self-description shouldn't be thought very meaningful. Certainly, not enough to warrant their being called "Christian" in the first place.

Check out this video:



Dawkins brags that he can certainly name the book. In no way was he "ambushed," nor does he say that he was ambushed.

Explaining the Secular Atheists.

Andrew Brown in the Guardian examines militant atheism:

There are three kinds of people in Britain today who might be taken for militant secularists: that is to say people who are not just themselves unbelievers, but have an emotional investment in the extirpation of religious belief in others. There are the adolescents who have just discovered "rationality"; there are gay people who feel personally threatened by traditional monotheist morality; and, in this country, there are parents frustrated by the admissions policy of religiously controlled schools.

About the adolescents, there is nothing to be done. Some will discover Richard Dawkins the way that others discover Ayn Rand. Large confident solutions to all the world's problems, which are only held back by the stupidity and self-interest of the old, will always appeal to teenagers. Most of them will grow up and those who don't will grow old and never hear the younger selves who'd call them tragics.

The position of gay people in this culture war seems to me historical and contingent. All of the main monotheistic traditions contain strong and contradictory currents of opinion about homosexuality, ranging from unremitting hostility to much more understanding and sympathy than was found in the secular world until recently. My own feeling is that humanity will win out here. I could be wrong, but in 20 or 30 years' time we will know.

And:

Their real offence, though, is that they don't understand the rules of secular debate. I know that this will appear a contradiction in terms: how can a secularist misunderstand the rules of secular debate? But Baggini's definition provides a way to understand this. A secularist, he says, is someone who appeals to natural reason, and not to divine law. And this kind of reason is by definition something shared by both sides in the argument. But the militant secularist takes for granted that "the religious" have no access to reason. There can be no reasoning with his opponents. All he can do is to repeat himself more loudly until the idiots understand.

This is a character trait, rather than a set of beliefs. It's certainly not confined to atheists. George Carey has it to an excruciating degree. And, of course, in Britain today, no militant has the power to persecute his enemies with the force of law. But that's not because we're nicer than other people, but because our political system is better.

Seen that approach, which consists of repeating the phrase "superstitious" and how "they want to control your life" while making incoherent, contradictory assertions.

It's really lame.

It is better to be feared than loved.

Glen Reynolds points out:

BECAUSE IT’S ONLY SAFE TO PICK ON CHRISTIANS: University atheist society president forced to resign after cartoon of Muhammad having a drink with Jesus is posted on Facebook.

And the lesson to Christians (and other religions) is that if you want respect, make people physically afraid. But if that’s the incentive system you create — and it is absolutely the one that’s been created — don’t be surprised if people pick up on it. Because the lesson of this decade is that people respond to incentives, even perverse ones.

Mark Shea counsels an atheist grieved that someone might say something ever so slightly askance about Hitchens...

...to get real.

Mark Shea got a comment, like the one I got by some atheist, bravely defending the notion that their hero's only destiny is to become worm food with the following:

Dude. Hitchens made a career out of insulting people’s memories in the hour of their family’s keenest grief–on national and international television. It was one of his most revolting traits and a living illustration of how courage, unhinged from the other virtues, can be deployed to do great evil–since it takes “courage” (of a sort) to defy healthy social convention and revile somebody’s loved one in the hour of their death.

In contrast, all Douthat did was offer some kind words. So: Cry me a river, wimpy self-absorbed atheist wuss, if a Christian states a) that he believes Hitchens now knows how wrong he was about God and b) does so in a generally kindly piece that tries to say something generous about a man who reviled his most cherished beliefs. Letters like yours just demonstrate that, yes, lots of atheists seem to suffer from some sort of personality disorder that renders them incapable of picking up the normal social and affective cues that normal people normally perceive. Lots of them are also, like you, full of self-pity and boasting that would embarrass a high school sophomore.

That you exhibit this adolescent cluelessness, O Future of Human Evolution, while simultaneously boasting of superior intelligence simply demonstrates yet again that those who worship the intellect seem particularly hampered in using it. Get over yourself.

Just in time for Christmas...

...Atheists disprove the existence of God...

...with a helmet that simulates the "religious experience."

Because, obviously, since we are composites of spirit and body, it is an essential tenet of Christianity that our body never has an effect on our spiritual/mental state, except when we consume alcohol, eat food, watch a sad movie, etc., etc.

Who are these idiots? And why don't they actually read what they are deconstructing? 

And are they doing their studies with public funding?

Good advice for the brave harbingers of the godless world of the future...

..."cowboy up."

Mark Shea writes:

"Atheists who screech like little girls at the sight of a world not to their liking are not going to be very effective Vanguards for the Revolution because, you know, sheesh! What a bunch of sorry pantywaists!

My advice: learn to cope with the fact that, with the exception of brief moments in history when people with major personality disorders who lack normal social and affective abilities take over and impose their will with blood and iron on a prostrate populace, atheists will always comprise a small minority, and even 21%of them are so confused about what “atheism” means they declare that they believe in God. So yeah, there’s a reason you feel like an outsider: you are. As a Catholic who is also an outsider in American culture, my suggestion is: have fun with it. One of the pleasures of outsideriness is that you get to be a subversive weirdo who is as exotic as a Hottentot. You can actually make friends who are fascinated by your counter-cultural lifestyle–that is, unless you are a sullen grouch who files suit and mutters about everybody around you praying. Then, you can just expect to be the unhappy isolated person you will inevitably be."