Atheism is a or is a product of mental illness...

Discussion in 'Politics' started by OPTIONAL777, Apr 6, 2009.

Atheism is a or is a product of mental illness...

  1. Yes

    12 vote(s)
    17.1%
  2. No

    58 vote(s)
    82.9%
  1. The victim syndrome of atheists...

    Why Are Atheists So Angry?

    Submitted by Hambydammit on September 5, 2007 - 1:52pm.

    "Why are all atheists so angry?"

    I hear this question all the time. In fact, my Rambo-Kitty avatar is partially inspired by the question. Anyway, today I was reading an article about the debate between Sam Harris and Rick Warren, and was struck by Warren's statement, "I've never met an atheist who wasn't angry."

    My first reaction was denial. Many atheists, myself included, are happy most of the time. My atheist friends are great fun to hang out with. We laugh and joke and drink beer, and hardly ever mention religion.

    My second reaction, I confess, was anger. How dishonest of him to try to discount atheism by labeling us all as angry malcontents! This is exactly why people like him make me angry!

    That's when it hit me, square in the forehead. He's not being dishonest. I don't doubt that every atheist he's met has been angry. If I met him, he'd almost certainly make me angry, too. That's just it! HE makes atheists angry, so they're all angry around him. So, I forgive him for thinking that all atheists are angry. I understand how he made the mistake.

    Anyway, I'd like to reflect on "Atheist Anger" for a few minutes, and ask a couple of questions.

    First, why is it a bad thing to be angry? The suffragists were quite angry, and for good reason. New Zealand had granted women equal voting rights in 1893, and America, supposedly the land of equality, was violently opposed to the idea twenty years later. There are still plenty of women who are angry because women make less money doing the same jobs as men in many industries, and women are often not even considered for promotions when they're equally (or better) qualified for the position. Are they wrong for being angry? Should they just sit quietly and wait for men to realize the error of their ways? Some people think so. I've noticed that the majority of them are men.

    Am I making a valid comparison? Is it reasonable to compare life as an atheist in America in 2007 to life as a woman in the early 20th century? Clearly there are significant differences. Atheists can vote. They can, in theory, hold public office. They can get married, sign contracts, work wherever they're qualified. So, do we atheists have a right to be angry in the same way suffragists had?

    To answer that question, I'll recall some more history. In Mosaic law, as we all know, women were slightly better than slaves. They had no property rights. In Roman law, women were completely dependent on male relations for all legal matters, and when they were married, it was a matter of purchase between two families.

    Here, we can ask a pointed question. Do women have the right to be angry that they're not making as much as men in the workplace? After all, they can vote, own property, divorce their husband, sue him for child support and alimony, and live quite happily on their own. This country is one of the best places in the world to be a woman! What right do women have to be angry?

    If your skin prickled a little bit when you read the previous paragraph, good for you. You're halfway to understanding why atheists have a right to be mad. The reason women still have a right to be mad is that things are still not equal. They have no obligation to remain silent simply because they have it better than someone who lived a hundred, or a thousand years ago. The reason women have it better now is that people were angry all through history, and made small gains here and there over many generations. Without the fuel of anger, women would still be property, and wouldn't even have the opportunity to be mad about making less money in the workplace.

    So, what about us atheists? Do we have a right to be mad? Actually, yes. Did you know we've had atheist presidents? We have. I'll let you do your own homework on this, but it might surprise you to learn that many of the leaders of the U.S. throughout history have been openly atheist. Is this possible today? One congressman in California recently admitted to being atheist, and it caused a nationwide stir! It remains to be seen whether he'll be reelected. To be sure, he'll be attacked for being godless and amoral when election time comes around.

    Until the McCarthy Era, the pledge of allegiance didn't have the word "God." Money didn't have "In God We Trust." Until the 70s, Christians were not actively involved in politics for the purpose of legislating religious values. Clearly, America is more theist than it used to be, at least politically. So, are things getting better for atheists? I dare say they're not. Unlike women, our situation is not improving. We are not being afforded more respect. Rather, we are being legislatively pushed farther into the margins where we have been quietly lurking for sixty years since the Red Scare.

    To bring things back around, recall my comment about my atheist friends and I sitting around having beers and laughs. This is a good picture for you to hold in your mind's eye when you think of me, or any other atheist. This is what we want. We don't like being angry any more than women who'd like to be paid more. I'm sure all the angry feminists would rather things were better for women so they wouldn't have to be angry anymore. It's the same with atheists. If we were a bit less hated, vilified, and marginalized, it would be a lot easier for us to be in the presence of theists and not get angry.

    Why are atheists so angry? Because things could be better, and we don't like being marginalized.


    Credulity is much easier to sustain when we've been taught that facts are things to be memorized and repeated, rather than sought out and discovered.
    -- Me
     
    #41     Apr 7, 2009
  2. Another fine example of the mental illness of an atheist...

     
    #42     Apr 7, 2009
  3. 50 years and you didn't go to a library and read?

    ROTFLMAO...

     
    #43     Apr 7, 2009
  4. Clark `a late convert to Catholicism'

    Clare Garner Religious Affairs Correspondent

    Thursday, 9 September 1999

    ALAN CLARK became a Roman Catholic shortly before his death, just as his father, Lord Clark, the distinguished art historian, had done.

    Mr Clark's conversion followed conversations over several years with Father Michael Seed, ecumenical adviser to the late Cardinal Basil Hume, leader of the Roman Catholic church in England and Wales.

    Father Seed yesterday confirmed that he had received Mr Clark into the Catholic church earlier this summer, "quietly and without any fuss".

    On learning from Mr Clark's family that he was gravely ill, Father Seed went to his bedside on Saturday evening, hours before he died, to anoint his body with holy oil and give him the sacrament of the sick for the last time.

    Father Seed, who has received a number of high-profile figures into the Catholic church, including the Conservative MPs Ann Widdecombe, John Gummer and Sir George Gardiner, said that although Mr Clark had a reputation as a renegade, he was a deeply spiritual man.

    "We are all flawed people and perhaps Alan was viewed as such," he said. "However, I can only testify to his absolute integrity and his spiritual depth."

    It was agreed that Mr Clark's conversion should be kept secret until after his death. However, even yesterday, his family apparently did not acknowledge his conversion. In an unusual statement, they said: "He was buried in the ground of his home, Saltwood Castle, in the presence of his close family. The service, at the request of his wife and family, was conducted according to the rites of the Church of England from the Common Book of Prayer by the rector of Saltwood, Canon Reg Humphriss, and the vicar of Hythe, Canon Norman Woods. On the previous Thursday Canon Woods had administered the last rite."

    In becoming a Catholic at the end of his life, Mr Clark followed in a long tradition of so-called death-bed conversions. Oscar Wilde was received by a priest as he lay dying. Long before, he had declared that "Catholicism is the only religion to die in". Malcolm Muggeridge converted shortly before he died, as did John Wayne, Mae West and the former foreign secretary George Brown.

    Last year Judge James Harkess converted to Catholicism. As the husband of Valerie, and father of Alison and Josephine, all three of whom slept with Mr Clark - and famously became known as "the coven" - he had more reason than most to begrudge the MP. However, last year he also published a book about forgiveness.

    Earlier this year Mr Clark contributed to Father Seed's book Will I See You In Heaven?, an anthology of well-known people's views on the afterlife.

    There, in one of his last pieces of writing, Mr Clark wrote: "Heaven is that place where all nature lives in harmony. Where man and animals, and birds and trees and crops and water all recognise in each other the gifts of God their creator. And where neither greed, nor cruelty, nor malice have any place, and the judgement of the Almighty is perpetual."
     
    #44     Apr 7, 2009
  5. What is the Deal with Anthony Flew's Conversion to Theism?

    There has been lots of buzz about renowned atheist philosopher Anthony Flew's conversion to theism (though not Christianity). Atheists rushed to claim that he had not really converted or that he had been duped and was now having second thoughts, but those reactions met a buzz saw with the publication of There Is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind, by Anthony Flew and Roy Abraham Varghese.

    The atheists have shifted tactics and have rallied around an article in the New York Times by Mark Oppenheimer called, "The Turning of an Atheist." In my opinion, the article is rather biased towards the atheists. For example, the author simply outright refers to Richard Carrier as "brilliant" and refers to his "magnum opus" written before getting his doctorate (the relevance of the timing is unclear to me). The Christians, on the other hand, are trying to foster their "scientific proof" of God (air quotes in the original).

    The thrust of the article is that these nice, biased Christian authors took advantage of a frail man with a failing mind and are "exploiting" him (perhaps without malice) to promote their agenda. Oddly, when Richard Carrier continues to question Flew aggressively, he is put in a far more positive light as someone truly seeking truth. (Yet another example, in my opinion, of the author's bias). In any event, the suggestion is that Flew did not have much to do with the book, as it was written by its co-author and may lack the intellect to even know what it says.

    The article, however, is forced to concede a few things. Flew is a theist now, accepting a God who created though not one who continues to involve Himself in the universe's affairs. Flew was on the receiving end of Carrier's own polemics and other atheists scrambling to change his mind, but in the end has rejected them and staked out his position as a theist. In addition to his work on There Is a God, he has written the British government and requested that they permit the teaching of intelligent design and appeared at a conference at Biola to accept a prize from a group of Christians. While there, he reiterated his theism to the Christian audience but again emphasized that he is no Christian and cannot accept the God of the Old Testament. This does not strike me as the actions of a frail intellect or someone who has been charmed into belief by overly kind Christians who he is afraid to offend.

    Victor Reppert, of the Dangerous Idea blog, has provided additional information. He has posted a letter from Varghese that explains more his relationship with Flew, the status of Flew's intellect, and the writing process for There Is a God. Yes, Varghese teed up the original draft, but did so based in large part on Flew's own writings and interviews with Flew:

    the substantive portions of the book came from a combination of Tony’s published and unpublished writings (and by the way he still does write) as well as extensive correspondence and numerous interviews with him. I would be happy to share these with any investigative journalist.


    Regarding Flew's involvement in the writing process, Varghese states that "Tony edited, corrected and approved at least ten versions of the manuscript."

    Moreover, if you are looking to the internet for fair coverage of the back-and-forth, you likely are missing out:

    For three years, assorted skeptics and freethinkers have hounded the poor man trying to get him to recant. Believe me, if there was the slightest indication, the remotest suspicion, that he had retracted his new-found belief in God, it would be plastered all across the worldwide web (and beyond). Instead, Tony has taken it on himself to respond to every attack on his intellectual integrity in contributions to publications ranging from a rationalist journal in New Zealand to the latest issue of Skeptic magazine in the UK. The attacks on him are always highlighted on the Internet – his responses are never to be found unless you happen to get hold of the print editions. Not without reason, he now refers to several of the apostles of reason as “bigots”.


    I also found interesting the comments on why Flew changed his mind. It was not just a matter of interpreting scientific evidence, but of philosophical issues that Flew is far more qualified to resolve than any of those raising questions about him.

    A key point missed by the article is that it is not just or even mainly the evidence from science that led Flew to change his mind. The single greatest influence on him was philosophical – specifically the book The Rediscovery of Wisdom by David Conway. It was not a tug of war between, on the one hand Paul Kurtz and Richard Carrier, and on the other, the theist scientists, with the data from science as the rope. The rope was a philosophical one and here Conway, Richard Swinburne, Gerald Schroeder (in his exploration of the philosophical implications of science in The Hidden Face of God), et al were decisive.


    As for his mental state, Varghese states that Flew, though affected by some memory issues and slower than he was in his prime, is the same considered scholar as before:

    When he sets pen to paper (as will be seen in the most recent issue of Skeptic), he is as cogent and coherent as you could want (and also as terse as he was in his 1950 article). The only reason why people ask questions about his mental faculties is because he dared to change his mind.


    What do I make of this? Well, based on the articles and blog entries and forum discussions I have read:

    Anthony Flew's conversion to theism is genuine and the result of an active and considered intellect. It is abiding, not a sudden shift or flash in the pan impulse. Flew has been heading in this direction for a while, by all accounts, and has firmly arrived. Atheists have swarmed him trying to convince him he had been duped, but failed. Having failed to get him to recant, the atheist orthodox are attacking his intellect, unable to admit that a "true" atheist could convert to theism based on reason and evidence. It simply has to be the result of those deviously clever idiotic Christians taking advantage of an old man. What seems to be truly inappropriate, however, is the atheists attacking an "old man" with outright or implied accusations of a failed intellect.

    Nothing about the writing of the book "smells" odd at this point. The first draft was based on Flew's earlier writings, his correspondence with his co-author, and interviews with Flew. It is consistent with the many public statements and writings Flew has offered on the same issue. And Flew edited ten drafts before approving it for publication by HarperCollins, a respected publishing house.

    So, I suggest that if you are interested in Flew and his conversion, you buy the book and see what convinced him. It might not convince you, but it will likely be an interesting read.
     
    #45     Apr 7, 2009
  6. Atheism as a product of mental illness? I wonder how the three wise men -- Limbaugh, Coulter and Hannity -- would respond.
     
    #46     Apr 7, 2009
  7. Being a good troll, does not make your life more meaningful.
     
    #47     Apr 7, 2009
  8. Being an angry reactive atheist suffering from a mental illness does not make your life more meaningful...

     
    #49     Apr 7, 2009
  9. It is true that Coulter is a man...



     
    #50     Apr 7, 2009