Comeuppance
By Mitch Berg
Many of us in the faith community have observed that Big Atheism loves to attack Christianity (the “turn the other cheek” faith) with a demented fervor, while remaining fairly silent about occasionally, disturbingly violence-prone Islam.
“Why don’t you take a crack at excoriating Islam – or to one of the other secular faiths, like big feminism?” we ask.
We all assumed the answer was because they were hypocrites.
The real answer seems to be “because they’re hypocrites, and are justly afraid of their own, co-secular-religionists on the left”.
In recent years, Andrew Dawkins – one of Big Atheism’s major evangelists – finally crossed that invisible line, and started attacking not only Islam, but the left’s great secular faith, gender identity feminism.
It hasn’t worked out well – for him, or for Big Left’s intellectual honesty.
For the rest of us, though?
In the process, he’s exposed a rich vein of hypocrisy in the Left — and, more significantly, an intellectual rift between hard-line and multiculturalist atheists. That rift is growing fast: non-believers, having exhausted their anti-Christian rhetoric, are turning on each other with the ferocity of religious zealots. Enjoy.
The whole thing is worth a read.
July 31st, 2014 at 8:24 am
I’m not a big fan of people who run around yelling “Hypocrite” as the term has been worn down to include people who oppose tax increases and larger government yet drive on public roads and flush a toilet that is connected to the public sewer system.
These people are phonies. They think they are speaking ‘truth to power’ and being ‘dangerous’ and ‘edgy’ by saying awful things about Christian religious. Please.
Comedy Central had no issue with “South Park” putting a cartoon Jesus in all kinds of blasphemous situations. The time the creators wanted to just have a cartoon Mohommed in an episode got nixed. And they had a stock caricature of a Christian Conservative that was created for television by a Left wing comedian – “Stephen Colbert” – who is going to get a real live network TV-talk show. Good luck finding the “Stephen Colbert” opposite anytime soon. As ‘Saturday Night Live’ producer Lorne Michaels noted, whenever SNL did a skit mocking Democrats they received lots of mail from angry Democrats (including the elected ones) threatening all kinds of mayhem if they didn’t cease & desist.
July 31st, 2014 at 8:45 am
It strikes me that militant atheists are in effect proving something that we believers have been telling them for centuries; that without the knowledge of God, moral restraint goes out the window.
Well done, atheists!
July 31st, 2014 at 8:53 am
So funny, I know here when dems are made fun of everyone is annoyed but they love conservatives/republicans being ripped. I have noticed that if its done well and intelligently republicans can usually laugh at themselves but democrats can’t. I think they take themselves wayyy too seriously.
July 31st, 2014 at 9:10 am
POD,
Many atheists I’ve spoken with don’t believe that God exists yet believe you do. Don’t get a to big of a head about it… some also believe that stones and trees have souls and one in particular believed waiving a crystal prism over her food warded off all kinds of maladies.
July 31st, 2014 at 10:12 am
atheists are fun to play with down here, usually they are still in denial. I’ve considered sending up a few to heaven just to see what would happen because they get really fricken annoying after about 50 years
July 31st, 2014 at 10:15 am
It is odd because without God I wouldn’t exist. Read your damn Bible, I’m a fallen angel and if you believe in me but not God that is literally impossible. I led a rebellion OUT of heaven.
July 31st, 2014 at 11:33 am
Many people who are committed atheists lack imagination. They can’t believe something can exist that will forever be outside of their understanding. Dawkins is like this. Stephen Jay Gould suffered from the same limitation.
I started watching Game of Thrones a few months ago (thanks, Netflix!). It’s set on some weird, quasi-Medieval fantasy world. At first I didn’t like it because it is really impossible to have a Medieval world without Christianity. None of the institutions would be the same, it wouldn’t have the look and feel of Medievalism without Christianity.
But perhaps GoT is trying to teach us something. GoT has small-g gods, but no God. The gods are distant and seem to have some power, but they can’t be said to demand any moral obligation from their followers.
If you’ve seen GoT, you know that any character who shows what we would think of as positive character traits — honor, loyalty, kindness, charity — is killed off in short order. In the world of GoT forgiving your enemies and turning the other cheek isn’t a virtue, it’s stupidity that will result in the gruesome death of yourself and everyone you love. From our point of view the moral world of GoT is an abomination, but from within that world it isn’t. Holding a wedding and killing the groom’s family at the end in revenge for some old slight is vicious and cruel, but not really wrong.
July 31st, 2014 at 10:52 pm
POD: No offense buddy, but aren’t we given to believe that your greatest accomplishment was convincing people that you don’t exist?
Or, was that just a good line spoken by Kevin Spacey in “The Usual Suspects”?
August 1st, 2014 at 8:14 am
both.