Debate With Dan--Part Four

Continuing from comment on Fighting the Good Fight

This comment from Pastor Cornell illustrates the problem with many believers' opinions about atheists. This guy is a believer speaking to believers. His intention is not an explanation, it is retention. He is trying to keep his flock in line by making assertions that he knows nothing about.

Relying on a preacher to explain atheism is like going to a Republican for an explanation of why there should be a Democratic president.

"An atheist assigns himself to life without ultimate purpose."

Wrong. It is just a different purpose than the pastor's.

"The atheist must also suppress the demands of logic."

Terribly wrong. It is logic that breeds atheism.

"...the very existence of the universe seems to be a colossal violation of the laws of nature (i.e., a miracle)."

Wrong again. But, this guy knows that. He is talking to believers not atheists.

"The atheist must also deny the validity of historical proof. If he accepted the standard rules for testing the truth claims of historical documents, he would be forced to accept the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead."

Wrong again. I have already covered this in a previous post.

"Always remember that the atheist's problem with belief in God is not the absence of evidence but the suppression of it."

Wrong. There is no evidence for God outside of the Bible which I have repeatedly said and shown is an unreliable source of information.

"This is what scripture teaches."

His only source of evidence.

This is a sermon, not an explanation. If you want your pipes fixed you get a plumber not a roofer. If you want to know what atheists think you ask atheists, not someone whose source of income is dependant on people believing in a fairy-tale.

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Fighting the Good Fight

There's an important case coming before the US Supreme Court next week brought by Annie Laurie Gaylor of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF). Gaylor will argue that President Bush's Faith Based Initiatives is a government promotion of religion and therefore unconstitutional.

While news reports about the case aren't very optimistic about Gaylor's chances of winning, they do concede that she and the FFRF have been successful over the last few years at whittling away pieces of the initiative.

Religious legal groups argue that "real people with real problems are no longer getting help because of some of their [Gaylor and the FFRF] lawsuits," but don't mention that money given to these Church groups could be just as easily given to government programs that are forbidden by law to discriminate.

Whether Gaylor wins her case or not, it helps me have some hope for my children's futures to know that there are people out there with the time and resources to fight the good fight.


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Fifteen Minutes of Stupidity

Today marks the 20th anniversary of Andy Warhol's death.

I am old enough to remember Warhol and The Factory, so remember, and appreciate the contributions that this man made to art, and pop culture, and have been fascinated for decades with his life, philosophy, and work.





I was also lucky enough to have seen some of his work at MoMA last summer when I was in New York with my son. I took the picture above while I was there. While there, something that really showed me just how brilliant Warhol's work is, was my son's fascination with it. He (my son) knew who Warhol was because of his part in "The Doors," the Oliver Stone movie about the band, but really didn't know any of his work. Then as we went through the museum the only piece of work that grabbed my son's attention more than the Campbell Soup Cans was the Richard Avedon portrait of Lennon (at left), which is itself similar to some of Warhol's work.


Along with his creating "Pop" art, Warhol was fascinated with fame, and is known for the quote:

"In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes."

As time went on, and he got tired of being asked about the quote he occasionaly changed the quote to "In the future 15 people will be famous" or "In 15 minutes everybody will be famous," but the original quote is something that has turned out to be somewhat prophetic.

With the popularity of stupidity like "Survivor," "American Idol," and other so-called reality TV shows (which Ron Jeremy has compared to porn flicks), and the World's fascination with people like Anna Nicole Smith, and Paris Hilton whose only claim to fame is fame itself, it seems that the Western World's main goal behind war is bringing Warhol's statement to life.

Case-in-point, during the time I have sat here writing this there have been two news spots on the Anna Nicole stupidity, and a full length segment on Britney Spears head-shaving rehab-quitting maneuvers on the morning news, and no mention of the mess in the land of the fabled Garden of Eden.

Everything I've read about Warhol seems to point toward his wanting and being fascinated with fame, but I really wonder sometimes what he would think of the fame machine now.


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Hey, NAE. Wanna Help? Then Get Out of the Way.

Last month the National Association of Evangelicals, sans Ted Haggard, announced an effort to begin protecting the environment. This extremely belated decision is quite a change from two decades ago when the Secretary of the Interior for the then Evangelical in Chief, Ronald Reagan, announced that environmental issues were a waste of time because of the impending return of Christ who wouldn't allow us to self-destruct before he got here.

But, now even Pat Robertson has come around, and no longer thinks that Global Warming is a hoax perpetrated by the evil Christian hating, Gay loving, feminista left.

According to the NAE's announcement they will start looking for ways to "reverse the degradation of Creation," and "not allow it to be progressively destroyed by human folly." Naturally, I have some suggestions for ways they can help.

First step: They should actually mean what they say. On the same day that the NAE announced their new stand on the environment, there was an announcement on the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance's website saying the exact opposite. For some, this contradiction says that there is a split in the Evangelical community over the whole issue, and I agree, but it also points to the NAE's attempt to play both sides of the issue, which will ensure that their current flow of money will continue pouring in to them. Money that people like the NAE's former leader, Ted Haggard, will need for prostitutes and meth.

However, the most important step they could take, would be halting their attempts to take science back to the Dark Ages.

The people who are now calling for "fundamental change in values, lifestyles, and public policies required to address these worsening problems before it is too late," and are pledging to "work together toward a responsible care for Creation and call with one voice to the religious, scientific, business, political and educational arenas to join them in this historic initiative" are the same people who routinely call for an end to the study of real science in American public schools, and are thereby promulgating their ignorance of science.

While famous failed attempts at dumbing down our children in places like Pennsylvania, and the comedic back and forth on the issue by educators in Kansas draw a lot of media and public attention, it is the daily battles fought by fanatic undereducated educators that really harm our society's chances to do something positive about the damage we have done to the Earth's environment.

Luckily, other economically powerful countries and groups like Japan and the European Union aren't as stupid as ours when it comes to science education, which goes a long way toward explaining why the richest and most powerful country on the planet consistently ranks behind virtually every European and Asian country in terms of the science and math proficiency of its students.

Luckily for the rest of us, these same countries have taken positive steps to help matters, despite the current American administration's continued road blocks over the past six years.

If the NAE really wants to make positive steps toward a survivable environment, then they simply need to take several steps away from public schools and education, and accept the Constituion's stance on religion and government, thereby allowing people who know what they are doing to get things done.


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