If you want to discover what kind of people atheists are, scroll down to my recent posts and read the responses. I am a troll. I am a cretin. I am a moron. I am a nut-job. And so on. For those who go beyond abuse, there is shrieking complaint. How dare you suggest atheists weren't around when this happened? How can you say atheists don't have feelings? How can you exploit this tragedy in this way? How come your God didn't prevent this, huh?
Actually my point was a simple one, and it seems to be unrefuted. Atheism seems to have nothing to say to people when there is serious bereavement or tragedy. Of course atheists have feelings and there were undoubtedly atheists among the mourners at Virginia Tech. But the Richard Dawkins philosophy--that we live in a meaningless world where there is no good and no evil--whatever its intellectual merit, seems arid and unconsoling when human beings are really hurting.
One atheist wrote to say that rather than rely on idle promises of fantasies of life after death, what atheists would say is that we need gun control laws and a better health care system. Fair enough, but is this what you tell a crying mother? "Madam, you should feel much better because new gun control laws and mental health reforms are on their way."
I wonder if the abuse that atheists heap on people when their ideas are questioned is indicative of a deeper malady. Atheists like to portray themselves as devotees of reason, but read the responses and see how much reason you discover there. Rather, it looks like these fellows hate God, and this hate spills over to anyone who brings up God's name. Call it the atheism of revenge. They blame God for screwing them over in some way, and unbelief is their form of payback.
Reader Comments ( Page 5 of 8)
61. Dinesh agrees with Marx: Religion is the opiate of the masses.
Mr. Reindeer at 4:46PM on Apr 21st 2007
62. D'Souza asked, where are the atheists? I don't know if the answer I'm about to give has been given before, but it would have been obvious to D'Souza if he had thought his question over.
It is probable that some of the people Cho shot were atheists. It is nearly certain that there are atheists among the friends and relatives of those who died. And if any of them are reading D'Souza's comments, the experience for them must be like having salt rubbed into their wounds.
David Canzi at 5:31PM on Apr 21st 2007
63. So to the list of reasons why you sympathize with Al Qaeda, we can add "no atheist members."
Dinesh D'Souza: Osama's useful idiot.
TTT at 5:47PM on Apr 21st 2007
64. Mr. D'Souza,
Ever hear of counseling or psychotherapy? Where would you send a troubled student? That is what atheistic science has to offer. I'd place my money on the efficacy of research-based therapy over superstition any day. Fantasies may be comforting temporarily, but they tend to backfire when they are eventually seen for what they are: Lies. You are forgetting that for many people, religion is no comfort in times like this. Why would God let such a thing happen? Was all that time I spent praying to him a waste, since he appears to be a malicious God?
I also suspect that atheist families are healthier and can offer more love and support to the victims than religious families. I have no scientific evidence for this view but it is based on the observation that the love of religious families tends to be very conditional; conditional on the child's religiosity of course. Many religious families also put God before each other. Jesus set the example here, asking his apostles to abandon their families and follow him.
According to Dawkins and others, eastern religions are relatively atheistic compared to western religions. How are they able to deal with tragedy without the nice man in the sky to comfort them? Through the support of friends and family instead of lies.
Perhaps the best answer is that no amount of religion could have prevented the tragedy that occurred, because it was caused by mental illness. Only better scientific, atheistic mental health services could have prevented it.
James at 5:52PM on Apr 21st 2007
65. I am not an atheist but I have friends with different views on the present as well as the hereafter, including atheists, christians, muslims, jews, hindus, buddhists, wiccans, etc..
You, sir, are as wrong as you can possibly be. I am still amazed how individuals can be so stupid as to lump everthing outside their own claim to the corner on "truth" as automatically wrong/incorrect/unreal.
web jones at 6:03PM on Apr 21st 2007
66. Mr. D'Souza: your argument that atheism is arid while belief is consoling is simply a reflection, based on infinitely greater need, that Man more likely created God rather than vice versa.
Atheism is itself a religious belief...a certainty that there is nothing beyond the grave. If one must have faith, it is logical to believe in something that offers promise rahter than a dead end (Pascal's wager).
But the wisest course of all is agnosticism: a humble realization that we can never know or touch anything supernatural. Anyone who claims certainty, yea or nay, regarding the supernatural is not necessarily a bad person, just one whose needs are corrupting their thought processes. Where they may go wrong and become "bad" people is when they attempt to force their belief system on others.
Cincinnati Rick at 6:46PM on Apr 21st 2007
67. You look at the world and you see God, he is in the infinite complexity and endless diversity that is existence. You hold on faith the eternality of this existence and of the essense of humanity; which you call the soul. You believe that action is the product of the divine, wheather it be proximate or from a distance. I don't like the term athiest, it requires that I prove a negative which is impossible. I perfer to believe that existence is not eternal, when I look out into the world I don't see god; I see endless complexity, beauty in chaos; patterns emerge from the random interaction of disparate elements creating the foundations for art and human expression that marks our many and varied civilizations as distinctly different from our animal cousins. I am a nontheist, I don't believe that there is no god, I don't believe anything about god. To think about god is to not think, so long as I am and I think I can't think about god. I believe in a world that's governed by elegantly simple rules which lay the foundation of physical interactions. Bottom line, to believe in god requires the absence of thought and without thought we cannot think, of god or anything for that matter.
Tyler at 7:17PM on Apr 21st 2007
68. Dalosophy wrote: "IT WOULD TAKE MORE FAITH TO BELIEVE THAT YOU HAVE MORAL STANDARDS THAN IT DOES TO BELIEVE IN GOD!"
I'm not sure what you mean by that. I don't believe in God, and I also have moral standards. Now maybe you wouldn't think that my moral standards are good, but I have moral standards.
Do you mean that an act would be ethical or unethical only if there is a God? If so, why?
Wes at 7:20PM on Apr 21st 2007
69. I wrote: "Do you mean that an act would be ethical or unethical only if there is a God? If so, why?"
Let me be more specific. What reason is there to believe that the existence of one or more Gods is necessary for any given act to be ethical or unethical?
Wes at 7:29PM on Apr 21st 2007
70. dalosophy -
Get thee both a clue and an education.
That is all.
andy at 7:45PM on Apr 21st 2007
71. Oh yes indeed... The religious are SO much more in touch with the feelings of their fellow humans than those cold-hearted atheists! Puh-leeze.
The Topeka, Kan.-based Westboro Baptist Church (WBC), which is not affiliated with any national Baptist organization, announced plans to protest at victims’ funerals only hours after 32 people were killed in the worst mass shooting in U.S. history. They also may protest at other events on the Virginia Tech campus.
The organization, founded and led by Fred Phelps, believes the United States has condemned itself to destruction by accepting homosexuality and other “sins of the flesh.” Phelps’ daughter, Shirley Phelps-Roper, said the Virginia Tech teachers and students who died on Monday brought their fate upon themselves by not being true Christians.
“The evidence is they were not Christian. God does not do that to his servants,” Phelps-Roper said. “You don’t need to look any further for evidence those people are in hell.”
Cho Seung-Hui, the Virginia Tech student responsible for the killings who took his own life after the shootings, was sent by God to punish those he killed, and America as a whole, for moral decline, said Phelps-Roper, while adding that she believes Cho is also in hell for violating God’s commandment to not kill.
“He is in hell,” Phelps-Roper said. “But he was also fulfilling the word of God.”
As Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg said, " with or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil; - that takes religion."
Buckster at 8:37PM on Apr 21st 2007
72. What is it precisely, that you speaking on behalf of God have offered them?
S at 8:53PM on Apr 21st 2007
73. Everyone needs a philosophy, it's true. Right from wrong doesn't just come naturally, and yes, if one is irrational then they cannot discern right from wrong, and degrade to their primal instincts. One such philosophy is fictional religion. It may or may not be true - there is absolutely no evidence for it, and nobody should bother trying to prove it wrong either, because faith needs to evidence to exist, just like imagination. But there are other philosophies, and they teach right from wrong in just the same way that religion does - except they're not made up.
I think this tragedy has many reasons behind it. But I think one of the main ones is the lack of any philosophy of importance in people - a lack of the belief that human beings, no matter what state they are in, have the capacity to be heroic and productive. Young men and women are realizing that religion is fake, and what do they fall back on? Some fall back on philosophy. Others fall through the cracks, because the adults around them don't want them to believe that they should believe in themselves.
If you expect men and women - especially young men and women - to grovel, faced with an enormous omnipresent god, or an enormous omnipresent state, or an enormous omnipresent society, then you also better expect some of them to fight back. A few will fight back productively - that's where we get the great heroes of our country. Others will fight back with words. And then others, who have absolutely no hope and feel their capacity to reason against the masses slipping away, will turn to violence.
A person of my philosophy does not feel any pity for the victims or their families. Rather, I feel that the problem associated with it can be solved. When something tragic happens and someone drives off of the road of life, a few others can help them. But if absolutely everybody pulls over, the road of life will abruptly stop. And that will hurt all of us.
RicDiS2 at 9:30PM on Apr 21st 2007
74. Turns out Liviu Librescu, the heroic professor, was not a religious man.
After read D'Souza, this is very SHOCKING! How can that be possible?
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0704200365apr21,1,4739235.story?coll=chi-news-hed
Jack Fisher at 11:00PM on Apr 21st 2007
75. I wonder if the abuse that theists heap on people when their ideas are questioned is indicative of a deeper malady. Theists like to portray themselves as devotees of reason, but read the tirades against atheism and see how much reason you discover there. Rather, it looks like these fellows hate atheists, and this hate spills over to anyone who points out their irrationality.
Dinesh, you're a perfect example of someone who is terrified that his own poor excuse for "faith" might be threatened by those of us who don't share it. It's just too bad that you, unlike so many other loons, have a public platform from which to promote your intolerance.
Frank at 11:44PM on Apr 21st 2007