This is an exchange between people in the Metro West Blog. It refers to an editorial in which the person chastised those who voted for Obama. We exchanged heated opinions....well theirs was heated .... and I responded again.
Yes, Iona you are right...the problem is there are so many who believe as I do such as you but they do not usually write responses so I get the ones whose ire I provoke and I DO provoke it. It's futile of course. No matter it's fun to see the fervor. That's why I write it. I KNOW what it's going to provoke and I find it enjoyable. Of course, I know we were ALL fetuses. Guess what I don't seem to recall that in utero experience do they?
They are right all those horrendous tyrants were atheists but for all those I can relate hundreds of thousands who were believers who were the most barbaric tyrants and did and DO the most despicable things. In fact, Hitlerian Germany while it was a perverted paganism, grew out of two thousand years of Christian Anti-Semitic brutality. Christian behavior brutal and extreme was a NECESSARY precondition for the Holocaust. It cannot be denied in any way as the Gospels especially the latter ones place decide at the feet of the Jews. There is no getting around it I do not care how much it is twisted. Six million full term human beings, men, women and ONE MILLION children went to their deaths because early Christianity fostered a poisonous creed. Without the illustrious history of Christian inhuman behavior toward the Jew the Holocaust would never have happened.
In addition, preeminent scientists who were and are atheists have brought the most advanced discoveries so religionists see what they want to see. MOST I say MOST scientists are agnostics and do not subscribe to a sky god or Biblical myth. We all need to feel good and we all fear illness, old age and death. As my atheist social worker humanitarian supreme friend said just because you want it to be so does not make it so. It's hard to be an agnostic or an atheist absolutely but I am a TRUTH person and I am a science person. I will ONLY believe what can be shown to work and be true. Other than that it's faith and I'm not good at nor do I buy that.
They ask ME why I am afraid of god believers I am NOT afraid of the god believers except if they try to destroy my rights which they have for decades. The question, I think, is why THEY are afraid of people who doubt or who have no belief or question belief through logic. It obviously threatens their entire system. If somehow god flew down from on high, showed his existence and eliminated immense human and other suffering THEN I would be happy -- MORE than happy -- to reverse course. Until then I am a confirmed doubter.
To my good buddy Jennie: Our country, while those who set foot on its shores in 1620 were of a self flagellating grim Calvinist Christian witchcraft believing variety, thank fate by the time our Founders arrived most were emphatic in church state separation for the very reason that exists in our exchanges. Religion spells anger and historically often war. They knew it as evident in Europe's religiously violent past. Sure religionists do some good, no doubt about it. So do Hindus, Buddists and oh yes so do atheists. It is in the human DNA to do good. It is better for the advancement of one's DNA to ensure the species survives. I will agree with you on one thing Christopher Hitchens would do well to eschew his profanity. It does, however, NOT make him wrong it simply makes him profane. Well, violence among religionists IS profane but of a different variety.
And by the way, Sheila, please do NOT waste your time praying for my sister or me for that matter. The answer your question is a RESOUNDING NO if the situation were reversed, I believe, I would have NO idea NONE, NIL, NADA, NOTHING about what occurred less than 10 days after birth. My very first memory of self is at age 3. Praying, I believe, does nothing. As Dawkins said in his email to me one day, it is too bad one cannot find joy and ecstasy in the universe as it is. Gloomy is NOT a word he uses to describe the awesome nature of its existence. However enjoyable, this, happily I am sure for some, is the final installment of the debate. I rest my case.
