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ebonlockSurprise, surprise, Dinesh D'Souza makes an ass of himself again:
Notice something interesting about the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shootings? Atheists are nowhere to be found. Every time there is a public gathering there is talk of God and divine mercy and spiritual healing. Even secular people like the poet Nikki Giovanni use language that is heavily drenched with religious symbolism and meaning.
The atheist writer Richard Dawkins has observed that according to the findings of modern science, the universe has all the properties of a system that is utterly devoid of meaning. The main characteristic of the universe is pitiless indifference. Dawkins further argues that we human beings are simply agglomerations of molecules, assembled into functional units over millennia of natural selection, and as for the soul--well, that's an illusion!
To no one's surprise, Dawkins has not been invited to speak to the grieving Virginia Tech community. What this tells me is that if it's difficult to know where God is when bad things happen, it is even more difficult for atheism to deal with the problem of evil. The reason is that in a purely materialist universe, immaterial things like good and evil and souls simply do not exist. For scientific atheists like Dawkins, Cho's shooting of all those people can be understood in this way--molecules acting upon molecules.
If this is the best that modern science has to offer us, I think we need something more than modern science.
To which an actual atheist professor at VA Tech responds, leaving a smoking crater where D'Asshole used to be:
We atheists do not believe in gods, or angels, or demons, or souls that endure, or a meeting place after all is said and done where more can be said and done and the point of it all revealed. We don’t believe in the possibility of redemption after our lives, but the necessity of compassion in our lives. We believe in people, in their joys and pains, in their good ideas and their wit and wisdom. We believe in human rights and dignity, and we know what it is for those to be trampled on by brutes and vandals. We may believe that the universe is pitilessly indifferent but we know that friends and strangers alike most certainly are not. We despise atrocity, not because a god tells us that it is wrong, but because if not massacre then nothing could be wrong.
I am to be found on the drillfield with a candle in my hand. “Amazing Grace” is a beautiful song, and I can sing it for its beauty and its peacefulness. I don’t believe in any god, but I do believe in those people who have struggled through pain and found beauty and peace in their religion. I am not at odds with them any more than I am at odds with Americans when we sing the “Star-Spangled Banner” just because I am not American. I can sing “Lean on Me” and chant for the Hokies in just the same way and for just the same reason.
[...]
I feel humbled by the sense of composure of a family who lost someone on Monday. I will not insult that dignity them by pretending there is sense to be made of this senselessness, or that there is some greater consolation to be found in the loss of a husband and son.
I know my students are now more than students.
You can find us next week in the bloodied classrooms of a violated campus, trying to piece our thoughts and lives and studies back together.
With or without a belief in god, with or without your asinine bigotry, we will make progress, we will breathe life back into our university, I will succeed in explaining this or that point, slowly, eventually, in a ham-handed way, at risk of tears half-way through, my students will come to feel comfortable again in a classroom with no windows or escape route, and hell yes we will prevail.
You see Mr D’Souza, I am an atheist professor at Virginia Tech and a man of great faith. Not faith in your god. Faith in my people.
I wish I could believe someone like D'Souza was capable of shame, but I just don't.
Notice something interesting about the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shootings? Atheists are nowhere to be found. Every time there is a public gathering there is talk of God and divine mercy and spiritual healing. Even secular people like the poet Nikki Giovanni use language that is heavily drenched with religious symbolism and meaning.
The atheist writer Richard Dawkins has observed that according to the findings of modern science, the universe has all the properties of a system that is utterly devoid of meaning. The main characteristic of the universe is pitiless indifference. Dawkins further argues that we human beings are simply agglomerations of molecules, assembled into functional units over millennia of natural selection, and as for the soul--well, that's an illusion!
To no one's surprise, Dawkins has not been invited to speak to the grieving Virginia Tech community. What this tells me is that if it's difficult to know where God is when bad things happen, it is even more difficult for atheism to deal with the problem of evil. The reason is that in a purely materialist universe, immaterial things like good and evil and souls simply do not exist. For scientific atheists like Dawkins, Cho's shooting of all those people can be understood in this way--molecules acting upon molecules.
If this is the best that modern science has to offer us, I think we need something more than modern science.
To which an actual atheist professor at VA Tech responds, leaving a smoking crater where D'Asshole used to be:
We atheists do not believe in gods, or angels, or demons, or souls that endure, or a meeting place after all is said and done where more can be said and done and the point of it all revealed. We don’t believe in the possibility of redemption after our lives, but the necessity of compassion in our lives. We believe in people, in their joys and pains, in their good ideas and their wit and wisdom. We believe in human rights and dignity, and we know what it is for those to be trampled on by brutes and vandals. We may believe that the universe is pitilessly indifferent but we know that friends and strangers alike most certainly are not. We despise atrocity, not because a god tells us that it is wrong, but because if not massacre then nothing could be wrong.
I am to be found on the drillfield with a candle in my hand. “Amazing Grace” is a beautiful song, and I can sing it for its beauty and its peacefulness. I don’t believe in any god, but I do believe in those people who have struggled through pain and found beauty and peace in their religion. I am not at odds with them any more than I am at odds with Americans when we sing the “Star-Spangled Banner” just because I am not American. I can sing “Lean on Me” and chant for the Hokies in just the same way and for just the same reason.
[...]
I feel humbled by the sense of composure of a family who lost someone on Monday. I will not insult that dignity them by pretending there is sense to be made of this senselessness, or that there is some greater consolation to be found in the loss of a husband and son.
I know my students are now more than students.
You can find us next week in the bloodied classrooms of a violated campus, trying to piece our thoughts and lives and studies back together.
With or without a belief in god, with or without your asinine bigotry, we will make progress, we will breathe life back into our university, I will succeed in explaining this or that point, slowly, eventually, in a ham-handed way, at risk of tears half-way through, my students will come to feel comfortable again in a classroom with no windows or escape route, and hell yes we will prevail.
You see Mr D’Souza, I am an atheist professor at Virginia Tech and a man of great faith. Not faith in your god. Faith in my people.
I wish I could believe someone like D'Souza was capable of shame, but I just don't.
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no subject
Date: 2007-04-20 12:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-20 02:06 am (UTC)I believe this translates to "Don't tell me Santa Claus doesn't exist; I find my childish fantasies too comforting to think about the real world".
Part of why people like this mock reason, is because reason forces us to admit that the world is full of ifs, ands, buts, and perhapses. They want simple, clear answers, not complexity.
Oh, and molecules acting upon molecules is just what religiously blinkered people think atheists believe in instead of God wills it so, only without God. It's the same level of complexity as their own belief system, and it really seems to me that they cannot or will not consider anything more complex than that.
But the first paragraph of the response you quoted is simply marvellous. As is this bit, which sums up a lot about what I feel about it:
We can accept a description of this man as evil. We just don’t think that is an explanation. That is why we are exasperated at your mindless demonology.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-20 02:35 am (UTC)But what a great answer to such idiocy.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-20 04:29 am (UTC)Let's face it, when the bullets start flying, We Are All Human Beings, trying to help keep everyone alive.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-20 04:54 am (UTC)Hrm. Or perhaps the atheists are right there, and they realize that in this time of grieving perhaps it is not appropriate to say "Your foolish myths and your sloppy thinking are an embarrassment to a culture with the wealth of knowledge and enlightenment that ours has." Perhaps, since belief in the existence of god/s comforts you and brings you some solace in this time of emotional turmoil, they've decided that it's more important for you to have a little solace than to confront the flaws in your belief system.
You smug little prat.