by Michael David Rawlings
Ever notice that the vast majority of atheists are statists? Seriously, out of all the many atheists I've encountered in my life, only a small handful were not. But more to the point, have you ever noticed how many of them don't seem to realize it themselves, as they inexplicably perceive the Christian's defense of Lockean natural law to be an apology for theocracy? Theocracy? Lockean natural law? Ever notice how many of them never seem to really grasp the sociopolitical implications of their slogan-speak? But that's giving them the benefit of the doubt; that's assuming that they're really not as sinister as their expressed thought processes would suggest, just stupid.
Check out the following statement recently made by an atheist on Yahoo! Answers who considers herself to be really, really smart and "an open-minded person" who "believe[s] in equal rights for all":
Note the casual arrogance: "Obviously these are misguided motives. . . ."
She continuous:
Many of the negative outcomes of religion stem from organized religion. Religion and government[,] and religion and education don't mix. . . . —Catherine
"[N]egative outcomes" of "organized religion"? She might as well talk about the negative outcomes of organized political parties, organized fraternities or organized sports. Name one formal group of individuals formed around a common belief or purpose that is not "organized". Further, any person with an IQ above that of a gnat and knows his history understands that beyond the whims of nature, the biggest threat to humanity is organized government, informed by one ideological system of thought or another. In the real world, no institution exists in an ideological vacuum.
But what are these mysteriously unique, negative outcomes of organized religion? In what sense are they different from those produced by other kinds of organizations? Never mind the logical fallacy of generalization, never mind that in the real world a myriad of different religious perspectives collide. This is important. We'll just lump all religions together as if they all ascribed to the same system of metaphysics and moral philosophy.
Wait! Wait! Eureka! Religion promotes charity!
But, no, that's not a negative . . . just a misguided plus.
False alarm.
Moving on. . . .
Now, we may quickly dispatch the atheist's delusion that religion and government don't mix; after all, human beings do not just throw their ideological biases, regardless of their nature, to the four winds when they enter the political arena. There most certainly is an intrinsic relationship between religion and government, for in fact human beings just so happen to be the very essence of that relationship!
I think we just stumbled across one of those sociopolitical implications of atheistic slogan-speak that its practitioners routinely and mindlessly overlook. Apparently secularists in general and atheists in particular are operating under the delusion that they don't drag their ideological baggage—including its morality, such as it is—into the political arena. And if they did, so what? It's supposedly not the stuff of religion! And it follows that the theist may not enter into the political arena with any legitimate expectation that the law of the land reflect his sociopolitical concerns, for obviously he must defer to the secular humanist in all things governmental.
Well, gee wiz, someone has to govern!
(Is there an atheist in the house who can explain precisely where in his godless and, therefore, meaningless universe this imperative exists beyond his thuggish, self-serving rhetoric and irredeemably convoluted mind?)
But then we've already been down that road before. Wherever atheistic and invariably totalitarian regimes have prevailed—in spite of the typical atheist's depraved indifference to the historical record—the wholesale slaughter and imprisonment of not just thousands or even tens of thousands, but tens of millions of dissenters, especially unrepentant religionists, have always followed.
But surely Catherine doesn't mean that theists should be effectively disenfranchised or perhaps slaughtered and imprisoned as they were in the Soviet Union and continue to be in the People's Republic of China . . . just for starters.
Moving on. . . .
Religion and education don't mix?!
And what are the sociopolitical implications of this arbitrary rash of madness?
How exactly does one attain a credible understanding of the history of ideas and events without examining the pertinent cultural , societal, political and, yes, religious aspects of that history? Are the pertinent professors at her school only partially trained in history and the humanities?
From what planet did Catherine's saucer fly in from? Her statement is essentially meaningless. Inscrutable.
But what she's really getting at ultimately goes to the abolition of parental authority over matters of education and socialization. And If not, why not? Clearly, she would apply this nonsense to public schools at the very least, the educational philosophy of religionists be damned. That's what leftists are doing in the public schools now, shoving their rubbish down everybody's throats in their one-size-fits-all trash cans. (See "Revisions and Divisions".) And if religionists don't like it they can educate their children at home or in a school of their choice. Really? Is that before or after they are fleeced of the tax dollars they pay into the system out of which they are driven by disgust? As for the others who do not artificially compartmentalize their approach to education, but cannot afford to pay for it twice: well, their children will just have to accept whatever lefty allows.
Of course, this assumes that lefty allows anyone to leave the public schools. There's no guarantee, as leftist activists incessantly use the courts to attack homeschoolers, for example, in states like California, Oregon, Minnesota, New York and others. The plight for ideological liberty in education is even worse in Canada where Catherine lives or comes from. It's likely that since she was knee-high to a grasshopper her mind's been thoroughly conditioned to think that such violations of natural law by the state are perfectly normal and just.
Who are these people who casually prattle about what does and does not constitute a legitimate regiment of education as if they were articulating some kind of self-evident absolute to which we are all beholden? Who are these people, these perfect strangers, who would essentially invade our families and the minds of our children via some instrument of the State with their filthy, atheistic blasphemies of secular humanism? Who are these people who would that are children essentially be the property of the State, chattel of whatever educratic oligarchy they deign to erect and dictate to the rest of us what we may or may not teach? More to the point, by what authority other than brute force do these thugs first eschew the existence of God and then elevate themselves to His position above the heads of their peers? In short, who are these putatively open-minded, freethinking enemies of ideological liberty?
Stop sputtering, Catherine. There is no other logical end to your mindless utterances.
Well, gee wiz, someone has to govern!
(Is there an atheist in the house who can explain precisely where in his godless and, therefore, meaningless universe this imperative exists beyond his thuggish, self-serving rhetoric and irredeemably convoluted mind?)
But then we've already been down that road before. Wherever atheistic and invariably totalitarian regimes have prevailed—in spite of the typical atheist's depraved indifference to the historical record—the wholesale slaughter and imprisonment of not just thousands or even tens of thousands, but tens of millions of dissenters, especially unrepentant religionists, have always followed.
But surely Catherine doesn't mean that theists should be effectively disenfranchised or perhaps slaughtered and imprisoned as they were in the Soviet Union and continue to be in the People's Republic of China . . . just for starters.
Moving on. . . .
Religion and education don't mix?!
And what are the sociopolitical implications of this arbitrary rash of madness?
How exactly does one attain a credible understanding of the history of ideas and events without examining the pertinent cultural , societal, political and, yes, religious aspects of that history? Are the pertinent professors at her school only partially trained in history and the humanities?
From what planet did Catherine's saucer fly in from? Her statement is essentially meaningless. Inscrutable.
But what she's really getting at ultimately goes to the abolition of parental authority over matters of education and socialization. And If not, why not? Clearly, she would apply this nonsense to public schools at the very least, the educational philosophy of religionists be damned. That's what leftists are doing in the public schools now, shoving their rubbish down everybody's throats in their one-size-fits-all trash cans. (See "Revisions and Divisions".) And if religionists don't like it they can educate their children at home or in a school of their choice. Really? Is that before or after they are fleeced of the tax dollars they pay into the system out of which they are driven by disgust? As for the others who do not artificially compartmentalize their approach to education, but cannot afford to pay for it twice: well, their children will just have to accept whatever lefty allows.
Of course, this assumes that lefty allows anyone to leave the public schools. There's no guarantee, as leftist activists incessantly use the courts to attack homeschoolers, for example, in states like California, Oregon, Minnesota, New York and others. The plight for ideological liberty in education is even worse in Canada where Catherine lives or comes from. It's likely that since she was knee-high to a grasshopper her mind's been thoroughly conditioned to think that such violations of natural law by the state are perfectly normal and just.
Who are these people who casually prattle about what does and does not constitute a legitimate regiment of education as if they were articulating some kind of self-evident absolute to which we are all beholden? Who are these people, these perfect strangers, who would essentially invade our families and the minds of our children via some instrument of the State with their filthy, atheistic blasphemies of secular humanism? Who are these people who would that are children essentially be the property of the State, chattel of whatever educratic oligarchy they deign to erect and dictate to the rest of us what we may or may not teach? More to the point, by what authority other than brute force do these thugs first eschew the existence of God and then elevate themselves to His position above the heads of their peers? In short, who are these putatively open-minded, freethinking enemies of ideological liberty?
Stop sputtering, Catherine. There is no other logical end to your mindless utterances.
The truth about the atheist is that he worships himself first and then inevitably some demagogic megalomaniac like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot or Kim Jung-il.
Catherine reveals the agenda or her worldview, though it's doubtful that until this very moment she's ever come face-to-face with the conclusion that resides at the other end of the logical chain of thought premised on the rhetoric she's been spewing all her life—regurgitated by rote, clearly planted in her head by others, ideas never once truly her own. Well, that is, unless she really has consciously been a monster all your life . . . chomping at the bit to get her Seig Heil on.
But Catherine does lay here finger on two of those supposed negative outcomes . . . or maybe not.
Catherine reveals the agenda or her worldview, though it's doubtful that until this very moment she's ever come face-to-face with the conclusion that resides at the other end of the logical chain of thought premised on the rhetoric she's been spewing all her life—regurgitated by rote, clearly planted in her head by others, ideas never once truly her own. Well, that is, unless she really has consciously been a monster all your life . . . chomping at the bit to get her Seig Heil on.
But Catherine does lay here finger on two of those supposed negative outcomes . . . or maybe not.
[B]ut when . . . [religion] causes people to discriminate against one another or to disregard science, it quickly does more harm than good. —Catherine
While Catherine's statement is of the sort that gives leftists that weepy, snot-infested-hanky feeling, this stunningly obtuse asseveration is littered with logical fallacies. It contains (1) an obvious and thoughtlessly irresponsible sweeping generalization that (2) a priori begs the question and (3) implicitly appeals to authority without qualification. It also contains (4) the fallacy of affirming the consequent which proceeds from (5) a fallacy of essence and leads to (6) a multilayered fallacy of false cause (specifically, cum hoc ergo propter hoc, i.e., because X and Y simultaneously persist, X caused Y). The latter fallacy, at least in part, most likely stems from (7) the genetic fallacy that prescientific biblical exegesis, for example, accurately represents the essence of the biblical narrative, or that contemporary biblical exegesis does not conform to the demonstrably or reasonably incontrovertible evaluations of scientific modernity.
In short, her statement is a mess, but it would take volumes to thoroughly untangle it. I'd be moving way too fast for the minds of Catherine and her ilk anyway, minds whose cognitive faculties have been artificially stunted by years of reductionist conditioning, wherein cognition is reduced to the accumulation of disconnected constituents, bits and pieces of information. The process is more technically assimilative than imaginatively analytic or systematic. It tends to stifle intellectual curiosity and passion. That is why so many secularists—typically leftists—think and speak in slogans.
Hence, I will simply make a few incontrovertibly self-evident observations.
Discrimination, in and of itself, is not evil or bad or wrong. On the contrary, it is an inherent, inescapable facet of human consciousness. Cognitively, it is the necessity of identifying or distinguishing the difference between characteristics or modes that are incompatible, a matter of differentiation. Duh. Ideological discrimination goes to the differentiation of cultural or sociopolitical beliefs and actions within the collective. These differences can either be suppressed by force or permitted to peacefully coexist by way of untrammeled free association. Choose.
All those who believe that Catherine does not discriminate against the ideology of Judeo-Christianity and its adherents (would happily welcome a group of us Bible thumpers into the hall of her atheistic ho down, not "discriminate" against us, but happily allow us to impose our ideological values on her group—extinguish it by way of forced assimilation) raise your hands. The rest of you, being sane, behold the arrogance, the pretentiousness and the veiled totalitarian threat of multiculturalism.
Once again, assuming that Catherine's rhetoric is nothing more than another page out of the book The Glaringly Obvious Gullibility of Unexamined Suppositions, it is essentially meaningless, another absurd example of her indoctrination. All she's really saying is that only those who disagree with her discriminate against other people. . . . Her discrimination against other people is not discrimination against other people, but merely the rejection of the beliefs and behavior of those who discriminate against other people (even though the nature of the discrimination of those with whom she disagrees is the rejection of her worldview and its values), as she does not discriminate against other people. . . . Oh, never mind.
Who made Catherine the arbiter of truth, the knower of the difference between good and evil forms of discrimination? On what uncontestable moral authority does this atheist stand?
Sure religion is a comforting thing but when it causes people to . . . disregard science. . . . —Catherine
Like the adherents of the religion of materialism?
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