Tag Archives: Atheism

Atheism to be taught to Irish schoolchildren

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So says the headline of an article in the Guardian. Rather than base the curriculum on the premise that something doesn’t exist, an endeavour that is patently absurd – like, to borrow a well-worn saw from atheism, running a school whose founding principle is that fairies don’t exist – the course is actually an outlet for the silly books of atheism’s evangelists.

The question is, once the children have been introduced to the idea that there is no God and that they live in a universe where, as Richard Dawkins puts it, “there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference”, what is to prevent them growing from self-absorbed little stinkers into solipsitic adults who trample on anyone who is weaker because they care for nothing and no-one but themselves? The answer is: nothing; and that is what will bring on the howling wilderness.

In a historic move that will cheer Richard Dawkins, atheists in Ireland have secured the right to teach the republic’s primary schoolchildren that God doesn’t exist.

The first ever atheist curriculum for thousands of primary-school pupils in Ireland has been drawn up by Atheist Ireland in an education system that the Catholic church hierarchy has traditionally dominated.

The class of September 2014 will be reading texts such as Dawkins’ The Magic of Reality, his book aimed at children, as well as other material at four different primary levels, according to Atheist Ireland.

Up to 16,000 primary schoolchildren who attend the fast-growing multi-denominational Irish school sector will receive direct tuition on atheism as part of their basic introduction course to ethics and belief systems.

Ontario Human Rights Tribunal rules that atheism is a creed entitled to protection

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From here:

Atheism is a creed deserving of the same religious protections as Christianity, Islam, and other faiths, the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal has ruled in a new decision.

“Protection against discrimination because of religion, in my view, must include protection of the applicants’ belief that there is no deity,” wrote David A. Wright, associate chair of the commission, in an August 13 decision.

The ruling was spurred by a complaint from self-described secular humanist Rene Chouinard, who was opposing the District School Board of Niagara’s policy regarding the distribution of Gideon bibles.

[….]

Three years ago, in a protest move, Mr. Choinard, a Grimsby, Ont. father of two school-age children, offered to similarly distribute the Atheist text “Just Pretend: A Freethought Book for Children.”
When, as Mr. Chouinard expected, the board rejected his offer, he took his case to the Human Rights Tribunal, alleging that the school district has “discriminated against them … because of creed.”

A creed is a formal statement of beliefs, something that today’s anti-theists would claim not to have; they don’t believe anything, rather, they rely on evidence and reason. At least, that is what they would have us – believe. It is nonsense, of course since even atheists believe in the efficacy of reason and evidence.

In spite of its compulsive grovelling before the altar of political correctness, the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal has correctly identified atheism as a creed, a system of unprovable, a priory beliefs that have to be taken on faith.

It also highlights another compulsion: Christendom’s determination to hasten its own demise.

The evolution of Darwin’s descendant

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From here:

According to the commonly held view about her great-great-great-grandfather, Charles Darwin, Laura Keynes has apparently broken all the rules in developing a passionate Catholic faith.

Apart from her family lineage, which includes her great-great-uncle, economist John Maynard Keynes, Laura also holds a doctorate from Oxford University in philosophy.

[…..]

The reason for her return to the faith of her baptism is quite surprising and something of an “own goal” for Britain’s shrill “new atheists.” She explains that, in her 20s, while she was working on her doctorate at Oxford, the “God Debate” took off, after a flurry of publication from the likes of Richard Dawkins.

Keynes continues, “I expected to be moved from agnosticism to atheism by their arguments, but after reading on both sides of the debate, I couldn’t dismiss a compelling intellectual case for faith. As for being good without God, I’d tried and didn’t get very far. At some point, life will bring you to your knees, and no act of will is enough in that situation. Surrendering and asking for grace is the logical human response.”

I find it rather satisfying that our strident anti-theists have helped to drive the great-great-great-granddaughter of Charles Darwin into the arms of the Catholic Church.

It poses something of a conundrum to the new anti-theists : if naturalistic evolution is true then Laura Keynes has involuntarily evolved to the point of denying naturalistic evolution – which casts considerable doubt on whether naturalistic evolution is true.

A monumental tribute to unbelief

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From here:

On June 29, the group American Atheists will unveil a 1,500-pound granite bench engraved with secular-themed quotations from Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and its founder, Madalyn Murray O’Hair, among others, in front of the Bradford County Courthouse in Starke, Fla.

One of the risibly fatuous inscriptions in this slab of nihilism is by Madalyn Murray O’Hair:

An atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An atheist believes that a deed must be done instead of a prayer said. An atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty banished, war eliminated.

Atheists rarely tire of telling us that they don’t need to believe in anything since reason has supplanted belief. And since, as Dawkins tells us, our genes are selfish, as long as Ms O’Hair lived close to a hospital she would have had little reason for building any more. And why does an atheist believe poverty should be banished so long as he is rich; or wars eliminated so long as they are elsewhere?

It would appear that Ms. O’Hair adhered – rather dishonestly, since it borrows so many of its ethical presuppositions from Christianity – to the religion of Humanism.

I feel a rare moment of sympathy for atheist bloggers

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IslamistsIn Bangladesh, at least, where fanatical Islamists are demanding the arrest of atheist bloggers.

A belief system that can sustain itself only by forcibly silencing all opposition is necessarily false. Islamists are not the first to try this, of course, nor will they be the last; it’s just as well that, in the long run, it never works.

From here:

Tens of thousands of Islamic activists prayed on the streets of the Bangladeshi capital today during a rally calling for the introduction of blaspemy laws and the restoration of a caretaker government.

Members of the Islami Andolan Bangladesh are demanding the arrest of ‘atheist bloggers who insulted Islam’ and to pass laws punishing those who ‘insulted Islam in the parliament’.

They have announced plans to ‘lay siege’ to the office of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on April 25 if their demands are not met.

You can't work here, you'll upset the atheists

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From here:

A graphic designer is suing a hotel after claiming he was turned down for a job there because he is a Christian.

Jamie Haxby said he felt ‘victimised and persecuted’ after allegedly being told he could not design adverts for the Essex venue due to his faith.

Mr Haxby, a regular worshipper at his local church, says manager Celie Parker apologised for inviting him to the interview after discovering he was a committed Christian.

He claims he was then told he would not be considered for the role as his beliefs could upset atheists working there.

With rich new veins of material like this, it’s a shame Fawlty Towers is no more.

Unless reduced to penury – a hitherto unlikely scenario, but you never know – I would not want to run a hotel. But if I did, upsetting atheists would be a condition of employment.

An atheist delusion

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When a person dies, there is little that is more fatuously stupid than saying that the person will live on in the memory of those who loved him. A few months ago when I attended a funeral at a Diocese of Niagara church, that is more or less what the priest told the mourners: no mention of the Christian hope of resurrection at all. If it were not for the inconvenience of having to recite the liturgy, I suspect he would not even have mentioned God.

The priest in question, while appearing to enjoy the pomp and pageantry his office affords, gave a passable impression of a functional atheist who hasn’t yet come out; after all, he wants to continue to collect his salary. For an evangelical atheist who has to try and make sense of mortality, it’s even worse: the memory that lives on is nothing more than the mechanistically meaningless firing of a collection of synapses. Nevertheless, that is how atheists – the champions of reason – choose to comfort themselves and their children when faced with death.

From here:

For Julie Drizin, being an atheist parent means being deliberate. She rewrote the words to “Silent Night” when her daughters were babies to remove words like “holy,” found a secular Sunday school where the children light candles “of understanding,” and selects gifts carefully to promote science, art and wonder at nature.

So when she pulled her 9- and 13-year-olds together this week in their Takoma Park home to tell them about the slaughter of 20 elementary school students in Newtown, Conn., her words were plain: Something horrible happened, and we feel sad about it, and you are safe.

And that was it.

“I’ve explained to them [in the past] that some people believe God is waiting for them, but I don’t believe that. I believe when you die, it’s over and you live on in the memory of people you love and who love you,” she said this week. “I can’t offer them the comfort of a better place. Despite all the evils and problems in the world, this is the heaven — we’re living in the heaven and it’s the one we work to make. It’s not a paradise.”

This is what facing death and suffering looks like in an atheist home.

 

Richard Dawkins reckons being raised Catholic is child abuse

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Richard Dawkins made the point during an interview on Al Jazeera, a broadcaster owned by Qatar whose state religion is Wahhabism, the religion that places its children in madrassas to replenish the ranks of the Taliban.

Dawkins, a self-styled man of reason, ignores this and concentrates instead on Christianity – in its Catholic expression – a religion whose founder became a child in order to redeem mankind and, when children came to him, said: “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these”.

His reasoning is based on the contention that Catholicism teaches something that it doesn’t actually teach: that the eternal destination of protestants, including children, is hell. Based on an anecdote from one person, he reaches the conclusion that paedophilia is merely “yucky” – a free expression of the Selfish Gene – and Catholicism is a malignant spawn from the eighth circle of, where else – hell.

From here:

The remarks are due to be broadcast tonight by Qatar-based TV network Al Jazeera.

Interviewer Mehdi Hasan asked Professor Dawkins about previous comments he made, when he said: ‘Horrible as sexual abuse no doubt was, the damage was arguably less than the long-term psychological damage inflicted by bringing the child up Catholic in the first place.’

Mr Hasan asked: ‘You believe that being bought up as a Catholic is worse than being abused by a priest?’. Professor Dawkins replied: ‘There are shades of being abused by a priest, and I quoted an example of a woman in America who wrote to me saying that when she was seven years old she was sexually abused by a priest in his car.

‘At the same time a friend of hers, also seven, who was of a Protestant family, died, and she was told that because her friend was Protestant she had gone to Hell and will be roasting in Hell forever.

‘She told me of those two abuses,  she got over the physical abuse; it was yucky but she got over it.

‘But the mental abuse of being told about Hell, she took years to get over.’

 

Atheists against Charlie Brown

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Well, not exactly: atheists don’t want to be that offensive. It’s more like: atheists against the Christ who is represented in “A Charlie Brown Christmas”.

Unhappily for the Arkansas Society of Freethinkers though, Charlie Brown’s creator, Charles Schulz, was a Christian so it is no more possible to get Christ out of Charlie Brown than it is to get him out of Christmas.

Face it, atheists: you really are Charlie Brown haters.

From here:

An atheist group is accusing an Arkansas grade school of violating students’ constitutional rights by inviting them to a performance of “A Charlie Brown Christmas” at a local church.

Students at Terry Elementary School in Little Rock were invited to a performance of the show at Agape Church. Teachers informed parents in letters home that a school bus would shuttle children to and from the show, which would be performed on a school day, KARK 4 News reported.

According to the station, the letter the teachers sent home indicates the play will be held on Friday, Dec. 14, at 10 a.m. at the church. Children attending will be taken on a school bus and will need to pay $2 to cover the expense of the bus rides, the letter states. Students are not required to attend the production, according to the school district.

One parent contacted the Arkansas Society of Freethinkers after receiving the letter.

“We’re not saying anything bad about Charlie Brown,” Anne Orsi, a Little Rock attorney and vice president of the Arkansas Society of Freethinkers, told KARK 4 News. “The problem is that it’s got religious content and it’s being performed in a religious venue and that doesn’t just blur the line between church and state, it oversteps it entirely.”