{"id":17102,"date":"2012-08-01T14:47:38","date_gmt":"2012-08-01T18:47:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/?p=17102"},"modified":"2012-08-01T14:47:38","modified_gmt":"2012-08-01T18:47:38","slug":"the-lords-prayer-causes-an-atheist-to-suffer-anguish-discrimination-exclusion-rejection-and-loss-of-enjoyment-of-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/the-lords-prayer-causes-an-atheist-to-suffer-anguish-discrimination-exclusion-rejection-and-loss-of-enjoyment-of-life\/","title":{"rendered":"The Lord\u2019s Prayer causes an atheist to suffer \u201canguish, discrimination, exclusion, rejection and loss of enjoyment of life\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Well good, you might be thinking, serves him right for being an atheist. The atheist in question, Pete the Atheist, has persuaded Secular Ontario<\/a> \u2013 I\u2019m sure they didn\u2019t need much persuading \u2013 to sue Grey County council for $5000 to soothe his excluded, rejected, anguished ego and restore his \u201cenjoyment of life.\u201d It\u2019s well known that recitation of the Lord\u2019s Prayer has been cutting a swathe of excruciating angst through its hearers for centuries: it\u2019s time someone put a stop to it.<\/p>\n

As he points out<\/a>:<\/p>\n

He said councillors are infringing upon his Charter right to freedom of conscience and religion, referencing a 1999 Ontario Court of Appeal decision that ordered the town council in Penetanguishene to stop reciting the Lord\u2019s Prayer.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t like politicians who break the law, and our county council is breaking the law,\u201d said Mr. Ferguson Tuesday from his home in Kimberley \u2014 one of nine municipalities within Grey County. He said if he wins the case, he\u2019ll donate the $5,000 to Canadian Civil Liberties Education Trust.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t really care about religion that much, I care about the law. I care about being fair.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So it\u2019s a matter of the Law<\/em>. But as one of Pete the Atheist\u2019s probable heroes, Sam Harris has pointed out<\/a> in his book Free Will<\/em>, the councillors had no choice but<\/em> to recite the Lord\u2019s Prayer. What appears to be choice is actually rigid determinism disguised as choice: their chemicals made them do it. They were not responsible, so there is no point in punishing them.<\/p>\n

As a corollary, Pete the Atheist has not chosen<\/em> to be an atheist because if he is right, according to Sam Harris \u2013 and I agree with Harris on this \u2013 there is no such thing as choosing. <\/em><\/p>\n

Thus, if Pete the Atheist\u2019s views are correct, they are little more than the inane divagations of an automaton to which no-one should feel obliged to listen. And that\u2019s where we came in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well good, you might be thinking, serves him right for being an atheist. The atheist in question, Pete the Atheist, has persuaded Secular Ontario \u2013 I\u2019m sure they didn\u2019t need much persuading \u2013 to sue Grey County council for $5000 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":2,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[2049,1219],"class_list":["post-17102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atheism","tag-atheism","tag-peter-ferguson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17102\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}