{"id":7795,"date":"2010-03-16T09:17:09","date_gmt":"2010-03-16T13:17:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/anglicansamizdat.wordpress.com\/?p=7795"},"modified":"2010-03-16T09:17:09","modified_gmt":"2010-03-16T13:17:09","slug":"a-new-form-of-christian-evangelism-atheist-conferences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/a-new-form-of-christian-evangelism-atheist-conferences\/","title":{"rendered":"A new form of Christian evangelism: atheist conferences"},"content":{"rendered":"

The blustering rudeness of contemporary atheists appears to have driven at least one person<\/a> closer to God:<\/p>\n

THE Global Atheists Convention in Melbourne last weekend worked a miracle on me.<\/p>\n

I’ve never felt more like believing in God. Especially the Christian one.<\/p>\n

My near conversion occurred because the convention’s speakers managed to confirm my worst fear.<\/p>\n

No, it’s not that God may actually exist, and be cross that I doubted.<\/p>\n

It’s that if the Christian God really is dead, then there’s not much to stop people here from being barbarians.<\/p>\n

I’d have hoped that the Atheists Convention’s speakers would have reassured me not just by fine words but finer example that a godless society will nevertheless be a good one.<\/p>\n

But what did they show me instead? First there was the world’s most famous atheist, former Oxford don and Selfish Gene author Richard Dawkins, who smeared Joseph Ratzinger as the “Pope Nazi” and mocked Family First Senator Steve Fielding as dumber than an “earthworm”. The insult to the Pope (right) is truly vile. As a 14-year-old, Ratzinger was conscripted by the Nazi regime into the Hitler Youth, then compulsory for all German boys.<\/p>\n

Yet Dawkins was far from the only speaker to unleash the hatred he claimed Christianity inspired. ABC Science Show presenter Robyn Williams boasted he could mount “a devastating argument against religion in two words: ‘Senator Fielding”‘, an insult which the hooting crowd clapped.<\/p>\n

Added Williams: “Richard Dawkins said his IQ is lower than an earthworm, but I think earthworms are useful.”<\/p>\n

Rationalist Society president Ian Robinson joined in, asking if there were any believers in the audience, adding: “OK, I’ll speak really slowly.”<\/p>\n

The fourth speaker, Age columnist Catherine Deveny, saved her worst for the ABC’s Q&A show on Monday, tweeting from the set that fellow panellist Peter Dutton, the Opposition health spokesman, had “a face of a rapist”.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The blustering rudeness of contemporary atheists appears to have driven at least one person closer to God: THE Global Atheists Convention in Melbourne last weekend worked a miracle on me. I’ve never felt more like believing in God. Especially the … 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":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[2049],"class_list":["post-7795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atheism","tag-atheism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7795","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=7795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7795\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}