Comments on: Atheism Evangelized

By: Rich Hugunine

Rich Hugunine — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 12:53:49 +0000

I stumbled across this posting while doing some research on evangelical atheism, and even though it was posted and the last comment rendered over nearly 13 months ago, I feel I must respond to one point in particular:

“Mentally and socially, we begin our lives as tabula rasa, empty vessels waiting to be filled and develop our sense of selves based on the totality of interactions we have while developing.”

Poppycock. We begin our lives hard-wired mentally for things such as intelligence, aptitudes for different methods of learning, and right or left handedness. We are also born hard-wired for sociability: it’s called personality, or temperament if you prefer that term. Any mother of several children can tell you that each child emerges from the womb with a fully developed method of looking at and responding to the world around it. Any developmental psychologist will tell you the same thing.

Aspects of the personality may be discouraged or, perhaps, nurtured as the child interacts with those around him / her, and the child may have to learn to adapt as the result of some very hard lessons in how to get along in social or familial circumstances, but the framework of the child’s response to environment and general outlook on the world is more or less immutable at birth.

By: Mike Haubrich, FCD

Mike Haubrich, FCD — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 18:17:28 +0000

I must admit that I am baffled by this response. Could you please elaborate?

By: Mike Haubrich

Mike Haubrich — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 13:37:54 +0000

The difficult part is facing people who think they understand critical thinking very well, thank you very much, and yet they use methodological naturalism’s final inability to satisfactorily prove absolutes as a justification that “faith” is as satisfactorily a basis for logical syllogisms.

By: Theo Bromine

Theo Bromine — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 03:35:27 +0000

It’s nice when people become atheists, but I think promoting critical thinking, rationalism and secularism is more important (and more useful) than convincing people of the non-existence of God. In some ways, I see dualism (ie the existence of the immortal soul) as more damaging than theism by itself.

By: Mike Haubrich

Mike Haubrich — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 02:30:02 +0000

I agree, and my title was a bit facetious.

By: José

José — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 02:00:06 +0000

While I personally think it’s likely he was a historical figure, I’m really just assuming he was real for the sake of conversation. The Gnostic texts are very cool, and I’d recommend reading them, but the are clearly younger rewritings of older religious text and probably less likely to be more representative of any historical Jesus.

By: a daughter's mother

a daughter's mother — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 01:40:10 +0000

Jose: Your comment begs the question: how do you know which Jesus representation is the “real” one? Or even that there ever was a real Jesus?

Sorry I missed your joke. Problem is, I know people who’d have been dead serious writing that.

And Mike, sorry that this has all been so-o-o-o off your original point. Returning to that, evangelizing atheism just seems so pointless. Interesting to attempt, and fair play as a return to all those door-knockers trying to save your soul their way, but just pointless. I get the wanting respect bit, and the spreading information bit, but I’m convinced that there’s such a small number of people out there who can tolerate not being part of a flock, in either sense. It’s too much trouble to think. It’s too much trouble to change. It’s scary, leaving all that wonderful emotional support behind, and scarier still if there’s a remnant of belief in Hell.

Plus it’s just such an oxymoron. Of course, that’s where my mischievous side wants to kick in again, and just riff. I think I’ll spare you that.

By: Mike Haubrich

Mike Haubrich — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 01:30:19 +0000

Okay, I misunderstood. But I am puzzled as to how we would know what Jesus wasn’t, when it isn’t even settled as to whether or not there was a historical Jesus in the first place. It is quite likely that the person we think of as “Jesus” is an amalgam of various mythical “Man/God” archetypes who preceded.

By: José

José — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 00:46:53 +0000

@Mike
Whenever a Christian refers to a “Normal Christian,” it is of course themself to whom they refer…

Nope. I just happen to be familiar with the text in question. I’m not a Christian, and I don’t defend Christianity. I think the Biblical God is an evil monster, which is the one thing the Gnostic Christians were dead on about. The Biblical Jesus seems like he was a pretty descent guy, but nothing more than that. The Gnostic Jesus was at times an egomaniacal, bat-shit crazy, jerk. I don’t like it when people try to represent that Jesus as something he wasn’t.

By: Mal Adapted

Mal Adapted — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 00:35:01 +0000

There’s an officially recognized (”cultic”) heresy asserting that you get a completely different Jesus if you just read just his quotes, as abetted by “red-letter editions” (starting in 1899) that make them easy to spot.

More recently, the Jesus Seminar concluded that only 18% of the statements in the five gospels attributed to Jesus were likely uttered by Jesus himself. One imagines the church authorities saying, as was purportedly said by the Bishop of Worcester's wife on hearing of Darwin's theory: "Let us hope it is not true, but if it is, let us pray it will not become generally known."