Does Atheism Have A Double Standard?

Keep religion out of our public schools, religious displays away from our public squares and buildings, and most of all, beware of creeping theocracy!

Yet every now and then atheist spokespeople let it slip how oppressive they would be if given the opportunity. For a long time I've suspected they aren't really as concerned with making the atheist alternative heard and respectable; deep down their aim is to eradicate religious thinking and, in the process, abuse those who do find a place for religion in their lives.

Another example (see also my posts Do Atheists Desire State-Sponsored Atheism? and A Theocratic Threat?) has presented itself in news coverage of comments made by physicist and cosmologist Lawrence Krauss (author of A Universe From Nothing) to the effect that "religion could be gone in a generation."

Okay, but how might that be so?

Like Richard Dawkins, he seems to want to make the educational system a place to destroy religious beliefs and instead inculcate atheism:

What we need to do is present comparative religion as a bunch of interesting historical anecdotes, and show the silly reasons why they did what they did.

I really take umbrage at the silly versus sane paradigm being introduced in this connection. Seems to me that would be encouraging bullying.

Krauss elaborated further:

But you don’t shy away from religion any more than you shy away from the claim that Earth is the center of the universe. We laugh at that now, and we get kids to realize why that might be wrong… and so we should take other falsifiable facts, which are at the center of our society, which is religious doctrine, and make just as much fun of that.

Note that Krauss and his ilk, however, feel that religion indeed should be shied away from if presented in a positive light by teachers.

Atheists bemoan it when their children are exposed to religious ideas in school. But religious parents who raise their children to believe in God should happy with having their children exposed to atheism - and in a confrontational way? 

Neutrality anyone?

Death And Faith

In the religious tradition I was raised (Christianity) death was viewed as the last enemy of humankind and was dealt a final blow by the resurrection of Jesus from the grave. That blow would be finalized by Jesus at the resurrection at the end:

For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. (1 Corinthians 15:25,26, NIV.)

Of course that isn't the only way religions deal with death. I no longer hold that particular faith view. In fact, I'm agnostic about post-mortem existence - albeit a hopeful agnostic!

When it comes to death, faith is the only way to remain optimistic.

And speaking of faith, I have to say that Richard Cohen, in writing of The Courage of Brittany Maynard, offers an astounding faith in science being able to one day conquer death. Actually, he seems to be writing of his faith in science as a certainty (although to be fair, Cohen is a columnist, not a scientist):

The death of death is fast approaching -- fast being a matter of decades or maybe more, but sooner or later science will kill the Grim Reaper and future generations will look back on us and wonder what it was like knowing the end was always coming. We will, no doubt, vanquish death. In the meantime, we will have to deal with it.

We are now, Cohen suggests, waiting for the "technical problems" to be solved.

Okay, that may be true. It requires more faith in science than I have, but okay. It's a target worth aiming for.

In the meantime I'm dying. My mirror and inner barometer won't allow me to doubt it. My heart is unwilling to totally let loose of faith that death might no be the end. If I can't have certainty, at least allow me hope.

When The Astounding Occurs

James Greenwood, a pastor at Faith Pentecostal Assembly church, (and this gives you an idea of the template he uses to interpret life events), tells a skin-tingling tale of coincidence, which he wonders aloud might be more akin to something miraculous.

The link to his experience is right here and I think it's worth the read. But I'll summarize his coincidence/miracle.

He traveled to a "developing country" in order to help install a water filtration system for a Christian camp that was forced to boil water for drinking.

Not being much of a handyman or "good with tools," he began to pray for two things: (1) that nothing went wrong in his effort and (2) that he would to see the purified water run before he left.

Once there they did run into problems with the installation and as he puts it: "We realized we were going to need more than what we had, and being in a developing country, we knew it would take longer than we had in order to find all the parts we needed."

It was decided that they would leave the water filtration system in hopes that one day it could be installed. But this was complicated by a "language barrier" between them and people at the camp.

Then the miracle/coincidence occurred when:

...a man with a plumber’s shirt walked by us. We quickly asked in our best Spanish if he was a plumber. We discovered not only was he a plumber, but he spoke perfect English because he was from Miami. And to top it all off he had a bunch of extra parts with him.

The man was only in the area for the week James and his friends were there to install the filtration system. James Greenwood did get to see the clean water running before he left.

In my lifetime I have experienced a number of these coincidence/miracles (and at the time I was a Christian and would have claimed these as answered prayers, just as Greenwood does). I've written posts about a couple of them. Since leaving Christianity I had another rather significant coincidence/miracles, and I posted on that a couple of years ago.

What to make of these things? I had quit praying (though I have since returned to the practice in a manner of speaking) because I had trouble making sense of how it was supposed to work. Was God something similar to a genie who granted wishes? Could God be petty enough to be cajoled into doing things? Or perhaps, I thought, it was time to take a second look at the Law of Attraction.

This I have discovered: people of all faiths and even those of no faith have usually experienced these happenings. I have collected a large number of these from friends, family, and acquaintances. I'm not so interested in how these individuals interpret these events. but just that they occur and make deep impressions on people. I have supplemented these with stories (like this one) that I have culled from the newspapers.

I can't help but be amazed and fascinated.

The "Truth" About The Paranormal

The BBC has recently published (on Halloween, no less) a piece that sets out to explain paranormal phenomena. Ghosts, telepathy, lucky charms - you know those things that bring the ire of the uber-rational among us, all are examined from a psychological perspective.

Now this isn't an overly negative piece. It is pointed out that superstitious thinking can provide benefits. even "boost[ing] your performance in a range of skills." Still, I think the overall thrust is given in the article by the following quote from psychologist Adam Waytz: "We create beliefs because we don’t like believing that the universe is random"

Ah, the crux of the matter, that. But what if the universe isn't random? What if those of us who are continually discovering overly coincidental coincidences aren't just being silly or superstitious?

The paranormal is one of those words like supernatural that I'm not fully comfortable with. Too easily they become pejorative.

The problem I have with paranormal is this: if so many millions of humans throughout history have experienced these weird occurrences (and there is abundant testimony that we have), why is it considered paranormal, as in beyond? It seems fairly typical, or normal, to me.

It further seems to me that whether we first believe the universe is a coincidence or designed leads us to our conclusions about the so-called paranormal. Cosmologist and physicist Paul Davies has been intrigued by what he calls the Goldilocks Enigma, the question of why the universe seems just right for intelligent life
.

Okay, I'm not denying it all isn't a huge cosmic coincidence. On the other hand, it seems excessively cynical to deny the possibility it might not be. Some folks are just too uncomfortable with the idea that existence might have an intelligence back of it.

For my part, believing the universe is random just doesn't make good sense to me, doesn't jibe with my inner sense of reality. I do think psychology can tell us a lot about so-called paranormal experiences. I don't tend to dismiss all of it as bogus. If the universe is intelligent and designed, it makes sense that we are designed to detect that fact (if fact it be) and make sense of it. For me it is all a matter of mind. It makes better sense - if not perfect sense - viewed this way.