Atheists, those claiming that they do not believe in God, seem to come out of the woodwork every time some well known Darwinian atheist writes a book against religion. Recently, in "evolutionary" timescales, Richard Dawkins wrote The God Delusion and Sam Harris wrote his book, Letter to a Christian Nation.
On 25 May 2007, Shaun de Waal made his contribution to the atheists fight against this God "nonsense" at the Mail&Guardian in an article titled, "Fighting fire with fire."
I recently started thinking that atheists are jealous of Christianity and other religions. Really! Christianity has a whole bunch of public holidays and the atheists have none. That must upset them terribly. However, there is at least one day set aside for atheists. April Fool's Day!
But, jokes aside!
Just like the argumentation most people present to bolster their case, even "clever" people come up with the "darndest" methods of decrying others. Take De Waal's argumentation to show how stupid Christians must be, in his examples of the way out statements by people who should have known better. Statements such as the ones on God's judgement through tsunamis, earthquakes and floods. Point out the outlandish ideas coming from some Christians and decry the whole of Christianity with one stroke of the pen! How genius! I should have thought of that too! Then we could simply point to something really stupid that some atheists have done, and voila! no more atheist problems! Strawmen! Simply strawmen!
Mr. de Waal seems to have contracted the "martyrs" disease. The evolutionists version, of course! Either that or he is not paying attention to what is happening in schools in America! Writing about America he says,
"Creationists are still keeping science at bay in the schools of the world’s richest, most powerful nation, retarding scientific education by centuries."
The fact is that American courts have found in favour of not allowing the Intelligent Design Theory (IDT) to be taught in American schools. This has been the stance in American schools for some time now. Further, every time a teacher in some public school tries to teach IDT, or a student in class tries to raise the issue of IDT, that wonderful institution, the ACLU, fighter for liberty and freedom of speech, comes forward with a court case against the school and teacher. The only thing being taught in American schools is evolution. Children are not even allowed to pray in school. By golly! How are Christians "keeping science at bay" in those schools? A gross over statement in my opinion!
Christians are in no way against science, per se. What Christians are against, is historical science, evolution! What Christians are for, is operational science! That which gives us the technology we have today. That which can be reproduced time and time again. Nothing within historical science can be reproduced in terms of experimentation. Historical science has produced space travel, computers, cars, genetic mapping, electricity and a host of other wonderful things we use every day! The fact is, that in Operational science, Christians have been at the forefront since the beginning of the modern scientific era. People like Francis Bacon, Galileo Galilei, Johann Kepler, Blaise Pascal, Robert Boyle, Isaac Newton, John Dalton, Samuel F.B. Morse, James Joule, Louis Pasteur, Arthur E. Wilder-Smith, Dr James Allan, Dr John Baumgardner, Prof. Kyoung-Tai Kim to name but a few.
Short memories abound, sometimes in the most unlikely of places.
Then, in other cases it is not a case of being forgetful, but deliberately steering away from what history has taught us. In his article, De Waal points to the many atrocities committed in the name of religion. If going by the amount of atrocities committed is anything to go by, then atheism and Darwinism fare even worse. One of the greatest villains the world has ever come across built his theories of supremacy and villainy straight from the evolutionary bible. I am thinking here of Hitler. His complete philosophy of eliminating the "unwanteds" in order to make sure that the perfect "race" survives was built upon Darwin's theory of evolution.
Furthermore, the millions of deaths under communism, again driven by atheism and evolution is another case in point.
Further, to point fingers at Christianity for other atrocities such as the Crusades is simply disingenuous! The Crusades came as a result of four centuries of raids and military advancement by the Muslim hordes from the Middle-East.
Too many people lazily repeat what they have heard in this regard and end up believing the claim that "monotheism" is the cause of the worst or most evils in the world. At the root of this mindless repetition is an unexamined prejudice against religion. We have to be honest with ourselves when looking at this issue. More than 100 million people have been killed by secularist regimes in the last century alone. More people have been killed by such secularist regimes in the 20th century alone, than in all religious persecutions in all of Western history. This, of course, is just a tiny omitted fact not revealed by those who should know better, or perhaps, do not want others to know. These secularist regimes were led by men such as Pol Pot, Mao Zedong, Stalin and Hitler.
The fact is, without minimizing the impact of the people that died in the Middle Ages, that only about 300,000 people lost their lives as a result of religious persecution in Europe over a period of 300 years. Not millions of people! Compare that to more than 100,000,000 under secularist regimes in the 20th century alone! In America, the so-called witch hunt lasted for only one year with 35 deaths. Again, not millions! Further, it was the leading Christian minister in this American colony that finally brought an end to the witch trials in Salem, and those that remained in prison were released!
De Waal's statement, "9/11 is unimaginable without the over-arching religious justification and perceived sanction of Allah," now suddenly makes no sense at all. The fact is that any type, such as those secularists mentioned above, could have done it too. The Muslims probably just beat them to it!
Further, according to De Waal, "the Christian Bible was used for centuries to justify slavery, colonialism, apartheid, the oppression of women and the persecution of homosexuals." The fact is that De Waal is right! The Bible has been used to justify all types of weird and horrible things. While there are human beings, these things will continue. The difference is, that one would be hard pressed to prove that all these things are sanctioned by the Bible itself. Concoctions come in all forms, not just in alcoholic drinks. People will end up believing what they want to believe and will use what is available to them to show their "correct" point of view!
The Bible was used very skillfully here in South Africa by those with an evolutionary bent to implement apartheid in South Africa. By a very clever twisting of the Scriptures, millions were fooled by these "concocters" and their manipulative ways. Just because those in the National Party (and its ancestral parties) claimed to be Christian did not mean that they were Christian. Before the 2nd World War, some of these men, who were already convinced of evolution paid a visit to the 3rd Reich. There they learnt how evolution, when taken to its logical conclusion, leads to systems of classification such as apartheid. These "concocters" knew that they couldn't just proclaim from the rooftops that evolution shows that apartheid is the way to go, so they used the Bible to "prove" apartheid as a legitimate political tool.
Be that as it may, by denouncing Christianity based on how some wayward people used the Bible to further their own evil aims, is like rejecting gravity based on the erroneous teaching of a wayward group. It would be better to go to the Source (Jesus Christ) and to find out what He has to say about Himself and the reason for His existence and what He can do for a wayward humanity. Do we fault the Hippocratic Oath because some doctors don't keep to it?
Another myth that De Waal repeats is that Christianity is an oppressor of women. The fact is that wherever Christianity became the majority religion it also brought liberty to women. It was under the influence of Christianity that the Chinese custom of foot-binding for women, was outlawed in 1912. Since the take-over of communism in China, that heinous practice has returned. Clytoridectomy has been outlawed in virtually every country where Christianity became the majority. In India, the practice of suttee (the burning alive of widows), was ended as a result of the tireless efforts of the Baptist missionary, William Carey.
The fact is that Mr. De Waal is simply perpetuating myths concerning Christianity.
Dawkins apparently wrote that "atheists should not have to 'prove' God does not exist -- the burden of proof should lie with those who believe in God, divine creation, and other dogmas derived from ancient scriptures." Why? As long as history has been written, man has been shown as a believer of some type of deity. In the grand scheme of things, that makes the atheists the heretics, being the dissenters from the longest held beliefs. This makes atheism the new kid on the block, and therefore, the burden of proof does lie with atheists and not those who do believe in deity.
Why is it that evolutionists always claim that they have this vast body of evidence which prove their theory? Far from the truth. Evolutionism is "theology" just as much as Intelligent Design Theory is a "theology." Both attempt to answer the question: Where do we come from? Both of these have the same facts, yet, it is the interpretation that separates the two. It is not as if evolutionists have a certain set of facts that prove their theory! The same facts are known by both camps. The evolutionists have certain presuppositions that cause them to interpret the facts the way they do, and IDT has certain presuppositions that cause them to interpret the facts the way they do. The evidence that evolutionists like to claim for themselves is simply their own interpretation of the shared body of facts.
Christianity is not against scientific inquiry as De Waal posits. Quite the contrary. Wherever IDT has tried to get into schools, especially in the U.S., the believers in Evolutionary Theory (ET) balked the most to keep it out. Where are the open minds? IDT made it clear that they wanted equal time in schools, not the only time (another myth).
Finally, De Waal writes,
"Voltaire said that to make a man commit atrocities, you must first make him believe absurdities."
I agree wholeheartedly with what Voltaire said here. We can see what happened when ET
took over in governments and schools. ET led to the killing of more than 100 million people in the 20th century alone, plus the murder of more than 40 million babies in the wombs of their mothers in the U.S. since 1973 and more than 500,000 in South Africa since 1996. Just as Clr. AnneMarie Sparg, ACDP Councillor in the Tshwane Metro Council says, more babies are killed each year than people are murdered in South Africa. What a tale to tell about evolution and atheism!
That, is what society becomes without God!
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