Atheists on the Move
The discussion concering religion versus atheism has reached an all-time high of popularity with the printing of several fundamentalist atheistic books intent on removing any kind of religion from the national round table. Bestselling author Sam Harris writes “raising our children to believe that they are Christian, Muslim, or Jewish” is a “ludicrous obscenity.” (Letter to a Christian Nation, 2006, p. 88.) Harris considers religion to be “grat stupidity” (p. xi) that has turned America into a “lumbering, bellicose, dim-witted giant.” Such ranting is to be expected from a man who ealier wrote, “every religiion teaches the truth of propositions for whcih it has no evidence. In fact, every religion preaches the truth of propositions for which no evidence is conceivable.” (Letter, p. 23).
While 83% of Americans (Gallup) say that God is “very important” in their lives, only 47% of Americans weekly attend traditional church services. Only 35% of Americans believe that “the Bible is the literal and inerrant word of the Creator of the Universe.”
Contrary to Harris’ statements against religion, Daily Mail columnist Melanie Phillips as written that “religion lies at the heart of our socieity’s greatest achievements…It is also this Judeo-Christian heritage that has given us values that…secularists prize, such as human rights and tolerance.” It seems that while American Christians value democracy such that they are willing to ”endure the slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune” at the hands of atheists, those who oppose Christianity are undesirous of reciprocating those same rights to believers. Who is really being intolerant of whom in this discussion?
On the other side of the (divinely imprinted?) quarter (or perhaps the coin simply created itself or burst into being after the inferior penny, nickle and dime proved too inferior to sustain their existence in a paper dollar eat silver world), Martin Rees, the President of Britain’s Royal Society stated, “The pre-eminent mystery is how anything exists at all. What breathes life into the equations, and actualised them in a real cosmos. Such questions lie beyond science, however; they are the provice of philosophers and theologians.” (The Sunday Times, Dec. 24, 2006).
In fact, it should be stated that whatever it is that elevates mankind above the existence of any other created entity also provides it with the ability to reason concerning humanity’s existence. Simply by virtue of the fact that people can and do think about why people exist provides questions far beyond what evolution could ever hope to answer. Francis Collins, director of the Human Genome Research Institute writes, “For me the fundamental answsers about the meaning of life come not from science, but from a consideration of the origins of our uniquely human sense of right and wrong and frfm the historical record of Christ’s life on earth.” (Time Magazine, Aug. 15, 2005, p. 34).
It would seem then, Mr. Harris, that it is atheism which is the “ludicrous obscenity” because it seeks to remove “our uniquely human sense” of what it means to be human by considering our quest for origins to be of no value beyond a flower straining its stem to point toward the rain which gives it life. Then again, maybe the flower with innate sense enough to recogize its life-giver, has more of a cognitive experience than some people.