Atheist Dawkins: "I Want My Fluffy Slippers"

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Laugh-out-loud funny video about atheist Richard Dawkin's refusal to debate Christian William Lane Craig.

h/t Uncommon Descent.

Mohler Monday: "Rarely is the sterility and bleakness of the evolutionary worldview displayed with such candor"

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World-class skeptic Michael Shermer is suffering from a not-so-rare condition: empty nest syndrome. His daughter is away at university, and he misses her. The authentic love of a father for a daughter, right?

Wrong.

Enter the darwinian explanation.

We parents can’t help feeling this way, and neuroscience explains why. Addictive chemicals such as dopamine and oxytocin surge through the brain and body during positive social interactions (especially touch). This causes us to feel closer to one another. Between parents and offspring, it cements a bond so solid that it is broken only under the most unusual (and usually pathological) circumstances.

Under this scenario, love is not authentic. It is just a chemical burp dished up by mindless evolution, the same process that dishes up the urge to rape.  It's an evolutionary parlour trick, and nothing more.

Albert Mohler puts it this way:

He concludes with words that can hardly be described as sentimental. “Each of us parents makes one small contribution to the evolutionary imperative of life’s continuity from one generation to the next,” he suggests.

Rarely is the sterility and bleakness of the evolutionary worldview displayed with such candor. The love of a parent for a child is reduced to an evolutionary factor that works through a physiological process of chemical interactions in the brain.

If evolution is true, it must explain everything. Michael Shermer’s article demonstrates just how unsatisfying that explanation is.

Does Shermer actually live as though love were nothing more than a programmed chemical response? Of course not. Atheism, and darwinism as part of the package, is unliveable in practice. We all live as if love is an authentic experience and an authentic part of being human. In other words, we live as though theism were true.

Philosophical darwinism is indeed a universal acid. It rots the soul and dissolves our humanity.

Rebel against the atheist machine.™

Can Man Be Good Without God?

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A good article about the now-seasonal atheist propaganda onslaught about being good without God.

In our culture, even the most passionate atheist cannot help having been influenced by the Judeo-Christian worldview that shaped Western civilization. “We know that you can be good without God,’’ Speckhardt tells CNN.

He can be confident of that only because he lives in a society so steeped in Judeo-Christian values that he takes those values for granted. But a society bereft of that religious heritage is one not even Speckhardt would want to live in.

From Townhall's Jeff Jacoby.

Would western atheists really want to live in a godless society? You don't see many of them clamouring to live in North Korea or China, with its forced abortions and harvesting of body parts from prisoners.

Overheard on the Internet...

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Anonymous said...

All you creationists seriously freak me out. It's as if you all are incapable of realizing this one simple point: that we are ALL atheists with respect to the mythic narratives we don't believe in. Wotan. Zeus. Thor. Poseidon. Apollo. The only difference is, some of us just go one god further. 

How can anyone believe that, once upon a time, human beings sinned and the world was henceforth subjected to bondage to death and decay? Hello? Death and decay were already part of nature before human beings were ever on the scene! How could they have spoiled creation? I have never heard a satisfactory answer to this crucial theological question.

For the sake of humanity, grow up, escape from your suffocating, self-referential system of thought, and join the rest of your free-thinking brethren out here in the real world.

To which another Anonymous replies:

Anonymous said...

The above post from my fellow anon (@9:24) has got to be a gag. "Free-thinker", "creationist", "we are ALL atheists with respect to (small "g") gods"...all the boilerplate internet infidel tropes are there. A gag--surely, surely it must be a gag: no intellectually superior "free-thinker" could possibly write something that is at once so vacuous and hopelessly smug.

I have a higher opinion of intellectually superior "free-thinkers" -- yes they could.

And then this:

Maolsheachlann said...

"It's as if you all are incapable of realizing this one simple point: that we are ALL atheists with respect to the mythic narratives we don't believe in. Wotan. Zeus. Thor. Poseidon. Apollo. The only difference is, some of us just go one god further."

This reminds me of one of my own theories. I mean, we all laugh at those who think that Francis Bacon, Queen Elizabeth, the Earl of Oxford and other historical personages wrote Shakespeare. But I follow the logic to its conclusion and boldly complain that NOBODY wrote the works of Shakespeare. Why do we need to posit a writer, anyway? Why can't they have just written themselves?

It's true that officialdom and teachers have fed us the William of Stratford myth. But the appeal to authority or tradition means nothing to me. I just believe in one fewer writer of Shakespeare than the rest of you.

And this:

Matteo said...

"It's as if you all are incapable of realizing this one simple point: that we are ALL atheists with respect to the mythic narratives we don't believe in. Wotan. Zeus. Thor. Poseidon. Apollo. The only difference is, some of us just go one god further."

An eminently sound piece of reasoning, if ever I've seen one. And it is universally applicable! Here's an example:

"We are ALL skeptics with respect to the crappy scientific theories we don't agree with. Ptolemaic epicycles. Phlogiston. Phrenology. The luminiferous ether. The only real difference is, that in rejecting the asininity of unguided Darwinian evolution, some of us just go one crappy theory further."

QED

My goodness! Your reasoning works quite nicely, doesn't it? It is absolutely compelling! Thanks for providing such a powerful, well-thought-out intellectual tool of discernment!

You can read the exchange at Ed Feser's blog, here.

Quote of the Day: "Often as Arrogant as They Are Ignorant"

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"...  it often pains me to see how desperately ignorant many young atheists and agnostics are. Often as arrogant as they are ignorant, they just have no inkling of the incredible intellectual resources contemporary Christian philosophers have provided for the formulation and defense of basic Christian doctrines....  --William Lane Craig, to a "friendly atheist".

Knowledge without humility is not true knowledge, at least not true knowledge of one's self. Christ said of himself, "I am meek and lowly in heart", which is an astonishing claim when we consider by whom it was made, and a claim that is too seldom echoed in our own lives.

As for ignorance, I would never accuse the regular posters at the Ball Bounces on this score-- they are very smart and know a lot, which I trust, adds to browsers' enjoyment of both my posts and their reposts.

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