timeimmortal

Well, I guess that it should technically be called a humanist church — but then, atheism and humanism have been close allies for some time, and most of the “big players” on the atheistic scene — Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett for example, although not Christopher Hitchens — are also ardent humanists.

Still…
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Count Roland invokes Neil Postman’s classic work in his response to this article.

Neil Postman, in various books but especially Technopoly, makes a similar argument about technology and how it and ‘scientism‘ have become our civil Religion. One of my favourite anecdotes is the student who could not declare a room to be hot before consulting the thermostat.

Socrates said it 2500 years ago that writing would impoverish humanity, as it would lead to a weakening of memory. Maybe it has, but likely not since writing can help us discover and adapt beyond one man’s lifetime work. But the kernel of truth is that every technology we develop changes us, and not necessarily for the better. Our trust in technology and in ‘they’ is as irrational as the faith we hold, if secularist claims about religious faith are to be beleived (they are not), and more irrational than the actual faith claims and their rational justifications especially in light of the ends to which they are going. GPS may save time on a temporal shipment; our faith has the telos of our immortal souls and the eternal situation in which they end.

What is increasingly troubling is that the gap between those who know (in a full sense) the technology and those who use it is widening. For example, thirty years ago most men could fix their own cars — they were simple nough to understand — or at least know if the mechanic was being less than honest, but today most drivers can not fix many problems because cars have become more technical. Yet, we seem to be putting more trust in said technologies. Trusting more what one understands less of, as a society, is irrational insofar as it makes us more vulnerable to personal and corporate catastrophe — a broken car on a lonely highway in winter, a terrorist attack using a Tandy 3000 on our power network. That is the opposite thrust to what Christians strive to do — trust more as we understand more. Now, we can never fully understand God and a childlike (NOT childISH) faith is important, but a child’s most important question is ‘why?’ and we seek to find the answer to that question about God and about creation. Blind faith in what ‘they’ tell us is right is not mainstream Christianity. Mainstream Christianity is fides quearum intellectum — faith seeking understanding — and while we,in sin, can follow the wrong path, a sincere journey will eventually take us towards the Truth. Modern society’s faith in ‘they’ — usually scientists or media-political elites — is indicative of cult (in the contemporary sense) behaviour.

Chesterton was so right, but then again, aren’t we Christians just ignorant fools? Everyone is, but sometimes God graces us with wisdom — I suspect Chesterton would have told the two mothers to cut the child in half, too.

Roland hints at a rather curious thing — the underlying paganism in atheism (or, more broadly, secularism).

Even a cursory look at history should inform the reader that, for as long as humanity has had any semblance of society (even down to the tribal level), humanity has had Religion. The act of worshipping is an intrinsic aspect of human nature, and the philosophers of atheism have it exactly wrong. The question is not, as some might suppose, whether we shall worship; the question is what we shall worship.

For example, Daniel Dennett would ultimately suggest that we worship the meaty organ located an inch or two behind our eyes, and its capacity for reason and rational thought. Other secular categories of worship include the environment (through movements such as radical global warming/climate change alarmism) and animals (through movements such as PETA and other rabid animal rights organizations), the sexual organs and the sexual act, money, power, technology (which we are discussing here), and Barrack Hussein Obama. Most adherents of these movements and philosophies might not regard their participation in them as being an act of worship, but fundamentally that is what it distills down to, personal opinions nonwithstanding.

In other words: formal, ardently disbelieving atheism is but a temporary interlude between (in the West at least) Christianity and whatever religion will supplant Christianity, or between old Christianity and a new, resurgent Christianity.

Humanity’s reliance on — and increasing credulousness in the face of — technology, however, seems poised to continue and to worsen. Roland is exactly right in noting the widening gap between the typical user’s understanding of the complexity of a particular piece of technology and the actual complexity of that technology. Think for just a moment, O Reader, about the last time someone — if not yourself, mind — pointed at a computer tower and called the whole assembly a “hard drive.” That’s a tiny (if somewhat irksome, in my opinion) example, but illustrative all the same.

We trust too much in technology, while at the same time knowing less and less about the ins and outs of pieces thereof. That’s not a good — nor very Christian — position for us to be in.

The talented author reminds us once again that the arguments of the New Atheists (Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, and Sam Harris, to name but four) are nothing new. The only two good arguments for atheism were done away with by St. Thomas Aquinas some 900 years ago…and all the New Atheists have to offer is rehashings of old, already useless arguments.

Seventy-thousand eyewitnesses (including atheists and skeptics) to the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima are told by the stay-at-home dogmatist that it was spontaneous mass hallucination unprecedented in history.

People who have experienced scientifically documented and inexplicable healings at Lourdes are commanded by New Atheists to believe they are victims or perpetrators of some sort of unnamed “excess.”

A Host begins bleeding human blood at a Mass in Betania, Venezuela, and the whole thing is caught on video by an ordinary tourist? Conspiracy and trick photography, despite the fact that the Host (still preserved in a monstrance after being subjected rigorous tests) continues to bleed now and then to this day.

And when the resolve to Just Not Look begins to crumble under the suspicion there might be something to the supernatural after all, the solution is “Pop in a DVD of the Amazing Randi or Penn and Teller debunking something and repeat to yourself ‘Some claims of the supernatural are bunk, therefore all are.’”

Atheists might have had a chance at convincing me that my faith was just superstitious bunk back in my early teens, when I was having the obligatory adolescent crisis of doubt. Fortunately, someone hooked me up with a copy of the Summa Theologica, and there was never again any risk that I’d fall in to such lunacy.

I think Vox Day makes a valid point here:

People sometimes wonder why I demonstrate such open contempt for atheism. I don’t fear atheists, I certainly don’t respect most of them - although I do respect atheist individuals such as Jonathan Haidt, Daniel Dennett and Brent Rasmussen, who have earned it - and I find that the lay atheist, like his heroes, tends to be incredibly obnoxious. Mono Ape [a commentator at Vox's site -- Ken] provides an excellent example of why this contempt is not merely justified, but demanded. It would be easy to think that he is simply stupid based on the way he relies on assumptions, intuition and faulty logic rather than simply looking at the available evidence, except that one runs into this behavior time and time and time again with outspoken atheists. Combined with their usual assertion of rational superiority and their demonstrated knowledge of common atheist talking points, this behavior increasingly tends to indicate intentional dishonesty rather than mere ignorance or unintellligence.

I seem to remember being asked, once, why I was so virulent in my denunciation of atheism and those who hold to that particular belief system. In part, Vox Day’s reasons — listed above — are my reasons also; not only is atheism false, but its would-be defenders among its laity are bigoted, biased, arrogant, and dishonest in their arguments. At best, one can expect a moving goalposts situation; at worst, one is almost better off not bothering to engage in banter (although one is always a sucker for a heated exchange). It is not only worthwhile to oppose falsehoods like atheism with as much strength and bravado as one can muster; it is necessary to oppose those falsehoods especially when the proponents thereof resort to all manner of lies and insult to advance their point.

Personally, I regard atheism as the single greatest threat to human liberty that humanity has ever devised for itself; I’ve said as much before. Why shouldn’t I be expected to pour out all possible contempt on such a thing? Passionate atheists like Christopher Hitchens spare my faith no contempt in their analysis of it; why should I strive for meekness when the point being made demands clarity and forcefulness as well?