:smilielol5:
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I've now had time to go through the article critically and would make the following comments:
Where are atheists who suggest accumulation of wealth?
This is an outrageous strawman argument. I would like to see evidence that any atheist has ever suggested accumulation of wealth as an alternative to religion.
There you go with your "strawman" again.
Although I have no doubt that some atheists are not materialistic, the absence of spirituality would create a vacuum, one would think, which must be filled-- if not with the desire to accumulate wealth, then with something else.
Among famous atheists Karl Marx derived his philosophy from Hegel's dialectical materialism.
The christmas tree comment isn't just wrong, it's stupid. The German tradition of christmas trees has only a tenuous connection to christ, which has long been superceded by commercialism. I have never heard an atheist railing against christmas trees and every atheist home I've been into this christmas has a christmas tree.
The Christmas tree, as a symbol, has a tenuous association with Christianity in the sense that it can represent both the "Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil," as in the Garden of Eden allegory, as well as the "tree" which provided the wood for the cross. The primary focus on the tree is that it is an evergreen, which for the pre-Christian societies symbolized the coming of spring and for Christians the idea of resurrection and everlasting life.
>95% is a false claim.
I feel that's a little low, given China alone, where a high percentage of the population does not practice any form of religion
How do we know this? Are we assuming that no Chinese harbor religious beliefs simply because they do not practice religion publicly? ( Doing so would be risking bodily harm by the State.)
I thought the examples cited by the author (including the woman who survived while witnessing the murders of her family, as well as the author's own father) were effective and emotionally moving examples.
Almost no atheists claim certainty, and Richard Dawkins' well-known 6.9/7 comment regarding certainty embodies this precisely for the vast majority of atheists. To claim that atheists talk of certainty and theists of doubt is a travesty of reality.
Well, many of them publicly behave as if they had all the answers, giving the impression that anyone who doesn't share their beliefs (or lack of them)is intellectually "juvenile," to use Dawkins's term. I'm sorry, but I cannot accept the premise that belief in a Supreme Being -- or even keeping an open mind to the possibility that there may be truth beyond what can be measured or perceived by the senses-- is
a symptom of ignorance. There are far too many geniuses in the intellectual history of mankind who advocated religious belief: Dante, Milton, Donne, Tennyson, Emily Dickinson, G. K. Chesterton. J. R. R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, et al.--especially William James:
http://www.online-literature.com/for...ad.php?t=57272
No one is forced to abandon his own cherished beliefs simply because the opposite opinion happens to be trendy or a hot topic at the time. It would be much better if both schools of thought would at least attempt to have respect for the other's opinion. Even though there may be camps of fundamentalist fanatics, the proponents of atheism do not have to emulate their tactics. In general, though, Christians are required to "hate the sin but love the sinner," though many do not always remember that. And though there is value in honest and forthright zeal, there's always the possibility of "brainwashing" on both sides.