I have avoided it for as long as possible. It has been my own personal manifest destiny, that I would one day be ready to approach it. An anonymous letter yesterday confirmed to me that it was time. The letter knew what I did, that there is in fact a rare collection of intelligent theist who pose the common atheist a problem. They represent the intelligent responses to the average defense against the dark arts we share against the breed of Christian defenders most apologists fall under (CARM, C.S. Lewis Society, Calvinists), for which I am noticeably excluding the truly insane variants summed up by AIG. The fear; a sort of theology I imagine I would argue for if I were a believer, the insight and clever worldly knowledge of an atheist, coupled with the organization and rare clarity of a literature forged theist. The e-mail I received yesterday said it all, “Dane, when are you going to tackle D.B.H?”.

David Bentley Hart.

I mentioned this person only recently to Derek and Chloe. Few on AANR know, so the letter was someone who was familiar with my early papers, and my presence on one of the great defense forums, and probably recently finding my current writing. There was a time when I spent most of my internet presence with scholarly atheists only, the type who cared only for cases and defenses. This person wants to know if I still consider Hart dangerous now that he had a few years to develop, and do I have the ability to intelligently engage in a decent rebuttal to his general work…

Yes, to both. I have avoided Hart. I am not as an accomplished writer as I have intended to be at this point in my life, and with the activism, AANR, and work, I have mostly stayed away from arguments and debates. Hart, depending on his development in thought, was suppose to be a ongoing project, allowing him to speak enough to eventually expose himself in different fields as another failed Christian philosopher, impotent to modern philosophical and theological vision.

I was wrong, and now we, as a collective group of thinkers are far behind. Hart has gone unchallenged and uncontested deep into the fields of theological thought, and emerged in my opinion, as the sharpest modern theological mind living. This guy could cream me in a live debate, my own personal forte. Evidently, he is up the street from me, literally, as the current Robert J. Randall Chair at Providence College.

I have ignored my roots for too long. I will reply to Professor Hart, on here, publicly. Obviously, the dichotomy that exists for our mutual existence is based on two systems of a world view in stark opposition. I do not believe in any version of god, and David Bentley Hart argues strongly for the existence of the Christian God. He does not offer arguments for the existence of God, rather forges, in amazing literary voice mind you, theological arguments based on philosophy, most often about the Problem of Evil.

The first article, I have chosen randomly, and in it, a rant in common style by Professor Hart about the freedom Christianity offers from Paganistic Nihilism. The article is 4 years old, but his material is spread out wildly, and I have already mentioned that we are behind…

It is called “Christ and Nothing“. Read it first, my work and comments are forthcoming.

Several articles have been reprinted lately, most in response to a Washington Post article which makes the dubious claim that atheism is on the rise. One asks, “Why is atheism on the rise?”. Local newspapers across the nation are showcasing one of the two versions of this article.

Sometime last night it struck me. A realization as profound as the organic label on produce, although vastly more useful. A question each of us can tackle, and hopefully empathize and experience in our own mildly solipsistic world.

The believer is in fact threatened by us. They are genuinely disturbed the fact that we don’t believe. Really think about this for a second… They are actually appalled by our non-belief. How dare you not believe. I suppose this concept was more profound to me, when I applied it to myself… Imagine you held that sort of conviction, the mere presence of someone who didn’t, knowingly, especially something you should know better about, would in fact be upsetting.

Let’s really think about that… How dare you not believe…

What kind of twisted, convoluted world do we live in? People are actually insulted by not accepting their beliefs. In other countries, it is a crime.

We should be angry. As a non-believer, the average believer seems ridiculous, but we are not genuinely appalled by their existence until they decide to speak. The believer is the common man, the usual, the everyday thing, the horribly wrong, yet defiantly stubborn sufferers of paranoia/delusional schizophrenia. We don’t make the comparison enough, but read for yourself: Delusional Disorder.

I write in jest mostly, but there is something wholly unnerving about the tendency of believers to not only become apparently disheartened at our existence, but to then go on to try and explain it?!

Why is truth on the rise? Why is sanity on the rise? Why are more people believing that disease is caused by microbes? Why are more people refusing to believe the earth is flat? Why are more people refusing to believe [insert random insanity].

Why is atheism on the rise?

Think.

I am opening up this blog to the public. That includes joining several blogrolls, and engaging in the fiery discourse of relevant events apparent in my commentaries from The Second Enlightenment.

So, the comment sections are open, and the googlebots will soon be eating my insides. I have also joined Mojoey’s Atheist Blogroll. To the general public, welcome to my insight. My name is Dane, and I don’t believe in a god.

“The most important thing is that I am a Christian,”

John McCain has lost all respect, following the white animal carcass of his party down the rabbit hole. As a grotesque take on the famous JFK speech about faith in politics, McCain now joins Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt “The Greaser” Romney as another ignorant detractor from real politics to play the part of Pastor in Chief in early rehearsals for candidacy for the most powerful position in the globe. Replace his moronic sentence with anything not resembling piety and faith and you should, as a reasonable person, see the problem. His support of stem cell research is no consolation to the insult of assuming only a Christian can run this country. The Republican presidential nominee scenario is shaping into the kind of blue collar jokes usually reserved for single demographic localities. A Mormon, A Baptiscopalian, and a TV Lawyer walk into a bar.. . This is the second time I’ve heard some variant of the “At least I’m a person of faith” argument…. with all do respect to the process formerly known as unthinking, can’t we just take a look at the evidence? Just a… ah … little peek?

Saying that it was important to be a Christian doesn’t attack a single other potential candidate (I’ll let the Christians worry about Romney’s status). It attacks several entire groups of people. What has being a Christian done for this country? Just simple facts is all I would need…

But let us review the first five, average scholars historical rankings of Presidents of the United States:

1     Abraham Lincoln     1861–1865     Republican     1.58
2     Franklin D. Roosevelt     1933–1945     Democrat     2
3     George Washington     1789–1797     Unaffiliated (Pro-Administration)     2.83
4     Thomas Jefferson     1801–1809     Democratic-Republican     4.42
5     Theodore Roosevelt     1901–1909     Republican     4.83

I will be damned. On that list, if we define Christian as “one who believes in the divinity of Christ” we seem to have only two Christians. Both Roosevelts were adherents of the Episcopalians, the same claimed “faith” of Jefferson and Washington, although both were known Deists, I also believe that Teddy was a Dutch Reformed and extremely skeptical, I could be mistaken, although he was criticized often for his lack of religious affiliation. Lincoln was only trumped by Jefferson in his non-belief of the divinity of Jesus Christ, and an avid admirer of Thomas Paine.

“The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma.” -”The Abe”

The most religious of the bunch was Franklin Roosevelt. I have no doubt he was a believer, however, he was known for his leaving references to his religion almost completely out of public speeches and utterances. He was known by some preachers as the “Alley President” for his support of the repeal of the 18th Amendment.

So, we have 3 of the top 5 Presidents by scholarly rank, non-Christians. What was that again McCain?

“The most important thing is that I am a Christian,”
Because we know that is what it takes to be a good leader.

The GOD pandering has got to stop. The Republican Party is in for a wicked surprise. There are a large number of people in this country who are sick of hearing about it, not just the non-believers. Do they honestly think the theocratic wing of their party has enough people to get them elected?

Now that is faith.

Despair, like the smoky avoirdupois of this turbid grey and dismal morning, hangs apposite to the integrity of this specific day. This day, as if the news would let us forget, is the six year anniversary of religion announcing her flagrant and holy right to destroy life. It is also the six year anniversary of the moment faith was unmasked for me. To explain to someone what it was like for me, staring dolorously at the large screen TV in the tenebrous confines of the Notre Dame student center, would be doing the ineffable experience an injustice. The potency of the event would come to fruition later, but as the world seemed on fire, the sudden realization that the thousands of people who die annually in equal brutal fashion around the globe were no different then my own countrymen, thousands having died that day. I was 20 years old, and I was introduced to the world. Everything was simultaneously closer and farther away. My brain, ripe with its’ developmental apex, seemed unable to filter the abattoir of thoughts and feelings.

I was there, standing, among my peers, yet I was alone. I watched the President’s devotional prayer, to the supposed creator of all life, me a skeptic, agnostic, only recently liberated slowly and painfully from indoctrination, watching the prayers of my school and the leaders of the country. It was then, at some moment between invocation and realization, that I vomited. On my knees in a men’s bathroom in a school dedicated the Our Lady, mother of the personal god of the Christians, I lost god completely.

Watching them, these people, praying to the same bloody creator who was invoked in the very destruction of life… the word irony was insufficient. My humility was gone, and my correspondence to my weakness was gone. I was no longer a skeptic. There was hard proof, and real life experiences that pointed to the most obvious fact in all of human existence: There is no personal god; there is no watcher, safe keeper, protector, or creator.

Years later and the facts would conclude this without a doubt. None of the manifestations of the personal deities of cultures made any sense… none of the ancient arguments held any modern philosophical weight, nothing was left of this god except the faith of the majority. The same faith across the globe, in its’ diverse representations. It was after this that I started reading the philosophies. In Alvin Plantinga’s class, I was introduced to what would later become the strongest argument for the existence of god to apologists, and needless to say, I left the class armed with certainty of the failure of the god hypothesis. I started reading different literature, from C.S. Lewis and then to Russell, and in 2004, picked up End of Faith, by Sam Harris, which led to pre-ordering of his second work, Letter to a Christian Nation, and Richard Dawkin’s The God Delusion.

This is the modern epistemology of an atheist. It started many, many years ago, with my Catholic family background, my first encounter with evangelicalism, southern Baptism, going to school in the deep south, becoming “born-again”, and finally being brought by a close friend to a Heaven’s Gates and Hell’s Flames production during the revival of the world’s worst youth movement. I was forged in the most religious parts of this once secular country, and I was introduced to what my life would be, what I would become, six years ago today.

“We began with freedom.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every day I read the latest articles railing and whining against the secular movements. Every day I read the same re-hashed arguments, the same tones, the same expressions of absolute faith and truth. I read that secularists are ruining America, I read that the Atheists are militant, dogmatic, and fundamentalists in their own right. I read that this country is a Christian nation, and be damned if you don’t agree.

Every article about atheism starts the same exact way:

“Atheism is getting a good press these days, but under false pretenses.”
“Fundamentalist Atheists are on the rise…”
“The only people more hard-headed than religious fundamentalists might just be
secularists.”
“A rash of atheist bestsellers…”
“Atheism has nearly always been with us in one form or another, but the atheists we’ve been hearing the most from lately—chiefly Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris—are a new breed.”
“A trio of atheist book sellers…”
“Militant atheists are on the march…”
“Although not yet organized into a marching army, we can identify a posse forming around malcontents such as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Sam Harris.”
“Atheist tracts are everywhere these days…”

This is it? There is nothing more truthful so far in this battle then the simple fact that a good rebuttal has not been made. Period. Nothing. Theists have offered nothing except attempts to keep their flock intact by simplifying the positions to pre-19th century levels. Of course an atheist is wrong, no matter what he says, because God is real. The articles take on the same kind of rhetoric and senseless repetitive phrases that mid 20th century propagandists excelled. The arguments that are formed with any coherency are usually detailed with the express assumption that one must first be delusional to understand it, one must first believe wholeheartedly, then whatever I say will make sense. This kind of sensationalism scare tactic works, for now. Keeping the general public scared and thinking that atheism has been defeated since the dawn of time, with the words, let there be light.

Well my belligerent theist friends, you are wrong. Allow me to make some things very clear to you…

Let there be light indeed. We are here. We do not believe in your god, or any gods, and we must certainly do not believe this country is a Christian Nation. We don’t think it is an atheist nation either. We think it is a fair nation, a compromising and promising experiment in man made governance. There is no divine right, and there is no state religion. Every person is allowed to worship or not worship as he sees fit. I’m sorry this upsets you. I’m sorry that we have to come out of the woodwork to stop the encroaching insanity. I’m sorry the idea of us marching on Washington is enough to get you all up in arms, heaven forbid you can’t live and let live. No. You aren’t happy until other parents children are learning the nonsense you think makes the world work. You aren’t happy until your version of right and wrong is imposed on the country. You aren’t happy until your neighbors have converted, their children attending Jesus Camp, and the morning classroom opens up with the some protestant declaration and statement of evangelical faith. You aren’t happy until life is defined as cytoplasm, and a person’s dignity is shred from them as they lay dying, with their shit shoveled from their ass every morning in a vegetative state. You aren’t happy until other countries are subdued, converted, and speaking the name of Jesus, your man god. You aren’t happy unless every leader in the public sphere believes how you do. You aren’t happy unless your marriage is justified by blocking of marriages that don’t match your Christian formula. You aren’t happy until science declares only that god exists, and that anything scholarly that denies it is wrong.

…and here my dearest Christian friends is the kicker. You still won’t be happy. As the tide of melting freedoms starts to pit denomination versus denomination, congregation versus congregation, church against church, some of you might actually rebel openly against the destruction of the wisdom of our sacred secularity. As other countries start to grow stronger economically and technologically, your staunch Christian defined patriotism might not be enough to hold this country as a superpower for long.

What then? Slip back into the origins of what made this country so beautiful? Hardly. That isn’t how divine leadership works. Slowly but surely, every family will feel the pressure, the fall in the global pecking order, and the pressure to return to greatness will thrust us further into a theocracy.

“Why am I angry” you might ask… “why am I a “militant” atheist?”

I’ll tell you. It is Because I am fighting for your rights as well, and you hate me for it.