Including one about the Tao of Dystopia and a post entitled “Scrod Muffins and the Sanctimonious Failure of the Civil Rights Movement”…

Alas, minds, like air filters, need to be changed… preferably often. I am undergoing an calculating change of expression, one which will manifest itself into a new site design.

But I will spare you the “under construction”.

I suppose I could choose the easy way out and quote passages from select poems and essays I admire…

Some time, it will be found that people can be changed only by changing their surroundings. It is alleged that, at least ninety- five per cent. of the criminals transported from England to Australia and other penal colonies, became good and useful citizens in a new world. Free from former associates and associations, from the necessities of a hard, cruel, and competitive civilization, they became, for the most part, honest people. This immense fact throws more light upon social questions than all the theories of the world. All people are not able to support themselves. They lack intelligence, industry, cunning — in short, capacity. They are continually falling by the way. In the midst of plenty, they are hungry. Larceny is born of want and opportunity. In passion’s storm, the will is wrecked upon the reefs and rocks of crime.

The complex, tangled web of thought and dream, of perception and memory, of imagination and judgment, of wish and will and want — the woven wonder of a life — has never yet been raveled back to simple threads.

Shall we not become charitable and just, when we know that every act is but condition’s fruit; that Nature, with her countless hands, scatters the seeds of tears and crimes — of every virtue and of every joy; that all the base and vile are victims of the Blind, and that the good and great have, in the lottery of life, by chance or fate, drawn heart and brain?

-Robert Ingersoll  “The Brain and The Bible”

NPR had a fascinating discussion this morning about the apparent increase in religious fervor around the world. Alan Wolfe with the center for Religion and Public Life at Boston College on the show made the case that the idea that religion was increasing is false. In fact, the world is becoming far more secular, which is not only good for economic and social wealth, but also good for peace. Of course, America is an open sore of an exception. Increase of wealth usually means a decrease of religion, but in America the increasing religion is in extraordinarily divisive, although it is not a revival, it may be a sign of a real religious death.

It gets me thinking.

As America moves closer towards a fascist state, liberal democracy has been turned into almost a swear word. No longer is it important if prosperity exists as an opportunity for all, no longer does equality of opportunity matter, no longer does civil rights and basic freedoms matter. Our country glorifies corporatism on the corporate owned venues of media and literature, (DaneAndrade.com is owned solely by me, Dane Andrade fyi) our country promotes strong militant nationalism and a national religion. It scoffs at violation of basic freedoms like privacy and freedom of association, one national language, one style of culture, and one desired ethnicity, and it wills a strong federal government. This is called, ironically, Conservatism.

Conservatism can’t be dying, but perhaps it is the cause of dying religion. Of course, by dying, I don’t actually mean that it is dwindling… rather, the highest producers, largest educated minority of this country, the most charitable and giving factions of this country are quickly turning away from dogma and the fetters of Christian hegemony.

There is a worrying trend however… Some have argued that where the open economy and free market exists, old world religion will also die.

This is where the flaw exists. Prosperity may kill religion, especially in the early stages., but the evolving religion will find a way to inject itself into free systems, like a tree killing vine. Here, the most prosperous country in existence, religion is killing us.

Prosperity Gospels.

The religious answer to the free market. The religious answer to growing secularism. Brand the faith under Joel Osteen and mega-church, and watch it flourish. Now, rampant monopolistic corporatism coupled with faith-guided politicians is destroying any residual essence of free market culture, ideas, and will ultimately cripple the economy.

What does Christianity offer Americans? Overpowering federal legislation that allows the government more power in the churches and the churches more power to enact powerful freedom destroying laws.

I’m done insulting benign faiths. My target remains forever, till the day I die, the fundamentalism of evangelical faiths in America and other countries. I have eternally sworn that it will be over my carcass that any words of the Bible are ever put into law in this country. As a member of Americans United I have found religious allies in this… people who understand that basic religious freedom starts with preservation of your own enemy’s faith.

America is the most powerful country in the world, and it is becoming a theocratic fascist state. This is undeniable. There is no compelling argument against it. Nothing. The only argument there is, by some, is that this is an acceptable path for this country.

I beg to differ.

I have graduated from school and inherited a world devoid of the promises of liberty and  the freedoms I read about in school. Instead of fighting for new freedoms, instead of marching down the streets as a new generation, new knowledge, better understanding, I find myself fighting unbelievable regression. Backwards. I can’t fight for new things, I have to fight for things that were once already decided. Things as simple of as the basic religious freedom of the citizenry. I did not inherit a free country. I walked into the scene as the destruction of law and the understanding of history were beginning. Instead of fighting for the rights of others, I have to fight for basic rights away from people who should know better… We have never regressed before… we have never gone backwards, towards darkness, like we are doing today.

This is an open cry to my ruling countrymen and women. You fucked things up for us. And you better believe we are pissed. Baby-boomer generation has royally ass-raped this country and my generation. Never before can I look back at a past generation and decide with such anger and bitterness, that they have failed their sons and daughters. This country is not safer. This country is not freer. This country is not more prosperous. What the fuck were you people doing this whole time? Worrying about what other people were doing in their bedrooms, worrying about fetuses, worrying about growing a massive military while stripping basic infrastructure growing programs to shreds, worrying about who was the sexiest actor in Hollywood, worrying about what people injected into their bodies… In the name of the things that offend you personally, you have crippled the people you meant to save. Damn you.

Everyone in my generation should be PISSED. These aging morons in Congress, on both sides, are living in age of personal self satisfying, while acting like they are giving anything back to us. An entire generation has raped for itself, leaving us with a dying planet, a dying ecosystem, a dying economy, and dying freedoms.

Their own system of self-preservation is also going to fail under them… What happened to the desire to leave this world a better place for your children? Overweight, television watching, moron voting, failures.

We don’t owe you anything. What have you given us? An opportunity to succeed? An opportunity to create? Massive national debt, limited freedoms, never-ending wars, terrorism, dogmatic religious fervor… Those are wonderful things. Thank you.

This doesn’t include them all. There are many people in my life, including my parents, who are superb exceptions. But they are outnumbered by the Fox News watching zombie horde.

You are even voting against us… as if you know better at this point. Why is my generation so against yours? Why are we voting so differently? Greedy bastards.

We are voting this time. Maybe I’m a cynic. It just seems like we’ve been lied to…

All I can say, I promise you my generation will be voting this year… and you will be seeing a change.

I couldn’t have said it better.

The beautiful thing about being atheist is the equal opportunity torture reserved for us in the afterlife. Sir Edmund Hillary, rather, I should just call him Edmund Hillary, as he would have preferred not to have been knighted, was simply another great human who now enjoys the endless discomfort of a torturous afterlife of whichever conflicting ideology happens to be true.

I sometimes wonder about it myself, having long ago been freed of the burden such a demonstrably evil concept held over me, it is a curiosity to me how normal people still believe wholeheartedly in myths of our ancestors to such a degree.

Hell, the concept, the word, is a weapon. Its power magnified by the intellect. No lay clergy could envision the hell of my nightmares, or the hell of Vonnegut’s nightmares, as the potential revelations of Einstein brings me to shudder… I may not be half as intelligent, but I understand enough. Hell is a mental ball of fire that feeds off of imagination. The least imaginable, the religious among us, fail to fully grasp the meaning of their construct, their greatest achievement, through mental anguish and torture, the servitude of man’s mind.

I will be joining Einstein, Vonnegut, Asimov, Hillary, Ingersoll, Russell, and the likes of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Paine, and Thomas Jefferson in whatever hell turns out to be the correct one. In fact, I can’t think of a single mentor of mine, a single hero from the past, Winston Churchill included, who won’t greet me at the gates of the one true hell.

Perhaps a real god is much smarter than those he allows to talk for himself/herself… suppose maybe, these people are the one’s who, in their stubborn rejection of false reality, actually obtain the greatest in love and respect from the creator…

Imagine, a God who creates the Universe, who then, after so many failed attempts to create a unique, autonomous creation, fully endowed with free-thought and a rational mind, creates humans. In the creation, he makes the entire world, so obviously devoid of any evidence of his existence, that the only truth that can be obtained by his creations is his lack of existence. As he observes, completely and utterly removed from their lives, he waits patiently for those who have honored him the greatest with their pursuit of knowledge, their love of the minds of men, the pursuit of justice and fairness and all that is truly good, the kind of good that fires all the right chemicals to create that warm glow… These people, at the end of nights, will be rewarded with the revelation of the creator’s true existence, and an opportunity to continue that pursuit to the moment of full satiation and satisfaction, to end the journey of life, with the final knowledge of all things…

That would be bliss. That would be heaven. This creator, this benevolent awesome power, is too wise, and too loving, and too careful to allow any sort of eternal punishment for his creation. The chance for life was an unrequested reward. The pursuit of knowledge, pursuit of all that there is to know would be the greatest gift his creation could give to him, and in response, these people would be rewarded with that which they seek. The only “punishment” that would exist would be the missed opportunity. The millions upon millions of people who go their whole lives getting others to regret theirs, and seeking an easy mental state, the worship of a god whose existence is hidden completely from them…

Throughout time, the free-thinkers and pursuers of knowledge are the only unmistakable mark of a creator. The only proof, in all of time, of the existence of any intelligent force, whatsoever, is the existence of those that don’t believe. As if, the Creator himself, intended that to be the truth, in order to find those most desiring the gift of this undeserved reward this short existence.

“Nothing is more difficult and nothing requires more character than to find oneself in open opposition to one’s time (and those one loves) and to say loudly: NO!” -Kurt Tucholsky

Nothing extracts from me greater inner turmoil and frustration than the Christian self-aggrandized claim that their source of morality is the greatest in the world. The bogus axiom is a sort of mantra of the Christian orthodoxy, so much so, that it rears it’s ugly face during every major election. Our favorite Joseph Smith worshiping candidate even added his two cents when questioned by Tim Russert on Meet The Press:

MR. RUSSERT: But when you say freedom requires religion, can you be a moral person and be an atheist?

GOV. ROMNEY: Oh, oh, of course. Oh, of course.

MR. RUSSERT: And participate in freedom?

GOV. ROMNEY: Oh, of course. Yes, this…

MR. RUSSERT: So freedom doesn’t require religion?

GOV. ROMNEY: Well, this–the, the context was talking about the, the founding of the nation and the, the sense in this case of John Adams describing the fact that our constitutional form of government and this American experiment required morality, which in turn required religion. And, and yet, of course, on an individual basis, you have many individuals of great morality and–that, that don’t have any particular faith.

How touching. I’m about as moved by Romney’s sincere tone as a dying country dog on a front porch. I know I’ve touched on the issue many times, but I can’t emphasize it enough; the general assumption, in all forms of media, that somehow, and someway, morality comes from a religion, is, absurdly offensive. I’ve seen debates, much like the one’s Dinesh D’Souza contributes, in which the particular non-believer on the other side seemingly gives a pass to the egregious falsity. I am not unlearned when it comes to the bible, and I am well aware how life lessons and morality can be deprived from the book.

The religious go from declaration of rights from the holy book, to denouncement of rights with the book, and continue to take credit for the morality of this generation, while ignoring the morality of previous generations. If a morality can be deprived with considerable effort from such an ancient text, this same effort should not be exhausted in the effort to exonerate themselves from the evils of their own history.

Morality is an accepted code of conduct. This is not a statement of “merely” but rather an authoritative pronouncement of certainty. One cannot paint a proper picture of the entire origins of the current Moral Zeitgeist, but one can identify the occasional leaps in understanding. Often, these turns come at the cost of human life and dignity, like the 1940’s Holocaust. Our general ability as a society to accept certain behaviors is sharpening the focus constantly away from transient barbarism to ever increasing levels of social ratiocination, humanity marches towards a generally better “accepted code of conduct”.

Christianity deserves credit for the commercialization of the most modern forms of morality. The ability to stamp ownership on the progress of human behavior is unique to the great Monotheism. Where every moral and bit of wisdom could claim origins in some other combined effort of social groups, it is with Christianity that the first real arrogant claims of moral development present themselves. The only thing worthy of this title is in fact, progress. Instead, society is told that the bible contains all the real world morality society needs. I disagree.

The New Testament is a decaying pasture of morality. Even when raked, sowed, and fertilized, often it’s with the carcasses of it’s own making, there is little, if any, practical standard of behavior to gain from it. If at anytime in humanity’s history the doctrine of Justice, Mercy, and Love were at the forefront of Christian past, I am willing to publicize my oversight. I believe that first and foremost principles in the early Christian and modern Christian religion is the doctrine of faith. Faith that God was a man, and a man was a god. Faith that man is born tainted, and must atone for this crime of being born by choosing to believe that this taint, this evil was cleansed by a man, 2,000 years prior. It is this faith that guided the marching armies of believers so many times throughout our history. It is through lack of faith that so many were put to death by so many who announced themselves of the most faithful. The doctrine of belief without reason first, is the doctrine that claims moral superiority over other creeds.

When faith is obtained, enter the doctrine of Jesus sayeths. It is not enough that the man spoke first and foremost to love, which, I am ever convinced, that if the man existed, he was a morally superior, vastly progressive liberal, to which I cannot take this from the author of these teachings. These teachings failed when the first Christian put to death a non-believer. These teachings continue to fail everyday, whenever someone goes out of there way to make another person’s life more uncomfortable, more stringent, more adverse, more dire. These teachings fail the second those feelings of hate emerge when a Christian reads that others don’t agree with them. It is the greed and desire for immortality that pushes the Christians, and it is the doctrine of faith that cements it. It is with this version of morality that continues today. Whoever can speak loudest what they think should be derived from the texts, is the leader. We are superior in morality because we say so, and the morality we speak of, is right here, when I apply this particular utterance to everyday life. The commercialization of this sort of morality takes on this form. Nowhere does the bible forbid abortion, or slavery, or torture, but everywhere the Christians march with tape on their mouths in defense of woman’s reproductive slavery, comparable, but philosophically no different than the coercive enslavement and ownership of other peoples.

But I am not done, because it is with Christianity as well, that the most unimaginable and unmistakable evil is forged. If we are to give credit to Christianity for Western Morality, than we most give it credit for the most disturbing and unequal evil ever conceived by man. The doctrine of hell. Nowhere is there more evil buried, than in the concept of eternal torment. An everlasting pain. Everlasting fire. Everlasting torture. This concept, this unthinkable and mind-numbing revelation, is nowhere to be found in the Old Testament, and not within the understanding of the New Testament. The same effort that could be applied to remove the simple and dreamlike sequences of imagery of a hell, are instead implied to demonstrate the prowess of the text to explain the good behaviors of society.
They are to blame for the good, yet, allowed exemption from the evil?

Finally, ask yourself this. If the same effort to deprive morality from the New Testament, the non-literal, metaphoric understandings of Jesus, were equally employed in the understanding of the punishments described in the odd, and obviously metaphorical rantings of Revelations, would Hell be a distinguishable concept at all? And, given that this is an obvious answer, why then, even promote it?

It is my opinion that it is a stretch to claim that morality is sourced with Christianity, but it is not a stretch to see how the modern concepts of Hell are used to lure and keep people believing in the original commercialization on the religion.
Ask yourself, why, as a body and extension of society, has Christianity not rejected the doctrine of hell?

The answer is because it has no real monopoly on morality. It is in fact, a source of regression and decay. The anti-love. A reasonable and loving and just person rejects the concept of hell out of common sense. Yet, people still preach about it and attempt to scare others with the inconceivable evil, and at the same time, exonerate themselves from it’s fabrication and endless promotion. The most hateful and virulent forms of behavior done in modern times, are people who believe in a heaven and hell; themselves always the recipient of the eternal paradise.

I have raised money for Ron Paul, I have recruited people to the campaign, I have defended his positions, and I have stood out in the cold to help get signatures. I have also contributed over 300 posts to the Ron Paul Forums, and was considered a Senior Member.

After posting recently four major concerns about atheists and Ron Paul’s policies, the thread was effectively deleted. Upon pointing out that I did not violate any of the forum rules by criticizing his stances, (concerning abortion, separation of church state, racism, education, and his views on evolution and science)the new thread was also deleted, and I was banned permanently from the forums.

This is what a campaign begins to look like. The Ron Paul supporters can congratulate themselves, they are mainstream, and they are acting like it. I have no real equivalent explanation to the behavior. This is a campaign that swears on the Constitution and our freedoms, a quasi libertarian movement that attempts to be above everyone else, especially in regards to our first freedoms.

What can I say about this? This is representative of the campaign and the movement. I have received personal return mail on the positions of every candidate or campaign except Ron Paul. One can only assume that he is offended by my non-belief, which means he will be offended by your non-belief. The grassroots campaign has become a cult whose rabid fans continue to expouse freedom as a qualifier of their authority under the guise of Christian Dominionism oozing with distant echoes of white supremacy. The real libertarians have been ejected from the role they started in the grassroots effort. In its place, this, an odd collection of pseudo-intellectual self-appointed arbiters, who believe in some sort of political panacea who, armed with single sentence cliches, run to the defense of Ron Paul’s policies despite the goatse like holes that have gone unfilled.

Am I bitter? Maybe. I don’t exonerate myself from a part in any of this… It was not like I was a troll or an obnoxious presence. I have merely been a presence of dissent that was deemed dangerous enough to the campaign to delete and ban permanently, without even a defined reason.

I believe in freedoms. There isn’t a freedom that someone could convince me to with enough reason and rationale.

What is this? This is what it has become? Suppressing a dissenting opinion? For what end? What reason, other than the fear that what I have to say may in fact reach a few people?

In no way do I intend to imply that I lost support for Ron Paul because of this event. I apologize for that misconception. My opinion changed because of issues I have yet to discuss. I would like to point out this post was more about the hypocrisy of being banned from a Ron Paul Forum in light of the claim of supporters to adhere to the principles of freedom. Many Ron Paul supporters have also attacked other forums for deleting threads about Ron Paul.

1. I did not endorse another candidate.
2. I did not break any of the forum rules.
3. I brought up a long list of issues and concerns in my consideration for Ron Paul as a candidate.
4.  Thread was deleted
5. Bringing up the deletion got my account banned.

Savvy?

Discussion on Facebook.

Remember when a Ron Paul Thread was deleted by Sean Hannity Forums?

It was with great reluctance that I withheld this long from writing. From a personal perspective, this has been highly draining. Surviving both an emotionally draining but entertaining trip to South Bend to watch my Alma Mater get an enema from Boston College, I returned to Newport with the nastiest flu I can remember, and followed it with an even meaner case of tonsillitis. An entire month+ and I’ve only managed to add another few pages to my very enjoyable essay on Hart. I had told myself I wouldn’t post until I was finished with the piece, but as the title explains, this has become an untenable situation in and of itself.

So much has happened in this short time. Greg Epstein has signed a deal to write about Humanism in a book tentatively called Good Without God. It is often difficult to explain to some of my peers why I like Greg so much, but talking to anyone in person changes your opinion of them, the one and quite possibly only issue I have with the technological curtain. I’ve always maintained in defense of Greg that Secular Humanism, in general, is the only imperative replacement for securing social traditions left in the absence of strict religious activities and observances. Greg has also given credit to us vocal atheists in bringing more attention to Humanism… I charge him with making sure it doesn’t enjoy the same apparent fall of the previous generation’s attempt.

Today marks the first celebration of a so-called Great American God-Out, which I’m guessing is a play of the Great American Smoke-Out. I had only recently heard about this, but some big players have signed on, including (Facebook-Hating) Rational Response Squad, Greydon Square, Michael Shermer, and Margaret Downey. The event calls for celebration around the nation for the 29 million people who consider themselves non-believers. With a slogan like “Help give theocracy the philosophical hammer!” I’m sure it will serve as a beacon of hope for those of us who are to be hanged in the next presidency.

I do have to revisit my comment about Facebook Hating. As a former user of Myspace, a peruser occasionally on the forums of Rational Response, listener of their broadcasts, and their home on Stickam, I’m struck with the noticeable failure of the entire group of usually insightful people to even investigate the potential of Facebook. I’ve been to all the places they get their message across on, and I’m generally unimpressed by the amount of involvement. I’m not saying this because of my loyalty to AANR, or my personal connection to it, it just seems that their is a tremendous amount more people involved actively with the forums on Facebook then anywhere else that I contribute. When this fact is brought up to Brian “Sapient”, it is usually followed by a very derisive scoff at the mere mention of Facebook. It should be noted the only reason I even maintain any Myspace accounts any longer, is for þL||2þΩ535 |<\>√Ω£√|<\>6 7#3||2 4[[355|8£3 4<\>I> þΩΩ|2 [ΩI>3. That really is how bad it has gotten. The forums on the “active” atheist group is comprised 4/5th of the time with advertisements, followed by HTML hacks. Occasionally, very occasionally, there is a taste of insightful debate.

No matter, AANR has just reached 13,000 members, a group which has no competition on Facebook. One would think I would be trying to avoid the Rational Response Squad’s presence, but I think the last thing we need in our battle for hearts and minds is that ancient Atheist independence rearing its’ ugly head, and as a result I am a adamant activist for cooperation on all fronts. What AANR offers is that sense of community ironically. Somehow, the group has become rather close, with some of the active members becoming friends outside the boundaries of technology.

Let’s see. Weapon of Nation Destruction, or WorldNetDaily (WND) as they like to call themselves, has yet another monstrous commentary on the position of non-belief. This one, lovingly entitled “The irrationality of atheists” (lower case intact) , is, to put it mildly, nearing the “fighting words” category of hate speech.

I can sum up the entire article in one sentence the Inkdribbler wrote, “You see, the problem that the atheists (and anti-theists) have is not an intellectual one but rather a moral one. It’s not a matter of the head but one of the heart; they don’t believe in God because they don’t want to believe in Him.“

Yikes. I can’t even muster up sarcasm for that. The Theists, and Conservatives in general, must always prove a point by declaration and affirmation. The last line of the commentary, “the evidence for God is so overwhelming that it takes far more faith to be an atheist than it does to be a Christian. That fact was demonstrated yet again, … as anyone who watched [the debate] objectively would have to conclude”, is the most egregious and disdainful attempt to undermine a group I’ve seen in my lifetime. Granted, I was born in 82′, and missing out on the various civil injustices of the prior generation, I am generally offended by this piece.

The WND is garbage. Most of us sit back and just acknowledge that this is the case, that there are in fact media outlets like this, and it’s best just to ignore them…

The problem is that these venues are new to America. You have to travel to the likes of old Soviet Russia and modern day Eritrea, to find this kind of distortion of reality. Our drive-by criticism is not doing the job, these groups, Fox News included, are distorting the public in a way that media has never done before in America. The supposed “liberal” news bias claims are unfounded. Liberal here literally means truth, in the case of the news organizations. If CNN reports on a death toll in Iraq, that’s liberal. When Fox News spends 3 minutes trashing the legacy of Kurt Vonnegut, that’s fair and balanced. When Weapon of Nation Destruction claims loudly and defiantly “Anything Not Christian is Irrational” that is the American way.

If you track the face time of the political candidates, you may notice that Fox does in fact spend a fair amount of time on most candidates (excluding the Red-headed stepchild of the GOP Ron Paul) , but how many of you actually see one bit of news that is fair to Obama or Clinton? Think about that, face time isn’t good if it is an hour long special on how you will ruin America. I just can’t sit back and believe that the American people are really falling for the obvious distortion of the some of the media. When a person is allowed to answer criticism sent their way, that is fair, when a news media that calls itself fair and balanced actively and willfully pushes the candidate of their own choosing… that is neither fair nor balanced.

Speaking of which, The New York Times seems to think that Fox has chosen their horse, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/02/us/politics/02FOX.html.

The question is, does this article seem excessively liberal or conservative, when compared to this: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,311838,00.html

Posted just an hour ago, I didn’t even have to look long for an example.

Sad… really sad. I’m ashamed to call myself libertarian when the movement gets even remotely associated with these neo-cons.

Edit: At the time of writing this, the Fox News Website also had this: Breaking News: Ball of Flame Erupts on Texas Highway After Truck Bursts Into Flames: Watch Live

*For the moral win.

This reminds me of the report that stated that Fox decisively shows more scantily clad women than any other news stations, in the guise of reporting on the failing standard of culture. Sensationalism…

Ayn Rand wrote about Fox News years before it was created… she called it The Banner.

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.