{"id":44871,"date":"2013-05-30T06:19:19","date_gmt":"2013-05-30T13:19:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/?p=44871"},"modified":"2014-12-29T23:14:39","modified_gmt":"2014-12-30T06:14:39","slug":"some-atheist-readers-were-offended","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2013\/05\/some-atheist-readers-were-offended.html","title":{"rendered":"Some atheist readers were offended…"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u2026at my reader for noting that it was two Catholic women who came to the aid of Lee Rigby while a bunch of cowards stood around doing nothing and taking pictures on their cell cams.<\/a><\/p>\n

One of them does the standard sleight-of-hand trick of saying, in essence, \u201cThe murderers were Muslim, and by Muslim, I mean Christian\u201d. This is magicked by the expedient of reducing all acts of Islamic violence to the work of \u201creligion\u201d and then declaring \u201creligion\u201d to refer to Christianity. He writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

To imply that organized religious has furnished these people with the mental, physical courage to perform these acts of kindness to a fellow human being, seems a bit big; under the circumstances. The countless acts of barbarity and cruelty perpetrated worldwide every day, in the name of god, does not support this theory. Furthermore, was this very act of inhuman depravity not also committed under the cries of \u2018God is great\u2019, even if uttered in Arabic?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In short, if you\u2019ve seen one religion, you\u2019ve seen \u2019em all.<\/p>\n

Ye Olde Statistician <\/a>replies to this wooly-minded act of intellect worship vs. intellect use so common among the internet atheists:<\/p>\n

The claim was not made for \u201creligion\u201d (whatever that is) but for Catholicism.\u00a0 Nor was it claimed that every nominal adherent of Catholicism will rise to the occasion any more than every nominal adherent of science will make a great discovery.\u00a0 (Think normal distribution: some people will be in the tails.)\u00a0 So what is remarkable is not that every<\/strong> Catholic approached the jihadis<\/em> but that only<\/strong> Catholics approached the jihadis,<\/em> where by random chance drawing from the British population you would have expected at least one to be non-Catholic.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It is sort of amazing to me that somebody would be surprised that a civilization which teaches that getting laid and being safe and well-fed are the highest goods should tend to produce people who behave like these are, in fact,\u00a0the highest goods when met with a life-threatening challenge.\u00a0And so the majority of Britons\u2013a product of just such a culture\u2013behaved in exactly the way their\u00a0ruthless secular cultural environment taught them to behave and saw no reason to stick their necks out\u00a0for a stranger.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s equally amazing that that an atheist who believes in the Prophet Darwin (pbuh) would be offended by the fact that a religious tradition that teaches there are higher goods than getting laid and being safe and well-fed would tend to produce people who act as though there are higher goods worth dying for, such as the love of neighbor typified in the parable of the Good Samaritan and Jesus who laid down his life for us.<\/p>\n

It is, ironically,\u00a0a positively Darwinian outcome and yet Darwinians can\u2019t seem to grasp it.\u00a0Instead, they whine about wanting to recognized as \u201cmoral people\u201d.\u00a0 Dudes: You can\u2019t spend Monday through Saturday constantly drilling into people\u2019s heads that they are cattle whose only true goods are bread and rutting and then expect that, on Sunday, those people will suddenly see some reason throw away the highest good they know for something so abstract and (as you constantly insist) ridiculous as \u201cGreater love hath no man than this: that he lays down his life for his friends\u201d.\u00a0 That religious martyrdom jazz is for suckers, don\u2019t you remember?\u00a0 You can\u2019t have it both ways.\u00a0 If there are no transcendent goods beyond the sensory pleasures of the organism, expecting a bunch of secular Brits formed on TV, consumerism, and the Nanny State to suddenly grow a pair is magical saltationism of the highest order.\u00a0 Those people standing around with cell cams are your legacy, atheists.\u00a0 Own them.\u00a0 It\u2019s natural selection at work just as you have always insisted it works.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Christians believe in supernatural selection too.\u00a0 That\u2019s why the Tradition speaks of the Elect.\u00a0 Ingrid Loyau-Kennett, Amanda Donnelly, and her daughter are among them, by virtue of their baptism: A baptism they lived out admirably in obedience to Jesus who told them to be willing to risk their lives for a stranger.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2026at my reader for noting that it was two Catholic women who came to the aid of Lee Rigby while a bunch of cowards stood around doing nothing and taking pictures on their cell cams. 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