A fast-paced and witty (at least to some of us) piece of writing by Robert Weitzel appeared in the Atlantic Free Press this month. Weitzel is a freelance writer and outspoken atheist whose writes regularly for The Capital Times in Madison, WI as well as several other papers and journals. The Free Press article is titled “Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris: The Unholy Trinity . . .Thank God” and is, as you might expect, a general ‘put-down’ of religion and those who profess to be religious and a rah-rah piece for the ‘unholy trinity of best-selling authors, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris.
Being a member of what Weitzel calls the POF (the “pis**d-off faithlessâ€) I found myself nodding and agreeing with Weitzel as he made the point that 10% of Americans identify themselves as atheists (which accounts for the phenomenal sales of the books written by the “unholy trinity”) and especially when he made the very significant argument that:
“If the faithful would just keep their religious beliefs in their own pocket and out of public school classrooms and bedrooms and women’s wombs, I doubt much would ever be heard from the unholy trinity or the POF. What would be the point?”
I’ve often had that very same thought and have more than once expressed it in several blog posts over the years. I realize, as I’m sure Weitzel does, that wishing for that is like asking for a cocktail at a Mormon picnic — its impractical when you consider that many religious people consider it their duty to go out and ‘heal’ us heathens; but it does frame the basic problem very well.
So as I’m reading along, enjoying the fact that the author has set so much of what I perceive in writing I am suddenly jarred to a stop!
This is the paragraph that stopped me:
“It goes without saying that multitudes of the faithful live quiet lives comfortable in the skin of their beliefs, and that good people are dedicating their lives to the betterment of humanity (locally and globally) under the banner of one religion or another. But if religion disappeared tomorrow, those same good people would still be out there doing what they can because of who they are not because of where they worship. (emphasis added)”
Suddenly a bell went off and I realized that Weitzel is attempting to completely devalue religion and I believe that that is a bridge too far.
Religion itself is not the enemy! Religion is, for many people, the only thing that they have to help them get through life. Many people would figuratively ‘disintegrate’ if religion “disappeared tomorrow.” Religion and religious values that stem from religion are not the enemy of the atheist, agnostic or secularist or of the American people in general — the enemy is that overwhelming urge that so many religious people have to ‘convert’ those who do not believe. That perceived necessity of so many religious people to “save the souls of us heathens.” I don’t want (and I do not believe any right-thinking non-believer wants) to steal anyone’s religion or destroy anyone’s religion or convince anyone that our way is the right way. All I want is what Weitzel expressed so well earlier in his article: I want religious people to “keep their religious beliefs in their own pocket and out of public school classrooms and bedrooms and women’s wombs.” Any religion that will not allow its adherents to do that is a religion that is not perpetuating itself but is destroying itself.
In plain English: evangelicalism is the enemy! Evangelicalism is, in fact, at least as I see it, the very antithesis of what America is all about!
News Links:
CNN International: I-Reporters quiz CNN’s Amanpour (re: the CNN documentary: God’s Warriors”)
Atlantic Free Press: Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris: The Unholy Trinity . . .Thank God
OpEdNews.com: Creating a Set of Laws for All Religions, Like Asimov’s Laws of Robotics
From the Blogosphere:
The Evangelical Outpost: All God’s Warrior’s Need Secular Shoes
Golos – The Voice: Guess who is most dangerous: Muslim, Jewish, or Christian religious extremists?
News and commentary by: Whymrhymer can also be found at the My View from the Center and at The American Chronicle Family of Journals
2 users commented in " Target Identified: Evangelicalism "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackAs you said, Robert Weitzel’s Atlantic Free Press piece is “a general ‘put-down’ of religion and those who profess to be religious.” The same may be said about the books of the “unholy trinity” of Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, to say nothing of other like-minded devout atheist authors. It should be glaringly obvious from their written and spoken words that Richard Dawkins and other (dare I say it?) *evangelical* fundamentalist athiests like him are in fact attempting to completely devalue religion. In Richard Dawkins’ and other fundamentalist atheists’ narrow-minds religion itself is most certainly the enemy and they are on an all-out “crusade” against religion. Richard Dawkins has written in ‘The God Delusion’,
“I am not attacking any particular version of God or gods. I am attacking God, all gods, anything and everything supernatural, wherever and whenever they have been or will be invented.”
:In plain English: evangelicalism is the enemy! Evangelicalism is, in fact, at least as I see it, the very antithesis of what America is all about!
Tell that to Richard Dawkins and his fellow *evangelical* fundamentalist atheist colleagues and allies. . .
Calls fo out from the church.
Refer to atheists as “fundamentalists atheists”. Then it happens in articles and all over the blog-o-sphere.
Trash gnostic christianity (because of the Davinci Code). Then you see articles trashing a long dead sect of christianity. (Many of the things they say about gnosticism happen to be lies as well).
Attack secularists with imprecatory black magick. Then you find stuff all over the internet on how to pray for the death of secularists and Supreme Court justices.
Now I see their is a call to invest a lot of money into more apologists to pollute the blog-o-sphere. Also, they supply talking points on effective lies to tell.
My question is: how good does this job pay?
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