But things are changing. Religion has long been imploding in all 1st world countries, and recent surveys show dramatic signs that the shrinkage of theism is accelerating to astonishing levels in the US as youth gives up on supernaturalism in a digital age. Far from leading to societal disaster, homicide rates have dropped in parallel. As time goes on it will become increasingly known that the death of 50 billion children disproves the existence of a good god, and that only atheistic democracies can achieve the highest levels of societal success. Combined with the powerful socioeconomic processes that are suppressing popular religiosity, fewer and fewer will be turning to a mythical God of Love when bad things happen.
It just may be that the Newtown horror is one of those tipping points that will boost the rise of atheism. It is so blatant, it is such an exposure of the perversion that is free will theory -- the sick idea that there is a "loving god." A perfect supermind that sits by while terrorized first graders are mowed down by gun, so that a mentally troubled young man can express his free will such as it is, when the very same act denies the children their free will. This in a world where the deity does not lift a finger to prevent billions and billions of children from being deprived of their freedom as they are cruelly liquidated by malaria, smallpox (the two biggest kid killers) and a long host of ruthless microbes that the intelligent designer either deliberately crafted to kill people (according the IDers such as Michael Behe as quoted below -- this qualifies as premeditated homicide by the creator), or were allowed to evolve (according to evolutionary theists like John Haught, Ken Miller, Francis Collins -- this is godly negligent homicide at best). Are we really supposed to abandon moral commonsense and common decency to believe the ethical absurdities that theists from professional to on the street demand we accept on what they grandly label faith, in base exchange for a ticket to some paradise to worship a power that has been OK with the deaths of so many children? Are we really not allowed as thinking adults to decide what is and is not moral and decent when it comes to the activities of the gods the believers cannot even show actually exist? Are we really not allowed to be outraged that people are still worshipping the homicidal deity in an age when science and reason should predominate? The theist pretense is too much for a large and fast expanding cohort of rationalists to swallow on sensible and moral grounds.
For theists who think it inappropriate to use the Newtown tragedy to make these points, who do you think you are to criticize, when theists proudly proclaim the Loving God in the wake of these events it could have stopped if it has the power attributed to it?
Sam Clemens who loathed theism and its deity had it right. Religion is not merely errant, it is moral depravity to worship a being that has overseen the homicide of tens of billions of children, all the more so when it stems from a nonaltruistic search for boons from the deity. It is time for humanity to grow up, acknowledge that the supernatural does not exist, and to get on with the hard work of saving the children that no god gives a damn about.
Here's something to ponder long and hard. Malaria was intentionally designed. The molecular machinery with which the parasite invades red blood cells is an exquisitely purposeful arrangement of parts. [A mother's] children died in her arms partly because an intelligent agent [God] deliberately made malaria.
Catholic Intelligent Design proponent Michael Behe, The Edge of Evolution
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
