A few weeks or so ago a British man managed to get the Church of England to officially recognize that he was no longer a member. As a result of the publicity somewhere around 100 thousand Brits have downloaded the form requesting the church quit counting them as members.
As you’ve probably guessed from the title of this post, there’s at least one Christian whose got a problem with this. According to Thomas A. Flynn, requesting that a group quit counting you as a member is an attack upon that group.
The National Secular Society in England has launched an initiative to request a certificate of de-baptism. So far they say that 100,000 Brits have downloaded the document from the Internet, disgusted by the idea of being called a Christian. Some are calling baptism “a form of child abuse”, as if the gift of faith we equivalent to the atrocious situations of violence in the home that we all know so well.
This is just the latest attack by atheistic groups around the globe. Pro-atheism advertisements have been draped on buses in several countries with phrases like “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” These, alongside the extensive array of anti-God best-sellers by authors like Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens, announce that atheism is on the march.
All these Brits are doing is requesting that a group they do not consider themselves a part of quit counting them as members. Nothing more, nothing less. How is that an attack by atheists?
It’s only an attack if you think that anything but absolute silence is an act of persecution. Christians may not be as violent as Muslims, but they are far from the democracy supporting freedom loving sweethearts they insist they are.
Answer’s in Genesis is “an an apologetics ministry, dedicated to enabling Christians to defend their faith and to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ effectively.”
It’s also the source of the following video depicting a white kid aiming a loaded gun at the camera while some man states that “if you don’t matter to God, you don’t matter to anyone”:
The message, of course, is “if it weren’t for my firm belief in the existence of Hell, I’d shoot your ass”, which is a rather common brand of fuckwittery amongst Christian apologists and extremists.
The bishop of Augsburg had a special message to share with his flock this past Sunday. It was atheists who were behind the killing machine known to the world as Nazi Germany.
A Catholic German bishop has come under fire for his remarks condemning atheists. In a sermon given on Easter Sunday, the bishop of Augsburg, Walter Mixa, warned of rising atheism in Germany. “Wherever God is denied or fought against, there people and their dignity will soon be denied and held in disregard,” he said in the sermon. He also said that “a society without God is hell on earth” and quoted the Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky: “If God does not exist, everything is permitted.”
Most controversially, he linked the Nazi and Communist crimes to atheism. “In the last century, the godless regimes of Nazism and Communism, with their penal camps, their secret police and their mass murder, proved in a terrible way the inhumanity of atheism in practice.” Christians and the Church were always the subject of “special persecution” under these systems, he said.
This isn’t the first time the bishop has caused a ruckus. He’s went after the Jews (ironic, yes?) by comparing what Nazi Germany did to them to abortion and Palestine. He also appears to like calling anyone who criticizes him Nazis.
According to an E-Harmony advice piece, these are the people most likely to cheat on their significant others: Those who crave excitement Those who are not religious Those who have a history of divorce, sexual abuse or such psychological problems as depression or bipolar disorder. I bore pretty easily and happen to be an atheist [...]
Back in October of last year then senator of North Carolina Elizabeth Dole was behind in the polls and did what any Republican politician would do in her spot. She went on the attack. Her method of attack was to ‘expose’ the fact that she had caught her challenger Kay Hagan not just associating with [...]
Much ado was made about President Obama’s mentioning of non-believers in his inaugural speech, but now that the rubber has hit the road, Obama has decided to accept the title of Honorary President of the Boy Scouts: Obama was meeting with a delegation of the Boy Scouts in the Oval Office on Tuesday afternoon, at [...]
We atheists get accused of a lot of things. Usually it’s just the same tripe repeated over and over again ad nauseum. Every now and then though a religious group has an original thought. It’s a stupid thought, but it is original. The religious group this time is the Free Market Foundation here in Texas. [...]
I’ve been in a rotten mood the last few days and reading this post over at PZ Myer’s has not changed my disposition. It appears that a teacher by the name of Richard Mullens of Brookeland, Texas was suspended after a parent accused him of being an atheist. On January 15th, there was a board [...]
A few days ago the local newspaper carried a story about the Boy Scouts of America getting in trouble with supporters over land deals that seem irreconcilable with the public perception of the BSA as land conservationists. And though this story has popped up in many newspapers, only one has a council leader appearing to [...]
There are times when I think I’m a bit too mean towards Christians. Then I find crap like this (you can read about it here): And become convinced that none of us, including our so-called Christian allies, are mean enough.
I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain. — James Baldwin
