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June 7, 2005 This is continuing a discussion with "Skip Toomaloo". The previous response can be found here: http://www.useless-knowledge.com/1234/june/article074.html SKIP: You are free to do anything you want except infringe on my freedom. That is what you're saying right? Are you being hypocritical? I am not trying to force any belief. I am only voicing my own belief. And I am only voicing my disagreement with the details of your belief. I trust that there is nothing wrong with that? We are both exercising our free speech, after all. In your original article, you said that atheists try to "destroy" your belief. I would like to know specifically what would actions constitute the attempt to destroy Christianity, in your mind. Is an atheist arguing against Christianity all that it takes? God does not suggest anyone "deserves" eternal torture. He has spent his entire relationship with men trying to keep them from that fate. Well then perhaps I am still confused. If I die without having accepted Jesus Christ, you *do* believe that I will be tortured forever, right? Will I not deserve this fate? If not, then is it a mistake? Will I go to hell because of a clerical error? SKIP: One must wonder, if one is not a Christian, why it is Christianity that is so hated and despised by the atheist; that the atheist will not rail against the murderous Islamist, or the cults of the Jehovah's Witness or the so called Christian Scientist. RUSSELL: If one must wonder that, then one does not pay much attention. Certainly, because so many atheists live in America, the religion they come most in contact with on a daily basis is Christianity. However, you'll find no shortage of atheists arguing against Islam [etc] SKIP: Well, this is my fault, surely. I do not normally enter the web sites of atheists and the only experience I have with unbelievers, are those who largely express hate toward Jesus; who they then say doesn't exist. Then perhaps I might respectfully suggest that you take a little bit of effort to actually RESEARCH WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT the next time you want to explain the beliefs and habit of people you admit you don't listen to. For instance, if you would bother to specifically ask atheists whether they "hate Jesus", most of them would say no; and if you would ask whether they believe that Jesus (a person) existed, many of them would say "yes", "maybe", or "don't really care." It can get confusing at times. This is inclusive of Islam and other so-called religions that declare Jesus is not the True God. What I pay attention to is the seriousness of the assaults against the Christian faith in America. You do realize that the arenas where the Bible and Christianity have been driven out are now the greatest promoters of evil, hate and sin in the world. I include the courts, and the public school system of America which have been in a steady moral decline, and the attempt to destroy the Boy Scouts of America by the tactics of the ACLU. No, in fact I do NOT agree that either courts or public schools are the greatest promoters of evil or hate. I also do not agree that the Bible has in any sense been "driven out" of these places, as you or I or anyone who wishes is free to bring their own Bible in there. Nor do I agree that any attempt whatsoever has been made to "destroy" the Boy Scouts. I am not your Christian audience, willing to swallow whatever you say as true. You will need to back up your claims. But I apologize. Yes, there are atheists who speak against the cults and Islam. This is a good thing really, I just wish there were more of that on Useless-Knowledge.com. Most all of the anti-faith vitriol there is against my chosen faith. That is almost certainly because atheists are responding to rants at UK which are visibly Christian. Certainly I wouldn't have written to this site at all if a friend hadn't drawn your article to my attention. If you see an article here that is notably in favor of Islamic Fundamentalism or terrorism, just let me know and I'll be happy to tell you what I think of it. RUSSELL: Atheists do not place any attributes on "God," because we do not believe in "God." Any features attributed to a god are entirely the product of those people who believe in one -- though they may be quoted or discussed by atheists. SKIP: I don't believe I am misunderstanding the scenarios presented by the writers in UK.com. They clearly try to place God in a human built, paradoxical situations. God is sovereign. He can do anything he wants. In the same vein, he can choose to not do anything. They call God mean and spiteful; always thinking of ways to "eternally torture" the unfaithful. But if they are responding to you then, in the absence of evidence for your god, the only description they have to go on is the one which you present. And the only definitions of "mean" and "spiteful" that are meaningful to us are those which we apply to humans. For instance, if a human built a torture chamber, with the express intention of throwing his children in there if they didn't express an appropriate level of love and devotion, then that human would be considered a monster. You can say that such concepts do not apply to your god, but then ideas like good and evil become pretty much arbitrary and meaningless. Amazingly, most will not accept God at his word that he prefers the salvation of all, to the death of all. Well then, if the god prefers the salvation of all, he is free to keep them out of the eternal torture chamber at his pleasure. Omnipotence and all that. SKIP: One must wonder, if one is not a Christians, why atheists would place themselves on the side of foolishness against the words of scripture that declare against them: "Only a fool says in his heart, there is no God." RUSSELL: Because we do not put any more stock in that quote than we put in the rest of your book. Fools believing there is no God, talking snakes, water into wine, the whole shebang -- we don't believe your book is correct. SKIP: Well, I place "stock" in the scriptures. It is the "message of God to those that believe, the Jew first, and also the Gentile". I did not write any portion of the Hebrew/Christian collection of works assembled as the Bible. But I do believe the collection to be much of what God told men during his period of physical, personal relationship with men on earth. Right. And in believing every word of the scriptures, YOU choose to believe that atheists are fools. Atheists do not agree with scripture, so I believe I've answered your question. SKIP: One must wonder, if one is not a Christian, why atheists simply reject facts of history and the mystery of the survival of the Hebrew/Christian Bible over centuries of persecution and attempted destruction. Or why tiny Israel; at one point completely disbanded, is again a power in the world with the fourth strongest air forces on earth. RUSSELL: Atheists accept many of these facts, while at the same time not believing that there is any evidence of a supernatural being guiding it. SKIP: Well, I don't believe enough thought is going into a conclusion like that. I've had a few write to me to explain to me how the entire Bible was "myth" with no base in "fact" and I believe that is dishonest. Um, the persecution of Christians and Jews is a matter of historical record, and in fact much of it post-dates the Bible. Just because the Bible, with all its supernatural stories, is largely myth doesn't mean that atheists disbelieve the existence of modern Israel. That would be stupid. SKIP: One must wonder, if one is not a Christian, why atheists are not martyrs, while there were thousands of men who have gone to their deaths rather than recant their belief in the only Son of God; and there are thousands more in places like North Korea, China, and the many belligerent Middle eastern countries who are imprisoned and killed because they dare speak of faith in Jesus. RUSSELL: Because atheists enjoy living and don't believe that there is eternal life coming afterwards. We think it's irrational to die for your beliefs except in really extreme cases. And we think that if, for example, the 9/11 terrorists had agreed with this principle, we would all have been better off. SKIP: The differences I see in this reply are that the Christian will believe until someone kills him for his belief. He doesn't insist on grabbing the unbeliever and jumping into death while holding on to him. The Islamist gains points for killing while going into martyrdom. Jesus never taught that. The unbeliever does not care unless and until the situation will affect only him. Or, more very simply...One seems selfless, one seems a murderer and one seems selfish. I suppose, then, that inquisitions, crusades, and pogroms must be a "myth." SKIP: One must wonder, if one is not a Christian, why atheists need vitriol to make a point; or why atheists are cruel in their writings; calling Christians ignorant and using many epithets that are unprintable in this forum. RUSSELL: True, atheists sometimes use vitriol to make a point. On the other hand, just in this article, you have called me "fool" and "hateful", referred to anything I may write as "tripe", and implied that I support "murderous Islam". Elsewhere in your site, you refer to atheists as swine and exhibit something very like glee at the notion of my future suffering. I believe there is a saying about a pot and a kettle that might be relevant. SKIP: I do not call you a fool; I point out that is a scriptural reference. Which you went out of your way to quote, because you agree with it. Hence you ARE calling me a fool. Hate is what I face and this, being only the third e-mail I've dealt with so far is at least a little more calm than the last two. Atheistic language against God is...in my opinion, "tripe" I will qualify that as my opinion. Atheistic language against me personally is just insulting, and it is something to be expected. Excuse me, but I believe I am entitled to take offense at being called fool, hateful, and tripe. This seems to be largely a semantic issue: if people call you names, that is hate; if you call other people names, that is justified loving retribution. Maybe the solution to this is to grow a thicker skin. God does not care that you do not believe. He only cares when one becomes a believer that they are careful not to bring shame on his name. The unbeliever is perfectly free to move on. God's messages are for those who believe. I'll believe that when you stop mischaracterizing atheists. You, also, are perfectly free to move on. If I "implied" that you personally (I don't recall using any names) support murderous Islam, I will ask your forgiveness. Mr. Smith and I have been e-mailing back and forth and he is insisting that Islam is as valid as Christianity. I do not agree that murder is equal to love. Context may have helped there. Which I'm certain is not meant to be a COMPLIMENT to Islam. Both religions have reasonable people, and both also have nuts who kill people. "Swine" is also biblical symbolism. Again, I ask you to remember I write to Christians, not to unbelievers. The Christian knows the typology behind the words of Jesus. I'm not yet familiar with useless-knowledge, but it doesn't APPEAR to be an apologetics site. It looks like both Christians and atheists come here. So I don't think you're simply preaching to the choir (so to speak); if you don't want atheists to read your writing, then there are plenty of exclusively Christian sites you can choose from. We don't own the whole internet, you see. "Glee in future suffering"? Well, that's just wrong. I take no glee in seeing the message of Jesus rejected. I know what that means to the eternal standing of any person. I was mainly looking at http://www.useless-knowledge.com/1234/may/article373.html where you wrote, "Those who mock God are those destined for suffering." and "Let those who mock God 'suffer alone'." I may be wrong, but I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking the subtext is "Boy, that'll teach em!" Let me ask you this: do you disagree with the idea that unbelievers SHOULD go to hell after they die? [On the subject of "atheist spew"] RUSSELL: If you think that Christians don't spew, you are just not looking for it. And if you don't believe me, I can easily come up with a list of, let's say, five links to examples in about thirty seconds. SKIP: Well, THEY ARE wrong. There is no need to "spew". Jesus takes some Christians like that and says he will "spew them from his own mouth". There are "lukewarm" Christians so-called, so steeped in their particular brand of man built ruler ship they hold the church laws of men with the same authority as scripture. The whole of that is wrong. Jesus did not fulfill the Law of Moses only to have it go to Hell under a set of man made laws about what can be done, eaten, drunk or played with. Yes, I can get to those same links. None of them speak of personal faith or a direct relationship with God. They speak of meditations, medications, self-help books, prayer rags and rugs, and holy cards. It is all religious (for want of a better word) crap! Good. I'm glad we agree on this point. Understand that I am not saying that all Christians do this, only that some obviously do. SKIP: Here is the heart. I cannot say it is my opinion God exists. But I can. That's what I'm here for. Atheism does not declare that it is their "opinion" God does not exist. Atheism, for the larger part declares it a "fact" God does not exist. That, in my opinion, is arrogance. Yes, it does. No, it doesn't. Yes, it would be, but isn't. An atheist is someone who does not believe in any gods. There are distinctions made between the so-called "strong" and "weak" atheists. But strong atheists -- those who say there definitely cannot be a god -- are a subset of atheists in general. Now, I would care about "opinions". I might even readily debate "opinions" because "opinions" can be changed. I remember the story of "Antony Flew" who has recently explained his change of opinion concerning "intelligent design". And I know stories of theists who changed their minds and became atheists. The opinions of Antony Flew are not relevant to me; all I care about is whether his REASONS were valid. Yet, over and over, I read Jesus is a "myth"; as if that makes all right with the world. Jesus is a "myth" because more people don't believe than do believe. Well, even the small number of actual believers was a prophecy if you know anything of remnant theology. The problem is that an idea is not made true simply because a large number of people really believe that it is. The majority of people also believe that the earth has been visited by space aliens. The majority of people believe that astrology can really predict the future. That doesn't mean that they are correct, fair enough? SKIP: I will apologize to the atheists who did not fall into these categories. I should have been more specific in explaining that these are atheists I know personally and the more extremely slanderous ones who fill my e-mail with all kinds of very un-kind things. I appreciate your apology. I also submit that each individual is the best judge of whether they are lonely or unhappy. Instead of making sweeping generalizations about atheists being lonely, even the ones you consider "slanderous", you might ask them if they are. You might be surprised at the answers. SKIP: I did not consider my column a "rail", a "rant", a "diatribe" or some of the more colorful descriptions thrown at me thus far. I write to support my brothers and sisters in Jesus. If you notice, I wrote "one must wonder if one is NOT a Christian". But I think NON-Christians do not wonder those things, as a lot of them are simply misperceptions. For instance, you've agreed with me that atheists do not argue against Christianity exclusively, and they are targets of "hate" (by your standards) on plenty of sites. And you've said that you write to believers rather than unbelievers, so I must infer that you were writing to Christians who do, in fact, wonder about those things. And among the answers you've offered for these wonderings, many of them are also false and paint atheists in an extremely unfriendly light. According to you, atheists are hateful because they are lonely people with no meaning in their empty lives, and they don't write against Islam because they are out to destroy what they already know to be the "one true faith", yet they pretend to deny it for ulterior motives. If this is not railing against atheists to some extent, I think we are using different meanings of the words. Christians need not wonder. We have been told. In a way, I was trying to tell Christians that we really don't need to battle and argue what we've been told will happen. When Jesus was falsely accused, he did not stand and argue the point. He let happen what happened and through that, not only was prophecy fulfilled, but even more people believed he was the very Christ. So perhaps, I could have found a better way to express all that I was feeling when I wrote that column. I shall work more carefully to make myself better understood. The bottom line is that Christians are to "live" their faith. Not take unbelievers to court. I wish the ACLU felt that way. The ACLU does feel that way. The ACLU believes in civil liberties for all individuals, and in the past they have often defended Christians against people who wanted to prevent them from individual expressions of faith. Check it out. http://www.aclu.org/ReligiousLiberty/ReligiousLiberty.cfm?ID=10147&c=142 http://www.aclu.org/ReligiousLiberty/ReligiousLiberty.cfm?ID=16295&c=142 http://www.aclu.org/ReligiousLiberty/ReligiousLiberty.cfm?ID=15897&c=141 http://www.aclu.org/ReligiousLiberty/ReligiousLiberty.cfm?ID=8122&c=142 See? Anyway, Russell, I do appreciate your notes and your comments. Critique is important to me. I see I must continue to be true to my faith, but I must ensure that I be much more specific in making my points. It is far too easy to be misunderstood when you are not specific. Sincerely, ST Well, Skip, obviously there are many things you say that I disagree with. But I will say that you've written a very sincere response, and it takes a big man to accept criticism the way you have. So, cheers to you. Russell ------------ About the author Russell Glasser: If you did not like the writing style in this message, then you will almost certainly not enjoy my blog, which is at: http://kazimskorner.blogspot.com Email: rglasser@apollowebworks.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com. Please link to this article rather than copying and pasting it onto your site (which would be unauthorized and illegal). |
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