Re: [asa] "As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God"

 I think the only "positive" message of New Atheism is freedom from moral restrictions in the here-and-now.  If you can drive God out of your conscience, then you are free to do anything you want. (I want to say "any damned thing you want" in the literal sense, but that seems a bit crude!)  But there are many things in society to remind the New Atheists about God and what they hate about Him, making them angry so they don't enjoy their freedom.  Thus, they feel compelled by anger to drive God completely out of the world.  This is just another instantiation of  humanity nailing Jesus to the cross, in which we all participated.  We wanted to drive God out of the world because when we saw Him we hated Him, because our deeds were evil (John 3).  (Thankfully, He chose to die to redeem those who were His enemies!)

Phil

 
-----Original Message-----
From: Schwarzwald <schwarzwald@gmail.com>
To: asa@calvin.edu
Sent: Sat, 3 Jan 2009 12:00 am
Subject: Re: [asa] "As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God"

I don't think that's 'the same thing' that was said in this article. And I think Christians, atheists, and others are all in favor of 'taking a stand for education and believe that no one should be taught info.' Alas, what constitutes false varies with the viewpoint.

And what's positive in an atheist worldview? What's a great potential in anything more than a very subjective sense? I think a consistent atheism in the NA sense doesn't av
ail itself to many positive messages.

On Fri, Jan 2, 2009 at 11:23 PM, Dehler, Bernie <bernie.dehler@intel.com> wrote:

An atheist friend of mine said the same
thing- that Christianity could be good for some people, weak-minded people,
like prison inmates.  I don't get it.  If I were an atheist, I'd
take a stand for education and believe that no one should be taught false
info.  Maybe the problem with the atheist is that they don't have a
positive narrative to offer, so rather than offer a negative atheist viewpoint
they prefer a false positive-Christian viewpoint.  If I were an atheist, I'd
tell them to focus on a positive atheist message- like developing a positive secular
humanist outlook... thinking about the great potentials that humans could achieve.

…Bernie

From:
asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On Behalf Of Nucacids

Sent: Thursday, January 01, 2009
3:14 PM

To: asa@calvin.edu;
philtill@aol.com

Subject: Re: [asa] "As an
atheist, I truly believe Africa needs
God"

Yes, that was an excellent article.  And for me, this is the type of
thing that is far better evidence for the existence of God than any of the
popular science or philosophy arguments. 

-Mike

----- Original Message -----

From: philtill@aol.com

=0
A

To: asa@calvin.edu

Sent: Thursday, January
01, 2009 3:05 PM

Subject: [asa] "As an
atheist, I truly believe Africa needs
God"

Here's a great article on how the
gospel changes people and societies.  This flies in the face of charges
from Dawkins and other so-called New Atheists.  The replies to the article
at the bottom are interesting, too.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/matthew_parris/article5400568.ece

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Received on Sat Jan 3 11:27:18 2009