This morning an essay Penn Jillette wrote appeared on the NPR website that sums up how we non-believers find a purpose in life especially when this life is all we have.
Author: Doug
Founder, editor and host of Secular Left - please be gentle
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Atheists may not be victims in the sense that Christians can be victims in countries like China but Atheists (and most non-believers) do suffer from the negative attitude as illustrated in the article by Leo that I started this posting with.
Obviously Leo was complaining about people complaining and he included Atheists in that lot as if our concerns are trivial.
There aren’t too many groups these days that one would hear or tolerate such negative attitudes expressed so publicly without any backlash. Imagine if a popular TV host said on the air she wouldn’t vote for any one who was a Muslim or Christian with the inference that viewers follow her advice.
For the 3rd time in six years the “experts” in science on the Kansas state Board of Education redefined science to fit their religious biases. Imagine someone who is mathematically challenged decides that 4+4=4 looks “pretty” and gets a Board of Education to agree. That’s what happen in Kansas on Tuesday.
God didn’t put a man on the moon or wipe out a majority of the world’s diseases. Science did. Praying didn’t increase crop yields which allows us to raise much more food than we really need on low amount of acreage. Science did. Going to church isn’t going to help us find a cure for AIDS. Science will.
The recent defense of Evolution in Dover wasn’t some conspiracy of secular humanists bent on corrupting “our children” but was conducted by believers who find the truth of science to be much more important than their religious beliefs.
Got this alert this evening concerning Larry Darby who was founder and president of the Atheist Law Center:
Cardinal Paul Poupard, who heads the Pontifical Council for Culture, said the faithful should listen to what secular modern science has to offer, warning that religion risks turning into “fundamentalism” if it ignores scientific reason.
Monsignor Gianfranco Basti, director of the Vatican project STOQ, or Science, Theology and Ontological Quest, reaffirmed John Paul’s 1996 statement that evolution was “more than just a hypothesis.”