Mosques Flourish in America; Churches Perish in Muslim World
As Muslims prepare to erect a mega-mosque near the site of the 9/11 atrocities, it is well to reflect that the sort of tolerance, or indifference, that allows them to do so is far from reciprocated to churches in the Muslim world. I speak not of Islamist attacks against churches — such as the New Year’s Eve attack in Egypt that killed 21 Christians; or when jihadists stormed a church in Iraq, butchering over 50 Christians; or Christmas Eve attacks on churches in Nigeria and the Philippines. Nor am I referring to state-sanctioned hostility by Islamist regimes, such as Iran’s recent “round up” of Christians.
Rather, I refer to anti-church policy by Middle East governments deemed “moderate.” Consider: Kuwait just denied, without explanation, a request to build a church; so did Indonesia, forcing Christians to celebrate Christmas in a parking lot — even as a mob of 1,000 Muslims burned down two other churches. If this is the fate of churches in “moderate” Indonesia and Kuwait — the latter’s sovereignty due entirely to U.S. sacrifices in the First Gulf War — what can be expected of the rest of the Islamic world?
The best example of anti-church policy is Egypt, where the Middle East’s largest Christian minority, the Copts, lives. Even before Mubarak stepped down, “more than 1500 assaults on Copts have occurred, without any appropriate punishment given to criminals or compensation to the victims,” according to Coptic Solidarity.
Similarly, Egypt’s state security, which is now in charge, has a curious habit of disappearing right before Coptic churches are attacked — such as in the aforementioned New Year’s Eve attack. They also tend to arrive rather late after churches are attacked: it took security “hours” to appear when six Copts were murdered as they left church last year. Considering that weeks ago an Egyptian policeman identified and opened fire on Christians, killing a 71-year-old — while yelling Islam’s ancient war-cry, “Allah Akbar!” — none of this should be surprising.
Wahabbi schools in America are the problem.
These are funded by the House of Saud, openly and without restrictions. These schools are spread over the America, from Washington DC to California and promote extreme fundamentalist philosophies, too extreme for mainstream Islamic practices.
It is estimated over 50,000 enrollees attend these schools within the United States, several hundreds of thousands world wide, and a large percentage of citizens of Saudi Arabia.
Why does the US allow Wahabbi schools to exist within our borders, and why do we continue buying petroleum from Saudi Arabia, the sole funding source of these Wahabbi Terrorist training schools.
We are chasing mosques, while leaving actual training schools for terrorists operating openly within the United States, and support the group funding them worldwide.
I agree totally with you Mr Alex ,it is the Wahhabis, Salafi who attacked on 9,11.Yet the churches are still existing and even more are being built in Syria and Iran where in Saudi Arabia the distinguished ally of the US it is still not allowed to bring a bible to that country!when US occupied Iraq Saudi Arabia sent the Qaeda Jihadists to commit suicide attacks against the Christians and the Shiaa!
How does the US plan its foreign policy?
Alex,
You are 100 percent correct. There is a school in Herndon Virginia about 40 miles outside of DC which is the Saudi International School whose curriculum calls me “a pig and monkey,” calls for the slaying of the infidel and other curses of the Koran. A couple of years ago I believe protests went from the State Department to Saudi Arbia and the school to remove from their curriculum the heinous, racist teaching. As far as I know none of this has been done as I suppose we are held by the short hairs because of our obscene dependence on Saudi oil. Until we get reduce this dependence, the Saudis can do what they want where they want.
Y’all are correct, as far as y’all go, but:
The problem is Islam, itself.
Read the Koran and see that moslems are to enslave or kill all who do not convert to their satanic religion. Look and see if y’all want to give up your constitutional rights and live under their Sharia.
Don’t be too lazy, too evil or too cowardly to learn the truth about Islam.
Then, help to stamp it out!
Islam is not just a religion. It is also a criminal conspiracy to overthrow our government by force, just as in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Palestine, etc.
With their Mahdi in the White House, they are ready to become Oscumbags
Brownshirts, and make Hitler and the Nazis look like Sunday School teachers. Lock and load!
Spot on. We’ve seen it first hand here where an Episcopal Church has been witing over 8 years for a permit in Antioch, while mosques encounter little or no legal hurdles. This was for the conversion and remodling of an existing structure, not a new construction.
The problem with this article is that it assumes this is new. My dad saved an 11th century New Testament from Turks marauding an Iraqi church in 1964. It’s routine. Since the rise of Islam, the tactic has been obliteration of the conquered population, any evidence of their religion, confiscation of child-bearing women and children, and thus erasing the history of their cruelty.
We live with incessant, widely believed accusations of Crusader cruelty because we spared our enemies, as Christians.
This is all because of the rise of the Caliphate and the war against Christianity. The battle between civilizations is here and we had better get used to it. The Islamists are deadly serious about taking over the world, just like the communists were. And, quite frankly, considering the people we now have in Washington and in the White House, I don’t know if we’re up to the challenge of waging this war. With Obama’s desire to leave both Iraq and Afghanistan as quickly as possible, the Muslim world simply sees us as weak and in retreat. Doesn’t matter that we’ve been in those two countries for almost 10 years now. All they see is that we went in and are now leaving, fast. We have no backbone and certainly are not in this for the long run, which was not the case against communism during the Cold War. The Islamists, Jihadists, and most if not all of the Muslim world (even Turkey, an NATO member), thinks that we are finished as a world power and that they have us on the run. And with Obama and Clinton in office, I can hardly blame them.
If that crazy imam does hold that rally outside the White House, it will not only be interesting to see how many people attend, but also how many people show up to appose it. Unless we find the same resolve that we did during the Cold War and unless we get used to the fact that this is a generational war that could take about 60 or 80 years to win, then soon we will be taking our orders from Mecca and Medina and NOT from Washington. This should be a warning to us all.
This has nothing to do with the Caliphate or Islams current rush of adrenaline fueled by Petro Dollars. Oh no this has ever been thus in any place where Islam became a majority. The fact that they cry for ‘understanding’ and ‘tolerance’ from you is just part of their soft Jihad and taqqiya techniques playing the PC naive, gullible, ignorant moonbats like a violin to advance Islam. But what they do to Christians and other denominations in Mohammedan lands is just HYPOCRISY which is one of the Pillars of Islam and has been so since Islam was invented in the 7th Century by the paedophile Profit who never made even one prophesy.
“acts of violence against Christians”
So Moslems are like ACT-UP (to pick one hate group in the USA at random), but more dedicated and practiced at their hatred?
Some months ago there was a cover in Newsweek to the effect of “Are we Islamaphobic”. The teenage daughter of an editorial writer for local newspaper her in West Michigan came home from school saw it, picked it up, slammed it down and said to her mother “We absolutely are”.
Her mother, the editorial writer, then wrote this teary eyed op-ed about her daughter and we Islamaphobs here in West Michigan.
I couldn’t help it. I emailed her and offered the following for her and her daughter.
The Offer:
All expense paid one week vacation in Mecca at the Grand Mosque; flight, hotel rooms, five star food, any and all expenses associated with the trip. The only conditions were that they had to stay within the city limits of Mecca, wear western female clothing, and go to the mosque.
As an added thought I asked her to quiz bowl her daugther with the following question: “How many Christian Churches, Jewish Synagogues, Hindu Temples are there in all of Saudi Arabia?” I offered that she was welcome to research this on line. (ERRRR..correct answer for those non-world travelers is ZERO)
Her response, while kind, was more or less a “WELL,,,hurrmmph that is beside the point, I was talking about Islamaphobia here in America”.
She didn’t respond to my offer or indicate whether her daughter took the test.
What a waste of time.
Anyway that’s all from just another Islamaphob, I guess. Oh, except I have several muslim friends that I get along with just fine. Oh well.
Sadly, things are not going well for the Copts in Egypt right now. Apparently Christians acting as human shields during the protests so the Muslims could pray has been rewarded with the assault on a Coptic monastery with tanks, APCs, and RPGs.
http://www.aina.org/news/20110223210634.htm
America is doomed: http://www.federalobserver.com/2011/03/02/dvorak-muslim-sharia-law-for-america-white-house-rally-march-3rd/
This rally was cancelled this morning – but still. These people are actually out in the open – in our face, as it were – calling for sharia law in America.
These people have got to go!
In a way it’s a shame the Shariah 4 America protest was cancelled.
Anjem Choudary the head honcho of this group of pathetic welfare abusing misfits is pushing and pushing and more he pushes the more are awakened to the totalitarianism of this opportunistic and colonising faith.
The taqiya spouters hate him because time after time he gives the game plan away and thus legitimises the pushback.
After his idiot crew insulted the returning troops marching through Luton anything we heard about religion of peace was soon dispelled and thus the EDL was formed.
Bit by bit our populaces learn and the more they learn the more disgust rises in our craws.
Nations are not comprised of political leaders, they are groupings of people combined for common good and commerce and as Europe twigs so the politico’s, fearing either loss of power or low level kuffar insurrection are forced into acting.
Europe is moving away from the political correctness of the left and the likes of Geert Wilders and Elisabeth Sabbaditsch Wolfe are gaining folk hero status.
Multiculturalism has hit the buffers as people realise what exactly is at stake and the resurgence of self protecting nationalism is rising.
It’s over in Europe as the weight of leftism is proved to be a hollow sham. If the Euro goes the way it’s heading all will be lost for this shabby crew who have sold us out to Frankfurt School Marxism and unfettered immigration then the real work begins.
Muslims cave pretty quickly. All bluster and Allahu Akbar one minute, the next when the chips are down, and I mean really down with no uncertainty or wriggle room they crawl. When faced with fit in or you’re out they’ll fit in. It’ll be messy but I think we all know by now what precisely is at stake.
Are we about to let that happen?
As long as there are people on the sidelines when it comes to defending the interests of Christians in lands where Muslims form the majority, they
deserve the condemnation pronounced by JFK when he said, in so many words, that the hottest regions of hades are reserved by those who claim neutrality in times of distress.
In “The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King”, those who helped Aragorn who were cursed by Aragorn’s ancestor, deserved the curse.
So, those of us who are willing to stick up for our persecuted brethren have to pull our own weight, and those who prefer to be on the sidelines.
For, if you think I am the only one saying this, take a look at “God’s war
on terror” by Walid Shoebat and Joel Richardson.
Unfortunately everyone gets to make his own judgments. Were I a Christian, one who actually believed in Christianity, and had to choose between an America which persecuted and prosecuted me for speaking the Truth (must I mention about what and perhaps fall victim to “hate speech” laws), and Islam, sitting on the sidelines seems the best choice. It’s not as if America believes in freedom, liberty, human dignity.
That the Islamic states in this world are misogynistic, hateful, conspiracy mongers is not news.
We can only do so much to educate them. However, that anyone with a Western education can really believe that this is a reasonable thing and that we should allow them to practice this behavior here is horrifying.
Live and let live? It is their country after all, it is their choice. However, those who come here need to understand that we do not allow this kind of honor-killing, child-raping, stereotyped hatred to go unpunished. People come here to be free of that kind of life, not to encounter more of it.
Here is a survey of the laws in Muslim countries regarding the construction of churches.
http://deathby1000papercuts.com/2008/07/survey-how-easy-to-build-a-christian-church-in-a-muslim-country/
It ain’t going to happen.
Christians in moslem lands are being treated like Jews. Oh my.
http://www.virtualjerusalem.com/blogs.php?Itemid=2643
This is great news.
Really.
It shows once again that democracies are the best form of government, and dictatorships just distort the popular will.
What kind of world would it be if authoritarian governments produced the same output as democracies? Total moral relativism.
Thank God we hold democracies to higher standards.
styx
Not only are Christians being silenced in the Middle East,it is happening right here in the USA. And with the help of the United Nations, soon it will be a crime to say anything against Islam…. our president gives his full support to the UN on this.
The fewer mosques in America, the better. End Moslem immigration and start deporting the ones already here. They’re at war with the kaffir. Time for the kaffirs to grow a pair and start acting accordingly.
One has to wonder where all of this is going to end up as Western civilization is pressed hard between the cultural, intellectual, moral, and spiritual vise of nihilistic secularism on one side and nihilistic Islamism on the other.. The pattern, though not repetition, of history suggests: Indifference, decadence, crisis, and then tyranny. All are already in the mix and operative. I think there is reason to be very, very concerned, especially as precedent upon precedent is piled up and people become more and desensitized to reality. These atheist inquisitions on the secular side will continue to grow, enabling and facilitating the nihilist inquisitions of militant Islam, by disarming Western culture through the doctrine of multicultural relativism. They are two sides of the same coin, an intellectual and cultural symbiosis, that is a metastasizing intellectual and cultural cancer eating away the soul of the West. Given the enervated status of the Christian Church in nearly all regions involving the clash of civilizations–secularism vs historic Christian orthodoxy; Islamism vs Christianity and the Enlightenment; secularism vs Islamism as a pretext to attack all religious teaching, all our defenses are down. Intensity defeats extensity everytime. And the fact is, orthodox Christians have neither in most battlefields of the conflict, even if they appear to be numerically more.
Your question:
“One has to wonder where all of this is going to end up as Western civilization is pressed hard between the cultural, intellectual, moral, and spiritual vise of nihilistic secularism on one side and nihilistic Islamism on the other.”
has one plaussible answer, if taken within its proper context; just recall what happened to the Biblical (and historical) Sodom and Gomorrah.
Nihilism, atheism, homosexuality, communism, primitivism are all the components of present day “western” liberalism. Add some islamism to the mix of present day Sodomites and Gomorrahites and you get the picture and the answer.
Add drug use to the above list of fine behavioral traits in modern day “West”.
We need a treaty with Saudi Arabia guaranteeing that mosques in the USA have the same rights as churches in Saudi Arabia.
1. The right to have churches burned.
2. The right to have your Scriptures confiscated by the police and burned.
3. The right to be executed for trying to win converts.
etc.
I don’t get it. Yes – the USA has far more religious freedom than any country in the middle east. Freedom is what makes a country great. It is a great thing that mosques can be built in the US without being harrassed the way churches are in other countries. How does tearing down our own freedoms here at home fix anything over there? Since when do two wrongs make a right? Jesus taught peace, compassion and understanding. It seems many so-called christians these days are obsessed with lust for revenge, wanting nothing less than all out war with the muslim world.
It is the Islamists who have historically brought the war on. No Christian I know wants a war or has revenge on his mind. Sensible people, however, see the bodies piling up as a result of Islamist aggression. Christianity does not call its followers to pacifism, contrary to what the peacenik reading of Christian moral theology. Common sense requires us to take seriously the threats and the murderous action, as well as the ideology (even if it cloaks itself in religious language, perhaps especially) that fuels it seriously. Just because it says its a religion, doesn’t mean we should give it the freedom to fuel the murder of people in order appear nice. No one is free to murder in the name of any religion and we can’t responsibly or sensibly believe such freedom is granted because of someone claims religion. Christianity’s moral analysis makes serious distinctions and we would be wise to avail ourselves of its good sense in this age of creeping and aggressive totalitarianisms.
Islam should be illegal in the US. It is not a religion but a socio-political movement soaked in blood. Just deny any visas from anyone from Islamic nations that persecute Christians & end all foreign aid to muslim nations. Islam is a curse.
So, Bulgaricus, why aren’t we doing this? It is so simple. i know, it is TOO SIMPLE and practical. Therefor the liberals, who control the media, the Senate and the White House, will NEVER ALLOW A SIMPLE,PRACTICAL SOLUTION.
THE GUNNY
jwv76 your right. you dont get it.
Writing here as an atheist and so very likely a member of a minority of readers, I agree with Mr. Ibrahim that it is quite and curiously hypocritical of Muslims, particularly those in the Middle East, to call for “tolerance” and “equality” and to pose as “revolutionaries” (re Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Yemen, etc.) yet then attack and murder Christians and burn down their churches. The issue is a straw man. Why belabor the point when it is conceded that Islam preaches and encourages intolerance, subjugation, and at the very least second-class status of non-Muslims?
Why dwell on Islam’s obvious double standards when it is admitted that Islam is a totalitarian political/religious ideology? Islam is a primitive, tribalist religion which frankly I place in the same belief system category as Freemasonry and Druidism, to name but a few surviving examples of mysticism, with the difference being that Islam is a virulent, aggressive, and wholly anti-mind system that demands unquestioning obedience and undiscriminating credulity.
So, what else should one expect? There is no difference between Islam and “radical” Islam. Islam isn’t even “radical.” It is nihilist in nature. It is an enemy and destroyer of Western values. It is not a morality for living happily on earth, free from religious and state interference in one’s life.
I was struck by Mr. Ibrahim’s omission of the fact that before Christian Egypt was conquered by “radical” Islamists, Egypt was the beneficiary of the pagan world of Rome and Greece and was largely pagan. At the time, Christians were the “jihadists,” demanding submission by all to Christian doctrines. The vacillating and compromising policies of Imperial Rome granted these terrorists political legitimacy and carte blanche to wage “holy war” against Jews and pagans.
This historical fact was admirably dramatized in Alejandro Amenabar’s “Agora,” which climaxes with the savage murder of Hypatia by Christians, a pagan philosopher and scientist, because she would not submit to Christianity and recant her beliefs and accept the role as a second-class citizen. Her murder was provoked by “St.” Cyril, bishop of Alexandria, and is evocative of the recent attack on Lara Logan in Tahrir Square, Cairo.
Hypocrisy and double standards are not the primary failings of Islam. They are wholly seconary to the evil of the anti-life creed itself.
While your opposition to islam is appreciated, your atheism isn’t.
The wholesale abandonment of Christianity in the West by people like you is undermining (in fact it has already corroded) Western Civilization as much as, if not more than, islam.
JJ: Because you have made it a personal issue (“people like me”), allow me to ask you this: What difference is there between Muslims demanding that Christians substitute a Christian God with an Islamic one, and Christians being certain Muslims are worshiping the wrong deity? After all, Muslims are just as certain of the existence of their deity as you are of yours, and in any down to the wire dispute between you and a Muslim would be a matter of fisticuffs. The outcome of which, of course, wouldn’t prove or disprove the existence of either deity. A Muslim bows five times a day to a rock (probably a meteorite); you perhaps make the sign of the cross in front of a crucifix. Those actions, however, are supposed to be not only confessions of faith, but proof of the existence of a deity.
Or should one ask if there is any difference between Allah the unknowable (only through blind faith) and God the unknowable (only through blind faith)?
And I differ with your assertion that there is a “wholesale abandonment of Christianity in the West.” Mosques may be springing up all over the country, but they have a ways to go before catching up with the number of churches of every imaginable denomination (synagogues coming in a close second). In the small town I live in, there are at least thirty churches, mostly Protestant, with a handful of Catholic ones. There might be a mosque here, but it isn’t advertising itself. If there is one, it has likely set up shop in an abandoned bagel store.
Western civilization rests on a fealty to reason, and not to faith. When reason is abandoned, and the evidence of one’s senses is disparaged and shunted aside and replaced with policies of “diversity” or “sensitivity,” then the West winds up with, say, the intractable problem of the Somali pirates (all Muslim, or Muslim-born), and how best to deal with those initiators of force. It also finds its fundamental institutions, such as individual rights and freedom of speech, under increasing attack by Islamic jihadists who are confident that the upholders of Western values are paper tigers.
You also insinuate that atheism is “corroding” Western civilization. I’m not aware of atheists flying planeloads of helpless passengers into churches, or plotting to dynamite St. Peter’s in Rome and hoping for massive collateral casualties among its throngs of visitors. What I am aware of, however, are various Christian sects firebombing abortion clinics, murdering doctors, asserting that our entire legal system is based on the Ten Commandments, and indoctrinating children in schools that America wasn’t founded on secular philosophy, but on religious faith.
On the matter of corrosion, it is a fealty to reason that is being corroded by blind faith, and there is an exponential relationship between the decline of reason in the West and the resurgence of any species of faith. Else how account for the cancerous inroads of Islam in the West (aside from the invidious effects of secular statism, the welfare state, and multiculturalism)?
Thank you for your comments. I’m happy to respond to some of them – it would be next to impossible to do so on all of them in much detail, within such limited forum.
At the outset, let me state I don’t belong to any organized religion, I consider myslef a 21st century theist, although I was brought up a Christian, and I deeply appreciate the contributions Christianity has made to Western Civilization, America, my family and myself (in spite of its minor failures over the past two millennia – when compared with its spectacular successes – and its shortcomings in dogma, when compared with its undeliable strengths of offerring vision real hope and deep purpose in life.) This issue is theological, and not being a theologian myself, I wouldn’t venture into it.
Atheism is the outcome of darwinism and marxism, not the product of reason, the Rennaissance or the Enlightnement all three the products of (religious) Classical Greece, Christianity and the Protestant Ethic within the Spirit of Capitalism (Max Weber). Classical Greece, Christianity and Capitalism are the pillars of Western Civilization. Take one away, and Western Civ collapses, as it has in front of our eyes. A small point in regards to reason and theism: Einstein, the early Hawking (not the today’s senile one) and Godel are impecable sources for that link.
Islam is a bad copy of the Old and New Testament, a fake religion a violent cult, a brutal socio-economic movement put together by an irrational psychotic murderer paedophile thief pseudo-prophet and nothing more nothing less.
Atheism has been the ideology of tyrants from Lenin and the other soviet communist leaders, to Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot and the rest. Now, before you jump to conclusions, I would like to clarify that I don’t blame all followers and fellowtravelers of atheism (people like yourself) to be necassarily evil communists or nazis. Most likely they aren’t; but this doesn’t take away from the monkey on their back, atheism.
I could delve more on all these issues, but I won’t. Hopefully you get the main gist of my key points.
In spite of Obama’s lack of ‘leadership’ on this particular issue; and frankly ANY issue that ties terrorist acts to Muslims–most Americans are wise enough to know who is doing these things and who are our enemies are. I supported both Gulf Wars and have lived/worked in the Middle East region for a period of 5 years or so; and many Muslims are very nice people and mind their business. Unfortunately; it is the ones who commit violence in the name of ‘jihad’ that dominate the news and kill people. When you enter their countries you take your life in your hands honestly. When these things happen in our own country, as in Ft. Hood or on 9/11–WE must take appropriate action. If Obama and his RACIST Attorney General will NOT prosecute these people or even call them what they are; MUSLIM TERRORISTS–then WE the people must do what is necessary to protect ourselves, our families and our property. Yes, God is indeed great; but OUR God does not tell us to kill people for ANY reason and then reward us with virgins in heaven. But, I am sure most of us will be happen to send any of these jihadist butchers to see God in a hurry should we encounter them. I think Dirty Harry said it best: “go ahead, make my day.” Indeed.
First, I was raised in a Catholic household, and attended a parochial school for eight years. I was a confirmed atheist by the age of 15, never having heard of Marx or Darwin. My disbelief in a deity was founded on two impregnable premises: the metaphysical impossibility of one, and the moral objection to an unseen power having power over my existence. The first aspect was based on my growing knowledge of history and of the universe and existence, and the absurdity that one omniscient, omnipotent deity was responsible for it all. The second was based on the contradictory nature of God: his was both omnipotent and omniscient, attributes he shares with Islam’s Allah.
If he was omniscient, or all-knowing of everything that was, is and is to be, then he cannot be omnipotent, able to change what was, is and is to be. He would have had to know that he was going to be whimsical in the future, and cause earthquakes and plagues and know what countless billions of individuals would and would not do; but that all-knowingness lets the wind out of his being able to change anything at whim. He already knew that he was going to indulge a whim. So, where’s the omnipotence?
Further on the moral objection: the role of predestination clashes with the Christian notion of free will. If one is “programmed” by God to be good, evil, or just mediocre, what role does “free will” play in the Christian scheme of things? This is double-talk, the Christian version of taqiyya.
And when one points this out to especially Christians, they invariably reply that reason cannot be applied to God’s existence or actions. Reason, they say, is the handmaiden of faith, and must defer to belief. That pitiful fall-back Christians share with Muslims. I had worked this out by the age of 15 (sans Muslims, who weren’t making headlines in the late 1950’s).
Contretemps: Atheism is an outcome of reason, of enquiry into the nature of existence. That most atheists historically have not conceived of a morality to replace altruism and self-sacrifice of Christianity, Islam, and other creeds is no reason to assert that atheism is a product of totalitarian ideologies. Most atheists I know just haven’t finished that journey. They are usually welfare-statists and collectivists. Atheism predates Darwinism and Marxism; Darwinism is a legitimate “spin-off” of enquiries into the nature of existence; Marxism substitutes God with a Hegelian notion of the masses and predestination and some mystical inevitability of the triumph of communism.
Capitalism is a consequence of reason applied to the nature of man and his political relationship with other men, that he must be free to act for his own gain and happiness. It is indeed a pillar of civilization. Again, it has not been morally validated, except by philosopher Ayn Rand.
You say that “Atheism has been the ideology of tyrants from Lenin and the other Soviet communist leaders, to Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot and the rest.” This is not strictly true. These tyrants merely replaced God with a deity of their own: society, the people, the race, and committed mass murder and made war in the name of the people, the race, and society. That they did not believe in the existence of the Judeo-Christian God is irrelevant. They established their own religions, more “materialistic” than the prevalent ones. That the dictators you cite have given atheism a “bad name” is hardly a valid reason for denigrating atheists in general. One could no more rationally cast a pall of evil over science, medicine, and technology because these evil men all used those realms of human enquiry and action to commit their crimes.
You rush to assure me “that I don’t blame all followers and fellow travelers of atheism (people like you) to be necessarily evil communists or Nazis. Most likely they aren’t; but this doesn’t take away from the monkey on their back, atheism.” Atheism has never been a monkey on my back, but rather an integral factor in my intellectual and moral growth. It liberated me from dogma and blind belief, which I disliked and had suspicions of even in my pre-atheistic childhood. It helped to require me to demand evidence and proofs behind anyone’s assertions.
On a final note, I have always found the gods of Classical Greece and Ancient Rome at least far more credible – their forms and actions were invariably based on man’s, not on some invisible, unknowable deity, and if not more edifying, then at least more entertaining.
I assume that your response to “Mike” is in effect a misplaced response to my reply? If so, let me make just a few additional points, with your indulgence.
Godel (the great logician of the two “incompleteness” theorems in logic) in his last and unpublished theorem on “a God-like structure” provides the most eloquent, convincing and rigorous proof to date for the necessity to invoke God in reason. Otherwise, fundamental notions in logic are reduced to contradictory statements. Such contradictions are ubiquitous in darwinism and marxism, and if you wish I could point out a few.
Indeed “free will” and “purpose” are essential components of Life. Atheistic science asserts statements such as “the Universe was created by random fluctuations preceeding the Big Bang, it has no purpose, there is no free will, and ‘unkown’ factors and ‘random’ events were behind the creation of Life.” Well, all these are of course arbitrary, capricious and unprovable statements, let alone undefinable and unobservable: for example, science can’t define ‘randomness’ or ‘unknow’ as it can’t deal (empirically or theoretically) with questions such as “what was before these ‘random fluctuations’ and the Big Bang, and why or how did they take place”?
To reject God because you want ‘empirical evidence’ and ‘reason’ and then turn around and accept ‘scientific statements’ based precisely on lack of evidence and reason seems to me quite preposterous.
As for islam, I already elaborated on it; please, don’t refer to it as a ‘religion’ it isn’t; and ‘allah’ is a bad imitation/copy of the Judeo-Christian God, a phony notion actually. If you read the stupid way the koran copied the book of Genesis (where it is stated that ‘allah created the universe from nothing’) you will understand that islam is a failed attempt to create a ‘religion sounding document’ to gain credibility.
I Can’t Understand Why Americans Are So Afraid To Stand Up For Themselves? We Need To Put An End To This Nonsense Instead Of Waiting Until After Something Happens! We Need To Take The Offensive Over Rather Than Just Being On The Defensive! The Sooner The Better For Us All Here In The United States. Maybe If We Do They Will Have Second Thoughts Concerning The Peoples, Who Aren’t Muslims, Overseas. They Need To Know How It Feels When The Shoe Is On The Other Foot So To Speak!