Losing faith in atheism
by Mario Laghos, The Critic:
Those of us who had too much spare time on our hands in 2007 will remember The Amazing Atheist, Pat Condell and Thunderf00t. For those who have a life, an explainer: the trio were bashers of religion online — the foremost among a collection of drop-outs, academics, and retirees who came to make a living producing videos “owning” religious advocates and their beliefs.
This was a genre popularised by Christopher Hitchens who would tour US TV studios doling out “Hitchslaps”, and it was in his image that these online imitators were born. They believed that by discarding tired vestiges of religious tradition — prayer in school, In God We Trust on the dollar bill and so on — we would herald an enlightened age.
It all seems so absurd now, like an expression of dramatic irony to foreshadow the madness that would descend in the 2010s and thereafter. But like millions of others, I was one of those who tuned in and believed.
[…] Where is the enlightened world that was promised? Non-belief in God has enabled corrosive cynicism and unmoored idealists. Absent a moral framework, many of these atheists are malfunctioning – and devoid of that great Satan of religion to attack they tilt at every windmill. Although God is dead, the sacraments are not – they live on as perverted taxidermies. We still kneel, but rather than for Jesus Christ, it’s for #BLM. In a crisis we pray — yet not to the Almighty but into the void. And while you can burn a Bible in public, the police will come knocking if you torch an LGBT flag. The seven deadly sins are now the ultimate virtues, from gluttonous free spirits to lustful Tinder swipers. Valuable aspects of religion have been stripped out – the community spirit, the shared ideals, and the belief in something beyond the self – leaving behind a skeletal carcass on which progressives feast.
Related Posts
Tags
Share This
