Dawkins: 'I'm an agnostic, not an atheist."
Dawkins made this statement in a debate with the Archbishop of Canturbury, who- nearly as surprisingly- turns out to be neither.
You know things are tough when you can't even get atheists to be consistent in their theology. BTW, I recently came a cross a wonderful quotation from Reformed theologian R.C. Sproul:
“I'm afraid that in the United States of America today the prevailing doctrine of justification is not justification by faith alone. It is not even justification by good works or by a combination of faith and works. The prevailing notion of justification in our culture today is justification by death. All one has to do to be received into the everlasting arms of God is to die.”
And I imagine there are still people in the LCMC and the ELCA who really don't see what that has to do with open communion.
HT: Drudge
Comments
As I think you well know. Not even a nice try.
Atheism inevitably leads to totalitarianism in every sense of the word. Where there is no accountability to God, whatever serves the needs of the State is lawful.
The Crusades were in fact defensive wars fought against a militant and expansionist Islam. But that point aside, I freely admit tht many terrible things have been done in the name of faith. The point here is that when you compare them to the monstrous things done by atheists, they are a drop in the ocean. Religion can be misused to inhumane and totalitarian ends; Atheism invites and finally assures inhumane and totalitarian means as well as ends.
As history shows so clearly.
"My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter... as a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice... as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people."
Adolf Hitler: The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, Vol. 1 of 2, pp. 19-20, Oxford University Press; 1942.
"I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator; by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord."
Adolf Hitler: Mein Kampf, Ralph Mannheim, ed., New York: Mariner Books, 1999, p. 65.
In Mein Kampf Hitler also describes how he began to change his mind about the Jews from the influence of the Christian Social Party.
What about the Spanish inquisition?
Dear Mr. Waters
I see you present your ideas with assertive confidence. Good for you. You seem so proud to be para-educated. Too bad you are not actually educated. Thus, you will be unable to see that your vociferous para-education is in all actuality, no education at all; leaving totally ignorant to valid knowledge as well as too brainwashed and arrogant to see how inculcated and ignorant you actually are.
Also, It was many years ago that Dr. Dawkins said he was an agnostic. Richard now defines himself as an atheist from a religious perspective.
That Hitler used an alleged affinity with Christianity- including his promotion of "positive Christianity" as a stalking horse for its negation- as a propagada tool early in his career before beginning his active persecution of the Christian Church is as much a historical given as his hostility to religion in all its forms- except possibly neo-paganism. Rather than rehearsing the multitude of quotes from Hitler mocking and condemning Christianity and proclaiming his intention to destoy it, I'll simply suggest that you do something you obviously haven't done yet: read some reputable historians on the subject. I suggest Conway's The Nazi Persecution of the Churches as a starting point in attempting to remedy your global ignorance on the matter.
Using ad hominems as a substitute for arguments is characteristic of extremist positions espoused by those who cannot defend them with facts and logic. Anyone who has done any actual reading on the matter, or has the vaguest acquaintence with the history of the Hitler era, would recognize your claim as being on a par with the notion that the Holocaust never happened or that 9/11 was an inside job. In fact, holocaust deniers very often cite the same quotes as you do in an effort to make the same bizarre point.
Yes, the Spanish Inquisition and other episodes of nominal Christians persecuting others did occur and cannot be denied. But as the post itself points out (you seem not to have read it very carefully), add all of them together and they are a drop in the bucket compared with the blood spilled by atheists like Mao and Stalin and Pol Pot.
Since Dr. Dawkins based his claim of being an agnostic on the fact that it is impossible for anyone to know for certain that there is not a God, I would lose considerable intellectual respect for him if your statement about his now defining himself as an atheist turns out to be true. However, as to my education, I'll gladly match my degrees against your.
Or more to the point, I'll match the facts as readily accessible to anyone with an open mind as Hitler's hostility to religion is against your naive acceptance of what history (and his actual policies)has deomonstrated to be his hypocritical lies and propaganda. The thing speaks for itself.
I don't think you're uneducated. I just think you're massively dishonest intellectually. And I think what you have to say about me is self-evidently an example of what Sigmund Freud called "projection."
Study some history, eh?
Oh. And one more comment: wouldn't Hitler's alleged Christianity come as a surprise to Bonhoeffer and Niemuller St. Maximillian Kolb and all the other Christians he sent to the concentration camps and the gas chambers and the gallows and the wall?
I wonder how many people he had murdered for being atheists.
You could count them on the fingers of one elbow.
“The heaviest blow which ever struck humanity was Christianity; Bolshevism is Christianity’s illegitimate child. Both are inventions of the Jew.”
- Norman Cameron and R.H. Stevens, trans., (Oxford, 1953), Hitler's Table-Talk, p. 7
The law of selection justifies this incessant struggle, by allowing the survival of the fittest. Christianity is a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature. Taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure.”
- Norman Cameron and R.H. Stevens, trans., (Oxford, 1953), Hitler's Table-Talk, p. 51
“The Ten Commandments have lost their validity. Conscience is a Jewish invention, it is a blemish like circumcision.”
- Rauschning, Hitler Speaks, p. 220
And BTW, there was never such thing as a "Christian Social Party." There were indeed Christian political parties, but they were as ideologically hostile to Hitler as possible, and it strains credulity to think they could have influenced him at all. The anti-Semitism of the day was pretty much the province of the far Right, not the Christian Center.
While not strictly a Hitler quote, this, too, is interesting:
We are the joyous Hitler youth,
We do not need any Christian virtue
Our leader is our savior
The Pope and Rabbi shall be gone
We want to be pagans once again.”
- Song sung by Hitler youth
And there are many, many more. I'd say, "Nice try, Bill." But it really wasn't. Like I said, read more history and drink less of the athiest Kool-Aid.
Hitler was an athiest. Or rather, he was his own god.