Notice something interesting about the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shootings? Atheists are nowhere to be found. Every time there is a public gathering there is talk of God and divine mercy and spiritual healing. Even secular people like the poet Nikki Giovanni use language that is heavily drenched with religious symbolism and meaning.
The atheist writer Richard Dawkins has observed that according to the findings of modern science, the universe has all the properties of a system that is utterly devoid of meaning. The main characteristic of the universe is pitiless indifference. Dawkins further argues that we human beings are simply agglomerations of molecules, assembled into functional units over millennia of natural selection, and as for the soul--well, that's an illusion!
To no one's surprise, Dawkins has not been invited to speak to the grieving Virginia Tech community. What this tells me is that if it's difficult to know where God is when bad things happen, it is even more difficult for atheism to deal with the problem of evil. The reason is that in a purely materialist universe, immaterial things like good and evil and souls simply do not exist. For scientific atheists like Dawkins, Cho's shooting of all those people can be understood in this way--molecules acting upon molecules.
If this is the best that modern science has to offer us, I think we need something more than modern science.
Reader Comments ( Page 5 of 26)
61. Mr. D'Souza is to be thanked for asking us to question what could have caused to man to appoint himself God and murder 32 innocent people.
As anyone who has read the 2 plays submitted to AOL written by the tortured soul of the murderer knows; these plays are a searing indictment of American popular culture. Themes of disrepect, hatred, pedophilia, murder, gambling, greed, and the ever present fat old evil white male authority figures were very much in evidence in these plays. Not coincidently, these very same things are constantly emphasized in our own popular culture. Why is that?
I've read interviews about what kind of person this murderer was. Extremely shy, intellegent, trying to connect with people but hardly able to communicate. This sounds very much like your typical descriptions of people with Asperger's Syndrome. A syndrome that has become epidemic in our society. What did this man do in his isolation? How did he try and end his isolation? He majored in English to try and communicate with us. He immersed himself in our culture to learn about us, so that he could connect with us. What did he learn about us? He learned that
rich capitalist kids are evil charlatans. He learned that old white men are fat, thieving, evil pedophiles who murder their victims. He learned that the young are victims whenever they don't get what they want and whenever they can't do what they want and should resist through murder and disrespect. These are they things he learned when he immersed himself in our culture.
The writers of the US Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution made clear that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with inalienable rights.
Were these 'Founding Fathers' all hopelessly ignorant and archaic believers in a supreme moral authority? Victims of their time?
Certainly not all of them if you are to believe modern historic scholars who have read the words in Thomas Jefferson's personal diary and declared he was an atheist. These historic scholars also know that Thomas Jefferson wrote much, if not most, of the Declaration of Independence and US Constitution. This begs the question, why would an atheist claim we were endowed with inalienable rights and created equal by a supreme creator?
In their wisdom, Jefferson and his peers realized, that if all men are created equal, no man then has the right to impose his moral authority on any other man. Therefore they decreed these rights were endowed upon mankind by their creator. It is quite clear Thomas Jefferson and the others helping to found our nation recognized that absent an external moral authority, one whose morals and impartiality could not be questioned, that a civil society of equal men would deteriorate into anarchy where violence was the norm as each citizen questioned the motives and moral authority of each citizen they encountered.
But why would Thomas Jefferson betray his atheism? Was he just your typical hypocrit? Or did he sacrifice his own beliefs for the common good? Perhaps he was wise enough to realize that most people were instinctively religious. Perhaps he recognized that the social cooperation needed to foster scientific inquiry,literature, entertainment, the building of towns, homes, and roads, indeed all of civilization itself needed a powerful external moral force to inspire people to behave in such an extremely unselfish way in order to accomplish these things for the benefit of all of them. So then, he was an atheist, but he had the intelligence to hold his tongue in order to benefit from the ignorant industrious devotion of Christians to their duty.
Why didn't Thomas Jefferson fear Christians and Christianity? After all, he was not an ignorant man. He knew of the Crusades and of the Inquisition. He knew of the occasional pervented man twisting the tenents of Christian belief for his own benefit. He knew these to be exceptions to the norm. He also knew, European civilization before the advent of Christianity was a primitive and barbaric place of uncooperative wandering tribes lost in a circular and never ending struggle of attack and counter attack. Tribes spent the whole of their existence wandering in fear.
He also understood that it was the social cooperation required by Christianity that enabled Europe and now the America they were founding to become centers of learning, technology, and comfort. Indeed, modern Chinese scholars studying how in the world the modern people they observe today in American and Europe became so techically advanced and rich concluded it was because of the social cooperation that is the mandate of Christianity and not because we are exceptionally clever or exceptionally tolerant.
So it seems, our 'world famous' tolerance is mandated by Christianity, as anyone observing the intolerance of atheists and agnostics in today's America can attest.
How was it that America become a land were every child was taught to read and write? Christians insisted that the children be taught so that these children could study the Bible themselves. They insisted on children's understanding of the meaning of moral authority.
How was slavery ended? Christians pointed to the moral authority of God as the unassailable arbiter of this dispute.
How did women win the right to vote? Christians again pointed to the moral authority of God as the unassailable arbiter in this dispute.
How did the Civil Rights movement of African-Americans do so much to promote their own equality? Again, Christians pointed to the moral authority of God as the unassailable arbiter of this dispute. Martin Luther King knew a Christian nation must submit to the will of God.
Christians submitting to the will of their God for the common good is what made America the object of dreams for the world's oppressed for generations.
How did a Christian nation such as Germany come to commit genocide in World War II? A leader came to power who abandoned Christianity for Norse Gods.
How did Russia, a Christian nation, come to commit genocide against millions of it's own citizens? Communists who made atheism a required belief.
China, communist China? Anyone dare to deny the facts of the millions who have been killed in the name of atheism there?
Atheism is a belief that can never be proven. Any atheist who has studied logic knows you cannot prove non-existance.
Darwinism does not prove the non-existance of God. It can explain why a belief in God keeps showing up in successful cultures. If evolution selects on traits that enable a better survival of organisms in nature then it was evolution that selected the trait that causes man to believe in a supreme moral authority. It selected on this trait to enable social beings to cooperate for their own survival. Nothing else selected for enabled them to survive in sufficient numbers, as they were not cooperative enough. Indeed, besides overwhelming anecdotal evidence that this is the case, scientists are today gathering empirical evidence that this is the case. You cannot 'educate' people into believing atheism is logical, it runs contrary to the traits darwinism selected
in people to survive. People 'educated' to believe in atheism will only instinctively create new Gods as they pass conspiracies theories among one another. One such example of their theories is the existance of the evil 'Illuminatis' and President Bush's membership in this group. Irony of ironies, when in 1000 years, their discendants, assuming there are any, talk of a vengeful God named George Bush.
Atheists, in attempting to destroy a belief in God, only succeed in destroying the social cooperation that enable the existence of atheists to come about in the first place. Therefore, atheists are a dead end on their own terms, those of evolution (darwinism). They will cease to exist.
John Grogan at 8:21PM on Apr 18th 2007
62. Wow, are you a retard.
Michael at 8:22PM on Apr 18th 2007
63. Now is the time for the Virginia Tech students to grieve their losses. Those with spiritual or religious beliefs will find solace in their church, those who hold other notions can be helped by counselors.
However, once the grieving is over and the flowers and teddy bears are picked up, and the crying subsides, we should begin to ask ouselves honest questions about how it seems our health care system so horribly and tragically failed not only this lunatic, but also the poor people of the community.
This man was confined for a time in a mental hospital, but the reason this man was not kept in an institition is that back in the 70's and 80's, well meaning people honestly thought that, given the real probelms we had then with corruption and patient maltreatment in existing and atiquanited institutions, and with the development of modern antidepressant and other psychoactive drugs, it would be better to liberate these patients from the rigors of institutional life, put them on the newly developed medications, and mainstream them into society. This led to massive deinstitutionalization, and the subsequent closing of many, many state mental institutions.
Now after all these years, with more than a few cases like this having played out violently (Unibomber, Timothy McVay, the Columbine murderers, and now this guy), it seem time we reconsider the effectiveness of de-institutionalization.
Ken Berg at 8:27PM on Apr 18th 2007
64. I'm not a religious person and I don't believe in an afterlife. Ironically, while I also won't stake a claim to being a Christian in the defined and institutional sense of the word, I am content to support the notion that the examples offered by a man (fictional or factual are irrelevant to me) named Jesus can guide us to change. His is the story of a social critic who dissected the fallacies and hypocrisies that permeate the human experience. He did so at great personal risk because I believe "he" saw it as I choose to see it...if one man can elect to pursue and follow "truth", then he is entitled to believe and expect that all men can do the same.
In doing so, when each individual makes this necessary choice, we will cease pursuing and negotiating for a better, future destiny...and we will finally live heaven on earth. Our destiny is of our own making. I refuse to allow religion, or those who believe it is theirs to define, to remove that destiny from my earthly grasp. In the end, we can choose to be good people that honor humanity without submitting to any religious institutions or doctrines. Attempts to argue that science needs religion to keep it humane are therefore absurd.
Read a full discussion on the question, "Does Science Need Religion To Have A Conscience?"...here:
http://www.thoughttheater.com/2006/05/does_science_need_religion_to.php
Daniel DiRito at 8:34PM on Apr 18th 2007
65. Groagan,
Jefferson was a Deist (believed in a god, but rejected the Bible) who did believe in a creator, he didn't betray anything.
And many atheists (I daresay most) can be classified as agnostic atheists. They don't claim to be able to prove a god's non-existence, they just claim that without proof there is no reason to believe.
Telemachus at 8:36PM on Apr 18th 2007
66. The irony of D'Souza's latest divisive sputum is that his politics (see "The Enemy At Home") are probably a lot more like Cho's than the secularists and atheists he is now trying to lead a crusade against. Just as Cho lamented the "debauchery" of his peers at Virginia Tech and found his fellow students deserving of murder, D'Souza thinks radical Islamic terrorists are justly inflamed by the debauchery of American pop culture, and that we ought to change our culture so as to not invite another 9/11. In D'Souza's fantasy world, if we just got rid of Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon and Michael Moore and Britney Spears, somewhere in Afghanistan a young jihadist would put down his AK-47.
As for the nonsense about Dawkins, D'Souza makes the same simpleminded assumption that most fearful theists make: If we deny the existence of a magic man in the sky, then the world will collapse into an orgy or murder, gay sex, and explicit lyrics!
Wake up, folks. We have morals and ethics because they've developed culturally over thousands of years after millions of years of evolution. They will still be with us tomorrow, even if we retire Jesus, Allah, and all the other magic men to the mythology retirement home, where they've belonged for many years now.
tinosoli at 8:46PM on Apr 18th 2007
67. There are no gods, just deal with it.
"Atheists: You Hate them because deep
down,you know they're right..."
David Johnson at 8:48PM on Apr 18th 2007
68. For your information my friend, there is proof, the tomb is empty.
musikangel at 8:50PM on Apr 18th 2007
69.
Hmmm. I think that actually helps that atheists. Who needs science when you've got logic like that?
Lynn at 9:05PM on Apr 18th 2007
70. I am an atheist student at Virginia Tech, and I am deeply insulted by your post. Where was I? I was at Norris, paying my respects to the fallen. Where was I? I was on the Drillfield, raising a candle and weeping with my fellow Hokies.
Where were you? Stanford? Then don't tell me that there were no atheists in the crowd. I was front and center at the memorial.
The bigger question is, where was your god?
If you want to know my thoughts, go to my blog, where I've posted about my whole experience.
http://gnosos.blogspot.com
http://gnosos.blogspot.com/2007/04/reflections-on-mourning-for-virginia.
Zeteo Eurisko at 9:12PM on Apr 18th 2007
71. Grogan,
Wow. Cut and paste much? Next time use the spellcheck, too.
You are obviously suckling at the teat of "thinkers" like D'Souza who have a fifth-grader's grasp of evolutionary theory and world history.
Nice try with the communism/atheism and Nazism/atheist parallel. By your logic, we ought to go after vegetarians because, you know, Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian. The problem with your Coulterish talking points is that communism under Stalin and Mao was extremely dogmatic. Nobody was killed by those tyrants "in the name of atheism." Dogma is the problem. And it just so happens that many religions are rigidly dogmatic. Dogma of all stripes is dangerous. Right now, in 2007, religious dogma is the type that is most prevalent, most virulent, and most dangerous. From the 9/11 hijackers to the abortion clinic bombers to the messianic politics of Bush, the danger of people who believe in things for which there is no evidence is, well, evident.
The "intolerance" of atheists toward people like you is simply intolerance of bad ideas.
tinosoli at 9:14PM on Apr 18th 2007
72. well for one everything hapins for a reason yes,But GOD would not have had that happin. and let me tell you that alot of this world needs to pay close attention to people like that instaed of thinking he or she is just a loner. I am a student at clover park tech in washington state, and I see alot of people leaving the people that dont talk much out. why is that? I'm not saying what he did was ok eather what I'm saying is all it takes is one person out of alot of people to notice is acts and beahaver. to reach out and help or include some one in. I got this karia kid in my class no one talks to him, I am the only one that helps and talks to him. what I have learned is the only way I can see if that person has problems is to be his or her friend. GOD cant control how any one feels or think. a person has to want to have GOD in there life. and for some reason he did not want god in his life . what I'm thinking is that he wasint shown GOD's way's. WELL I GOT TO SAY AFFTER THAT IS I CANT STAND LOOKING AT IS FACE ANY MORE HE IS THE DEVAL AND IM SHURE HE NEW BETTER. HE JUST WAS SICK AND TIRED OF HIS LIFE AND LIFE AROUND HIM. I WISH THAT SOME ONE WAS PACKING A GUN AND WAS ABLE TO SHOOT HIS PUNK ASS!
kirtusmiller at 9:23PM on Apr 18th 2007
73. Wow that was brilliant! Because a horrible tragedy happened and our media is saturated with ever minute detail this is somehow supposed to relate by statements on belief for or not for god? You my friend win the Darwin award.
"So tell me what Cho was like? You were in one of his classes."
"Well, he was creepy. But first of all, I just want to say I have been thinking about the whole god thing....and well I believe...wait...I meant I don't believe!"
chris at 9:24PM on Apr 18th 2007
74. Way to use a horrific tragedy to further your own agenda, Mr. d'Souza. I hope you're proud of yourself.
Disgusting.
- B at 9:25PM on Apr 18th 2007
75. D'Souza has really crossed the line with this posting. No further comment.
Carl at 9:32PM on Apr 18th 2007