It looks like the atheists in the media just can’t stand it a moment longer. Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens just can’t stand to go unnoticed for very long. Every time the world hears about the good of Christianity or Catholicism, it has to hear from these men and their ilk.
Dawkins is upset because the Catholic Church has made it much easier for traditional Episcopalians to rejoin the Roman communion, welcoming married priests and bishops. He believes this is just more proof that “the Church is one of the biggest forces for evil on the planet.” He sounds worried to me.
From my lofty perch as Little Miss Know-It-All, I can say that it sounds to me like these guys are running scared. They are getting OLD. Getting old means that one must eventually pass on to one’s reward (or punishment). For an old atheist, this little gate swings both ways. Either he is right, and nothing will happen, just as he predicted/hoped. He will close his eyes one last time and that will be the end: Instant Soylent Green. Or, he is wrong, in which case, he is going to have to have his life scrutinized by Someone he hates, and even though he will be allowed to witness the scrutiny, no excuse will change his fate. This could go quite badly for such a person, in terms of eternal existence.
Perhaps these old atheists are beginning to wonder just what it is that has made millions of people down through the ages gladly embrace torture and death for the sake of their belief in the Reward — The Reward that was promised them by the same God these guys have hated since they were children. The God who will be the scrutinizer of their souls.
Methinks, to paraphrase the Immortal Bard, these gentlemen protest too much. Whistling past the graveyard, as my mother used to call it.
Here’s an old post I wrote several years ago related to the topic, as well as a link above to another old post similarly related.
BRIGHT AND GAY, REVISITED
October 1, 2003
The atheists of the world are in need of a new name, they say.
Daniel Dennett, one of the leading lights of this group of believers in the negative says just that: The term “atheist” is too negative, and should be replaced by something more positive–something along the lines of term “gay,” the word which has been co-opted by the homosexuals in the West to describe their destructive, negative, and unattractive lifestyle. The term Dennett thinks will describe his fellow unbelievers and himself is “bright.” “Bright,” he presumably hopes, as in “intelligent.” That’s a good idea. But is it really descriptive of people who not only refuse to believe in a Creator, but refuse to look at any evidence that might lead to belief in such a Creator? Who believe humans can actually cause global warming, but refuse to believe in God?
“Those of us who subscribe to no religion; those of us who rejoice in the real and scorn the false comfort of the unreal, we need a word of our own, a word like ‘gay’,” says Richard Dawkins, another “bright” light of atheism.
Atheists, by their own choice, are believers in a negative. Atheism could even qualify as a religion if the guidelines were strictly applied. Dennett is a professor of philosophy at Tufts University. Dawkins is a scientist and a Don at Oxford. They are both condescending and scornful of anything that smacks of religious faith. Both are fervent “evangelists” for their beliefs, but, of course, they believe in nothing beyond what they see. Whatever pleasure they might take in their stance is derived from mockery and smug self-satisfaction.
When I was growing up, the word “gay” meant “happy,” “joyful,” and so on. So far, I haven’t been able to apply it to the homosexual lifestyle with any real conviction since the poofters stole it from the normal vocabulary of English. To me, those of the “gay” persuasion will always be lost, pathetic, self-destructive, and insecure. Just applying a happy word to such negative behavior isn’t necessarily going to produce that quality in the people who try so desperately to make it describe their chosen lifestyle.
The atheists I’ve known always struck me as a joyless and ill-humored bunch. Life can’t hold much happiness for people who refuse to accept the possiblity that life might have been a gift from a Giver of infinite Love, at best, or a simple outcome from a process put into place by a Prime Mover, at worst. They have to be cranky and out of sorts all the time, as if they are required to be irked and disappointed by the fact that they can’t bring themselves to acknowledge a cheerful “Bless you!” when they sneeze without a sour expression and a grumpy, “No, thanks!”
Perhaps the joyless aspect of their demeanor is what has prompted this need to be thought of in happier terms. They get old and wrinkly and realize they don’t want to die without ever having experienced real joy. They know that whatever they mistook for that condition was nothing but a sham, and they feel their sad lives slipping away without having known what it feels like to experience real inner peace. Whatever it is, I don’t think the term “bright” is going to stick to these grouches. They need a shot of real joy.
I’m going to claim the term “bright” for myself. “Bright” means “clever, intelligent, cheerful” just for starters, and I’ve always been a bright person. But, I can’t see it applying to soreheads like Dawkins and Dennett, so I don’t think I’ll let them drag it down into the same muck that the queers have used to sully the word “gay.” Gay and bright people are uniquely joyful, and a real pleasure to be around. Co-opting the terms doesn’t make them any less bright and gay, any more than applying the terms to people of negative and self-destructive mien works any changes on people so named.
They could easily be bright and gay if they would simply acknowledge what the rest of us have taken for granted since mankind first looked at the stars and had the intellect to wonder how they got up there: That life is a joy, in spite of tears and sorrow and the rest of the travails that make real joy and peace such a precious condition, and believing in a loving God who created us out of love, and whom we can thank for all that beauty makes sense.
I, and people like me who believe in something more, will at least have covered all our bases. But atheists of whatever sexual persuasion are going to be singularly unprepared for any judgment that might come to them upon their deaths. If I am wrong about what I believe, there will simply be “nothing,” of course. If there’s nothing there, nothing will happen. But if Dennett and Dawkins are wrong…
As far as I’m concerned, life will be “gay” in spite of the chosen manner of intercourse of homosexual men, and it will be “bright” with hope and joy in spite of the attempt by a few crabby atheists to co-opt the word to themselves.
I noticed something in my long years of people-watching. That something is this: People who choose a lifestyle or belief system that attempts to negate the established norm of historical morals are self-absorbed, and they take themselves far too seriously. They need to brighten up and get really gay about life.
