I really liked this post over at Nicest Girl and Destroyer of Planets. Why - WHY?! - do religious people go on the attack when it comes to atheists? What does it say about their faiths that they depend on atheism NOT working, NOT resolving problems, NOT encouraging moral behavior (I mean that in the general sense of treating people decently, not in the Moral Majority sense)? It doesn't say much for Christianity, I'll tell you that. Just because atheism doesn't work for some folks doesn't mean it doesn't work for anybody. Anyway, go visit Girl and read her great response to the jerk who used Virginia Tech as an excuse to get all huffy at atheists.
UPDATE: I just saw this from a faculty member at VT:
"There is also an infusion of religious groups from all over. While
most are here unobtrusively and are truly trying to help, I feel like
we are now a site for (some) groups to witness and convert. I wanted
to just be silent, but there was preaching
there so I didn't stay long. Others have been far worse; one
evangelist set up loudspeakers on the drillfield and preached--about
repenting of our sins etc.! People asked him to stop, disconnected
the speakers, etc., and he refused. It is not a surprise that his PA
system was eventually damaged, police came, and it was turned
off. And now we hear Fred Phelps is planning to come. This is
incomprehensible to me."
And to me, as well.
Friday, April 20, 2007
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6 comments:
It's still only been a few days since the massacre happened.
Let's let some more time pass before we complain about how everyone's persecuting us.
KWIM?
Not really. I don't feel that anyone's persecuting me. But I do feel that there are some Christians who are using this tragedy to further their own goals, as the update I just posted also suggests.
Perhaps I should add that I'm not an atheist by any means. But I don't think it's cool for "Christians" to use a tragedy to attack a group of people, which is what's going on in both the instances that Nicest Girl and I mention.
Ah, plains, yes, you know how I feel about atempts at religious conversions during times of grief. What a joke!
I didn't mean "we" as in you and me personally, I just used it as a general term, meaning people in general.
It just seems tacky to me that only a few days after the slaughter of 30+ innocent people, we must be paying attention to atheists talking about how *they* are being persecuted.
Seems kind of minor in the face of everything else.
I understand what you're saying, but you're missing the point. It's about people using this tragedy to spread their own political message by attacking others. That is what's tacky.
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