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What The Atheists Are Saying, Pt. 3 (Pt. 1 and Pt. 2 no longer exist unfortunately)
Atheism And Mental Illness
Readymade Thought #3

This month’s atheist fare is anemic—not much out there worth reading.

How To Appeal To The Kids
Christian Flag in Rankin County Courthouse: Time For Action
Hillary Clinton Promotes Assassination
Is Free Will An Illusion We’re Incapable of Disbelieving
Baby Jeebus (Jesus) Weeps Over Starbucks Mermaid Slut
23% of Canadians Are Atheists
Atheist Liberation

• Copying the feminist and homosexual playbook

Ditching The Crazies

• Politicians distance themselves from religious leaders

Judge Lifts Injunction Against Expelled

I found this video on YouTube and thought it was a great example of mental illness. It is also a great example of the level of anger and bitterness prevalent in many atheists.

WARNING: Language is beyond foul. My fellow Christians will be offended.

The Bible is not a book of man-made myths as the intellectual, secular progessives think. It is not a book of man-made rules for ethical and moral living, stifling the our free will. The Bible is God’s authoritative message on right and wrong, of light and darkness, of what is good and what is evil. It is full of absolutes, because God is absolute. The Bible is a blueprint and guide for humanity. It is “God-breathed.” (2 Timothy 3:16)

Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

2 Peter 1:20-21 (NIV)

This week, I had two different bloggers from two different blogs mention my beard on the same day. Yes, my avatar has a beard—me about 10 months ago. The beard is long gone.

Here is what the Teen Athiest had to say:

peak9, I like myself way too much to “take things so personally.” Wouldn’t you be annoyed if you heard the same shit every day, no matter what it was? “Trim your beard,” “Wear something nicer,” et cetera. If I honestly believed I knew everything and couldn’t stand dealing with the ageism, I wouldn’t call myself the Teenage Atheist. I did choose that moniker for this blog, however, because I am admitting that I don’t know everything, and I welcome advice from my readers on how to deal with problems and go about things.

So, don’t generalize. Just because you were a know-it-all dipshit when you were my age doesn’t mean we all were. That’s ageism in and of itself.

My response:

Awesome. There’s no more beard either.

Here is what Brandon said at The Original Mudpuppy:

Just because I don’t have a fun blog name like “Politics & Culture” and I don’t look like the 4th member of ZZ Top doesn’t mean I’m not funny.

My response to Brandon:

Actually, I don’t have a beard anymore. I can’t believe two different bloggers on two different blogs commented today on my summer beard. The other blogger called me a dips%#t. At least you only associated me with a band of fellow Texans.

What are some other associations that can be applied to my former beard? A coworker once mentioned “rapist.” Another said I was “bummin’.” My own wife threw out “child molester.” We have “4th member of ZZ Top” and the ranting of a petulant imp. Let me know.

Much has been said and written about The Golden Compass and the man behind the story, Philip Pullman. Check out the discussion going on concerning my post “Narnia Tears Apart The Golden Compass”. I gathered up some quotes from Pullman that I came across in my attempt to give him some benefit of the doubt. Unfortunately, it is clear just how dangerous his mind really is. Surely, some readers will accuse me of being selective. Not all of Pullman’s words are relevant to this topic, so yes, I am being selective.

It is my belief that the Golden Compass is not a harmless fantasy, but an attempt to “benignly” infiltrate the minds of the incognizant, not through viewing the movie, but through further investigation into Pullman’s written work. However, there is one argument that Pullman makes that I have to agree with. The Golden Compass or the book it is based on, The Northern Lights, are not anti-religious or anti-moral.

As always, not everyone will be negatively affected by Pullman’s books and the subsequent movies. Most will enjoy the stories as a entertaining fantasies, but if just one soul is tarnished because of the anti-God and anti-Christianity message in Pullman’s work, he has succeeded. For a man who hates the fiction of C.S. Lewis so much, it is odd that he copies him in such a blatant fashion.

These quotes where taken from Peter Hitchens’ 2002 article “This Is The Most Dangerous Author In Britain.” I am just relaying some of Pullman’s thoughts as reported by Mr. Hitchens.

I hate the Narnia books, and I hate them with deep and bitter passion, with their view of childhood as a golden age from which sexuality and adulthood are a falling-away.

All stories teach, whether the storyteller intends them to or not. They teach the world we create. They teach the morality we live by. They teach it much more effectively than moral precepts and instructions… We don’t need lists of rights and wrongs, tables of do’s and don’ts: we need books, time and silence. ‘Thou shalt not’ is soon forgotten.

We’re used to the Kingdom of Heaven; but you can tell from the general thrust of the book that I’m of the devil’s party, like Milton. And I think it’s time we thought about a republic of Heaven instead of the Kingdom of Heaven. The King is dead. That’s to say I believe the King is dead. I’m an atheist. But we need Heaven nonetheless, we need all the things that Heaven meant, we need joy, we need a sense of meaning and purpose in our lives, we need a connection with the universe, we need all the things the Kingdom of Heaven used to promise us but failed to deliver.

The following quote comes from Sarah Lyall’s New York Times piece “The Man Who Dared Make Religion the Villain; In British Author’s Trilogy, Great Adventures Aren’t Pegged to the Great Beyond.”

When you look at what C. S. Lewis is saying, his message is so anti-life, so cruel, so unjust. The view that the Narnia books have for the material world is one of almost undisguised contempt. At one point, the old professor says, ‘It’s all in Plato’ — meaning that the physical world we see around us is the crude, shabby, imperfect, second-rate copy of something much better.

The following quote comes from Claudia FitzHerbert’s interview of Pullman for the Literary Review

The problem for those who think there’s an anti-religious anti-moral bias in the books comes when they haven’t actually read the books: of course there’s a criticism of organised theocratic tyrannical religion but who can disagree with that?

A review in the Church Times said, ‘When the morality is secure the metaphysics don’t matter.’ The qualities which my books criticise are intolerance, fanaticism, cruelty, and the qualities they celebrate are love, kindness, openness, curiosity. I think the moral majority in America is not a majority at all and that the power of the organised Christian Right is a phantom.

Theocracies don’t have to be religious. Soviet Russia was a theocracy. They had a holy book, which was Marx; they had prophets and doctors of the church (Lenin, Engels, Stalin, and so on); they had a priesthood that had privileges and powers above the ordinary, which was the Communist Party.

Here is a video of Pullman discussing his “agenda” in writing his books with Donna Freitas, author of Killing the Imposter God. The problem is that this agenda is common to all writers and is thus generic. He obviously is doing promotion for The Golden Compass and thus is obligated (required?) to be silent on the anti-God, anti-Christianity rhetoric.

Watching this video gives one the sense he is a harmless intellectual promoting “kindness…love…courage…and courtesy.” All good character traits for humanity regardless of personal beliefs. Then he has to drop the rhetoric bomb, attacking “coldheartedness…tyranny…and closed-mindedness”, all words used by secularists (modernists, evolutionists, progressives, et al.) to describe Christians and Christianity (the Church).

Here are quotes from a 2000 interview by Hugh Spanner for Third Way.

The values depicted in the Narnia stories are certainly not the values I read in the Gospels. Hatred of the flesh? Condemning children for growing up?

The Christian story gives us human beings a very important and prominent part. We are the ones who Jesus came to redeem from the consequences of sin, which our parents – you know. It is a very dramatic story and we are right at the heart of it, and a great deal depends on what we decide. This is an exciting position to be in, but unfortunately it doesn’t gel at all with the more convincing account that is given by Darwinian evolution – and the scientific account is far more persuasive intellectually. Far more persuasive. And, as I have said, there is another consequence of any belief in a single god, and that is that it is a very good excuse for people to behave very badly.

Here is a quote by Bill Donohue, president and CEO of the Catholic League, in an article by Catherine Donaldson-Evans of FoxNews. Mr. Donohue shares my sentiments regarding the real danger the The Golden Compass puts forth.

They’re intentionally watering down the most offensive element. I’m not really concerned about the movie, [which] looks fairly innocuous. The movie is made for the books. … It’s a deceitful, stealth campaign. Pullman is hoping his books will fly off the shelves at Christmastime.

It is obvious that Philip Pullman is a talented writer because The Golden Compass was made. Make no mistake about it though, he desires to eliminate Christianity through the promotion of open-minded free thinking (i.e., intellectualism). Intellectualism looks benign, put it pushes the mind further away from God, eventually eradicating Him from all thought processes. For anyone who has spent any time in a university, you know where all the intellectuals are. They are conditioning new intellectuals.

I have to believe most readers of Pullman’s books, and viewers of The Golden Compass, will take the stories at face value without reading into them any deeper. However, some will read further and will be led astray, while others will be emboldened by them.

Related Posts:

Narnia Tears Apart The Golden Compass

Here is the opening weekend box office returns for The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe versus The Golden Compass.

• Narnia ($65,556,312 between 3616 screens)
• The Golden Compass ($26,125,000 between 3528 screens)

Atheism could only muster up 40% of C.S. Lewis’ Christian masterpiece.

Related Posts:

Philip Pullman Quotes