Monday, April 16, 2007

An interesting article on Atheism

I was leafing through the complimentary USA Today this afternoon in my hotel room just outside of Disney World, when I came across an article entitled Atheism isn't the final word, by Don Feder. It was an excellent article. I am quoting some of it here. Hopefully it can be found on the USA Today website under April 16.

Early in the article he listed several new books with eye catching titles such as Atheist Manifesto: The Case against Christianity, Judaism, and Islam and The God Delusion. However, what caught my eye after the title was the statement that the author welcomes the phenomenon of the influx of these books on atheism. He goes on to say, "Let the godless write their books and the faithful answer them."

He goes on to talk about how Christianity has outlasted the Soviet Union's attempts to destroy faith in any kind of God and China has a thriving house church movement in spite of their "war on God."

The real meat for me was in the following statement. "A universe that isn't God-centered becomes ego-centered. People come to see choices through the prism of self: what promotes the individuals well-being and happiness. Such a world view does not naturally lead to benevolence or self-sacrifice."

The buzz word for where we are in the 21st Century is post-Christianity. We are no longer the Christian nation we were meant to be. We've become so open we have let our Christianity drain right out of us and in it's place there are either religions foreign to many of us or atheism. We look at our nation's children and wonder what has happened to make them so angry and lost. Today another school shooting has terrorized and destroyed lives. We live in a lost society.

I am amazed at how angry and almost violent a person will get when traffic is not moving fast enough to suit them. I am amazed at how people would rather destroy long term relationships because they aren't getting their own way than make compromises to keep those friendships intact. I am saddened when I find myself falling into those thought patterns of what about me or what do I get out of this? I find myself at a loss as to how to deal with our young people who use their Ipods and mp3 players to mindlessly allow sexual lyrics, angry tirades and anti religion pour into their minds as they block out the rest of the world.

I am not one who thinks we should be out pushing for school prayer or forcing religion down other people's throats. I am one who believes that our world was much better off when we had the ten commandments in all of our community buildings and judges who believed they were good rules to live by.

As Christians many of us have sat idly by and let the atheists in our world spill their lies and half truths onto the pages of books that are on the New York Times best seller list. It is time. Time to get up out of our apathy and do something about restoring truth to our society.

Let the godless write their books--Are we the faithful going to answer them?

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