Freedom from religion? Or freedom from opposing ideas?

Hello my fair readers. I begin today's article by saying that I am unashamedly Christian and that I don't mind if that turns some readers away. Frankly it's my blog and I will occasionally post things that others find opposite to their ideoligcal or personal views. That being said I continue on with today's topic.

I often get into debates with agnostics or atheists regarding Christianity, why I do so is still somewhat of a mystery to me as it is rarely productive. True I make no secret of my religious beliefs, which has made me a target of anger and criticism in the past, but I should hopefully know better at this point than to engage in pointless debates with people who just sincerely don't want to hear my point of view on the matter. Which of course brings me to today's subject.

In a recent, more friendly chat I had with an atheist acquaintance he told me he supported both the seperation of church and state, and the campaign for a freedom from religion. This is a term I had heard of before, but wasn't quite sure of what it meant so I asked him to clarify. He explained the term meant that he supported the view that the discussion of religion and faith should be removed from the public sphere and regulated into the private one and into a person's household.

This of course shocked me to no end. I asked whether that he meant for atheism to disappear from the public forum as well, and to his credit he answered 'No I'd just rather all religious debate disappeared so we wouldn't have to hear about it anymore, but I'd still insist there's no God."

Now none of what he'd said there is bad at all, but the very idea of simply removing a point of topic from the public sphere is one that strikes me as totalitarian in nature.

I of course should clarify something here. I am a rabid opponent of racism, hate speech, revisionist history, and the greatest sin of all, Holocaust denial. Any of those items are hateful, usually carry violent undertones, and are meant only to provoke hostility in a crowd. These things are in my opinion not defended under free speech, just like inciting violence or panic isn't. None of these things are appropriate or acceptable in civil discourse, just as copious name calling or profanity is considered impolite and obscene to public debate.

The idea that religion can be used to incite similar hate speech or intolerance is not false, but that goes against the thousands of other religious or faith based initiatives to do exactly the opposite such as promoting peace, justice, care for the poor, and forgiveness in society. So to be clear, attempting to ban religious discourse in public based on that category falls flat.

Now to return to the matter at hand, the term 'freedom from religion' implies that a person who is not a believer would be able to go about their daily life and never have to encounter a religious message or slogan (presumably unless they pass a church or mosque ect). That implies I would hope that a religious person could go about their daily life and never have to encounter an atheist banner or slogan.

I somehow though doubt that is the sincere wish of the atheist who promotes the idea.

Consider this, an atheist does not regard himself as religious, nor would his own banner or slogan be considered religious under the law. So I must presume that 'freedom from religion' does not include 'freedom from atheism'.

Now I can understand some out there asking 'Yeah, so what?' well in rebuttal let me put it this way. If society is 'free from religion' but not free from atheism then a religious or faithful person will most likely have to endure slogans, banners, chants and other atheist items without complaint while being unable to mount a rebuttal in the public forum themselves. I regard this as totalitarian in nature. It merely silences an idea that an atheist finds disqueting, is this idea hateful, bigoted, aiming to incite violence, or provoke people? No, the simple belief in God does not do that. While it will of course sometimes spark heated debate it is not meant to be used as a message to spread hate, bigotry, and ignorance (anyone who claims otherwise is deluded or no true servant of the Lord and merely a self-centered bigot).

So for someone to claim they want 'freedom from religion' I hear echoes of 'I want to silence the opposing view point'. While this may not be forefront on the minds of many who adhere to this idea, I am quite certain that most of its ardent defenders clearly want a society where they are free to preach their own spiritually dead message, while using the power of the state to silence any view point which would contest them and regulate the worshippers to their homes and churches rendering any response they might have mute.

Not only is that abhorent and un-democratic, but it flies in the very face of what most atheists would believe. They believe they have reason and logic on their side, well silencing the other end of the debate is not reason or logic. It is naked brutality masked as concern for society. I don't agree with anyone who supports this idea and I would encourage others to chastise the holders of it. It is not an idea which people who live in a democratic society should hold to, nor is it one which anyone who believes in logic and reason should want to see undertaken.

I am sometimes criticized for my belief in 'censoring' holocaust denial, or hate speech. Well what does someone who wants 'freedom from religion' preach? Civil discourse? No. They preach no discourse at all and merely wish to dictate to us what we can and cannot hear. That is the exact opposite of what I stand for in society.

I like to believe that we live in a free and open society which doesn't allow for bigotry and hate speech to run rampant. If we close one door of civil public discourse, how many more can be closed to satisfy people?

I finish with this, 'freedom from religion' is no freedom at all, but merely totalitarian urges masked behind lofty idealism. If you don't agree with a view debate it, if you don't wish to participate in said debate ignore it. What one cannot do is silence any opposing view point in a debate! If one cannot speak their mind than how can civil disocourse in society exist at all?

Brought to you by Satan

Now before I post this article I suppose I should clear this up that I personally am a Christian who believes in the Lord Jesus Christ and that he died for my sins and along with the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost will lead me to eternal salvation.

In light of my beliefs I am usually surprised by both the virtrol and the stupidity of people when it comes to understanding my faith (or any other peoples belief for that matter) in regards to both theology, practices, and what constitutes the sacred. In my time I've dealt with those who are of  the militant atheist stripe in both real life and on the internet (I'm thankful to say that I remain friends with the atheists in my life despite some lively debates on the subject). I usually come across the regular anti-religious pomp and bigotry on the internet and I'm never really surprised by it. The ignorant who like to flout their 'knowledge' of the subject of Christianity really astound me, especially those who claim to have been Christians before turning to atheism. In my many conversations with them I rarely found them to have an even basic grasp of the Gospel or even the words of Jesus Himself! So I always have to question their so called 'knowledge'.

But recently on Facebook I found this little goody that made me laugh.

I'll give readers a moment to browse the flow chart. For those of you who have pondered the question before absorb it. For those of you who have seen this question multiple times and always had faith laugh with me now as I go on to explain the folly found within.

The flowchart (posted by a user with the name satan, hence our title) proclaims itself 'the quick and easy guide to God' and is anything but! Instead it asks some relatively simple questions after the statement of fact evil exists. I'll say to readers right now, yes evil does exist. Whether the corrupt politician lining his pockets with ill begotten money, the pimp abusing women as sex slaves, or the terrorist preparing to detonate himself to blow up a bus full of school children evil in the human heart surrounds us as a part of the human condition.

The chart then proceeds with a number of questions such as 'Can God prevent evil?" or 'Does God know about all the evil?" and with each 'no' answer one is directed to the conclusion that God is either not all powerful, knowing, or loving. Mind you of course that each time no is answered that is in direct contradiction to the Scripture, and since one must use the Scripture to get to know God and His divine nature it is fairly obvious that the no answers are really baits early on until we get to the final assertion 'Could God have created the universe without these?' in which case the logic goes that if he could we have two answers as to why He didn't create the universe without evil because a) free will or b) He wished to test us.

Now the chart responds that if a) Could God have created the universe with free will but without evil? Now here I have to step in because when we go from here the reasoning gets rather cloudy. Let me ask this, if all that is good and just stems from the Lord and he gave us the free will to chose otherwise what is logically all that is the opposite of what He loves? That would be what you call evil correct? Of course it would for "Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows." (James 1:17). That which is just is pleasing to the Lord. Everything else such as perversion, theft, and debauchery is a sin. So if God created the universe without evil then he would created it full of everything pure and holy and mankind would either not be in it, or unthinking robots who had no choice but to praise God and would rob Him of the very beings He created to inhabit his Garden. Now is seems even the chart recognizes this problem so it comes at us with choice b for what I suppose the creator figures is his coup-de-grace.

Choice b) is that God wished to test us and have faith in times of need to see who is worthy of salvation. Now the answer always to the idea of being tested is 'if God is all knowing He would know what we would do if we were tested and therefore would have no need to test us' this has two problems. One it commits the infinitely hilarious fallacy of saying that 'God must' or 'God would' as though the writing of the author and his opinions have any real reflection on how the creator of the universe is going to behave. The second problem is that it tries to undermine that God is all knowing by saying He would know how we would react when we are tested and therefore have no need to test us. Now those of you who understand why we have faith in Christianity should already be shaking your heads and saying how foolish this is, those who are scratching their heads and saying 'this makes perfect sense' allow me to disabuse you of that notion.

God is all knowing and 'the very hairs on your head are numbered'  as God knows all about all of us and all about each of our actions. When we sin it is plain to God what we have done, yet he forgives us in his infinite glory and wisdom. However, despite the fact that God is all knowing and all powerful He gives us the choice in how we are to react before Him or accept his forgiveness and He knows what to send against us and whether we can muster to the challenge or not. This we must do on faith. Take for example Job, whom God allowed to be tested beyond the reasonable limits of any man in order to prove that he was a good and faithful man. Satan took away his sons and daughters, his lands, his health and his dignity, but Job stood by his God knowing that even though he would suffer he would be rewarded in the next life. Again the choice lies in human hands as to whether they will accept His forgiveness just as the choice as to whether we would sin in the beggining lay in Adam and Eve's hands, despite knowing we had the option of choosing evil God allowed us to go ahead and do as we willed. Like Job he tests us to show us that no matter what is sent against us He will be there in the end and that we should accept Him regardless of what comes. As to knowing how we would react, this assigns a sort of human logic to God that by knowing the outcome he wouldn't do it again putting this silly notion that God must function according to the authors will rather than His own mysterious ways.

Now as a note in regard to the great tempter himself we have Satan whome all evil and rebellion stems from. Satan is a fallen angel who was regarded high in God's court and deciding that he was the most beautiful and powerful that he deserved to be God's equal. He was cast out with all his followers. Now he goes around tempting people and attempting to turn them away from God in an act of petty spite, while he knows his days are numbered and that in the end he will lose to the Most High. The chart says that 'An all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good, God could and would destroy Satan, sigh, that silly notion again. As the Bible says, Satan will be destroyed and sent forth into the lake of eternal fire. There is simply a time for that and it is coming. In the meantime Satan will continue a campaign of petty spite to try and overthrow God by destroying we who are precious to Him. In the end Satan will fall and the world will be saved.

Now I know full well that those of you who do not wish to believe will certainly not after I have trashed this sore chart and its assumptions. Then again those who do believe will be reafirmed in your faith and sing his praises with me. Then of course there are those of you who have had a seed planted in you and are on the road to accepting Him. Maybe I have put you one step closer to having faith in Him, perhaps I haven't. He alone knows these things. We on the other hand must have faith in Him, as after all if these things were certain and we knew the infinite nature of God what we do would not be called faith now would it?

The Grey: A Review

Recently I saw the film "The Grey". This film was promoted as a film about survival, and was also said to have a surprisng philosophical message. I call the promoters liars on both counts because of that. I am not saying the film was bad, far from it, I merely call the promoters liars. It is a good film and overall I enjoyed it.

To get this review started I will simply give a rough recap of the plot. A man employed by an oil company to protect workers from wolves in a remote drilling camp in Alaska and struggling over his seperation from his wife, is caught up in a disastrous plane crash while flying back to Anchorage and stranded in the wilderness with a number of other survivors and they are forced to survive on their wits and not much else.

This is the so called survival element. Though the film does show some interesting elements and very accurate ideas about surviving in such a harsh wilderness, the film plays more like a slasher movie.

Like any slasher movie it prays off our fears of something, in this case being eaten to death by wolves. It establishes from the start that the wolves are to be the films main antagonists and I'm surprised at just how much screen time they get in comparison to natures other perils, especially frostbite.

As wolves fufill the survival element and make the film a slasher by picking off our fairly dim protagonists we get a deep look into the ideological view of both narcisism and atheism.

The films philisophical tune is essentially harsh post-modernist nihilistic thought mized with passive atheism. The nihilistic thought creeps in as we see the characters struggling and continuing to fail despite any hope spots that might seem evident and consistently portrays the struggle against nature as hopeless and futile. This lends to a meta idea that struggle for reform or absolution is useless and that all we can do in life is fight and hope our deaths are not too meaningless. The atheistic element involves a camp fire discussion where one character asks about faith, another dismisses it as a fairy tale while a third says he wishes to believe its true but he can't. This directly leads to another scene where the principal character has just lost all hope and looks skyward and pleads with a higher power to do something saying "...fuck faith! Earn it! Do something!" in response we see an empty and uncarring sky looking back at him. A hope spot could have been inserted here but the writers chose for a long drawn out sequence to emphasise that there wasn't one. This reinforced the sense of passive atheism but gave the film a tone of ranting against nature and how unfair live could be.

I found that the setting for its post-modern views was uniquely thought out but by extension was self-fullfilling. Rather than a rant of how unfair life could be it showcased the deep uncaring ways of Earth and nature around us and seemed to mock the use of prayer. But by its very setting it merely proves the point of an uncarring Earth and not any sort of uncaring God, rather the writers knew this and decided to add the long sequence of empty sky in order to make that point. That and ensure that they kill the obviously religious members of the cast in rather cruel ways. Clever, but hardly proving the point. Instead of making an atheistic point it relies on old arguments of "why would God let this happen?" one which, mixed with many of the characters attitudes and various ineptitudes is rather uncompelling.

Though somewhat depressing due to its subject matter and portrayal I found the movie interesting but couldn't help be irritated once it abandoned its interesting survival premise and became a more predictable slasher film harping on an irritating ideological agenda. I reccomend it for those who enjoy slashers, not any sort of deeper ideological experience.

All in all I'll be generous and give it two and a half stars.