DeStefano - Inside the atheist mind

In the following pages, I’m not going to focus on proving God’s existence or showing how much sense it makes to be a believer. As noted earlier, plenty of books on popular theology do that already. Rather, my main purpose here will be to expose once and for all the blatant hypocrisy, dishonesty, and intellectual bankruptcy of the atheists themselves.

 

For when you really look at what the new atheists are saying, you don’t find a carefully constructed, logical argument against the theistic position; in fact, you don’t find any argument at all. What you find is a lot of hot air. A lot of bluster. A lot of disdainful, unfounded, and empty dogmatism. Above all, what you find is arrogance.

 

Arrogance has been the calling card of atheists for a long time. It didn’t start with Richard Dawkins or Bill Maher. Friedrich Nietzsche—the great patron saint of atheism, and, coincidentally, the favorite philosopher of Adolf Hitler (a fact atheists conveniently neglect to mention)—proclaimed famously in the nineteenth century that God was “dead” and “in his grave. That preposterous pronouncement set the tone for atheistic arrogance over the next hundred years.

Epub Edition February 2018 9780718080594

ISBN 978-0-71808059-4 (eBook)

 

A Note to Atheists

   1. The Arrogance of the Atheists

   2. The Ignorance of the Atheists

   3. The Ruthlessness of the Atheists

   4. The Intolerance of the Atheists

   5. The Shallowness of the Atheists

   6. The Cowardice of the Atheists

   7. The Death-Centeredness of the Atheists

   8. The Faithfulness of the Atheists

   9. The Malevolence of the Atheists

   10. The End of the Atheists

Suggested Reading

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Notes

In the last chapter, we looked at the constant refrain that religion is responsible for more death, bloodshed, and war than any other single factor in history. That charge is shouted from the hilltops by atheists everywhere and then trumpeted by their sympathizers in the entertainment industry, the media, and the academic world. It’s even familiar to schoolchildren, who are taught very early about the Crusades and the Inquisition and many other so-called crimes against humanity, perpetrated in the name of God.

We’ll have something to say about those infamous events shortly, but the first point to make clear is this: It’s a lie. A big lie. A big, blatant, bald-faced lie.

 

Religion is not the cause of most of the wars that have taken place. It is not the cause of most of the murders that have taken place. It is not the cause of most of the bloodshed that has taken place. To even suggest such a ridiculous thing is to display an ignorance of history tantamount to imbecility.

 

The number one cause of war and bloodshed on this planet is, was, and always will be economic gain. One country or city or town wishes to take control of another’s wealth and attempts to do so through force. Violent conflict ensues. People die. In ancient times the economic benefit might have been gold or silver or precious jewels or land or tools or livestock or slaves. In modern times the economic benefit usually takes the form of oil or technology or machinery or resources for manufacturing. No matter the specific object to be gained, the underlying motive is always the same—money.

 

Next to economics—and often connected with it—the most common cause of war and bloodshed in the world has been territorial gain. One country or city or town comes to the conclusion that it desperately needs more land—either for economic reasons (such as agriculture or oil), or because it wants more “living space” (such as the Nazi invasion of its neighboring countries), or the creation of buffer zones between enemies (such as in the Middle East or the Ukraine).

 

These are the two main reasons for violent conflict in human history—and nothing else. And they are worldly in nature, not religious. Beyond these, the principal kinds of wars have been civil or revolutionary. Within a given country, internal disagreement arises as to how the nation should be governed. Passions are enflamed, and war and carnage follow. Or, perhaps, a segment of the population revolts against its rulers for the purpose of changing the leadership or to gain self-determination.

Civil and revolutionary wars account for a vast number of bloody conflicts that have taken place on this planet, and almost all of them pertain to gaining political power. Very few have been about religion, faith, or God. In fact, even when the stated purpose of a war is ideological in nature, its underlying cause is usually civil, revolutionary, economic, or territorial.