Atheists do so adhere to Dogma

Every six months or so, atheists post a flurry of remarks trying to make people believe they don't adhere to dogmatic beliefs. It's always good for a chuckle.

In a kind of “If you can’t beat em - join em” scenario, a shared atheist doctrine resembling very much the themes of religion has been congealing quickly in the last year. Along with atheist conferences and atheist schools of indoctrination popping up, some of them operating on Sunday mornings, that atheism isn’t clearly a faith-based philosophy will, in a short while be an indefensible stance to take. So, to the Dogma of atheism:

1)“Better by far to embrace the hard truth . . .”
Here Carl Sagan is instructing younger atheists what their attitude should be in the face of atheism’s hopelessness.

2)“We must develop expressions of awe and wonder regarding the workings of the Universe.” Carolyn Porco, Richard Dawkins.
This is now standard and expected fair when atheists are describing, to who ever will listen, what awesome individuals they are and how they will turn the next generation in to wonderful individuals as well.

3) All atheists must get out there and begin doing good works.
We’ve heard the now familiar call to all atheists to become good citizens. An example of this tenet can be found in the instruction for all atheists to donate blood during the World Day of Prayer. This demand that you become a good person is in contrast to the standard atheist attitude that was clearly sounded in a recent atheist blog when a young man, lamented, “Can’t I just fuck around and watch tv in the evening if I want to?”

4) No religion tells us what to do.
Only slaves feel enslaved and no one reacts negatively to rules, guidelines and authority more strongly than the immature, self-centred atheist. Simply hearing the word “God” used in a non negative manner makes atheists like Michael Newdow react like cockroaches scurrying from a freshly lit light bulb. Atheists feel stifled and imprisoned by the mere existence of religion.

The next six points of atheist dogma deal with one subject but are voiced in detailed point form because there is no room for misinterpretation in this part of the atheist belief system.

5) Nothing positive regarding God can be mentioned in the presence of children.
It is not science per se, not even evolution as such, but a special brand of anti-God-Darwinism that atheists want to be taught in the schools. A belief in God must be removed from ALL children’s minds. As Richard Dawkins preaches, “Faith is one of the world’s great evils, comparable to the small-pox virus but harder to eradicate.” The real reason that atheists want the exclusive teaching of evolution in schools is not just that atheists see it as being scientific but that they deem it to be anti-religion. Dawkins again, “Religion is capable of driving people to such dangerous folly that faith seems to me to qualify as a kind of mental illness.”

6) Teaching Christianity is harmful, even abusive to children.
Christopher Hitchens writes, “How can we ever know how many children had their psychological and physical lives irreparably maimed by the compulsory inculcation of faith?” The atheist answer? Inculcate all children with atheist beliefs.

7) Christian Children are not the property of their parents.
Daniel Dennett, “How much do we regard children as being the property of their parents? Should [Christian parents] be free to impose their beliefs on their children?”
Again, the atheist answer is to impose atheist beliefs upon not just their children but upon everyone’s children.

8) Atheists know best what children need to learn.
Christopher Hitchens suggests that atheists become the defenders of the world’s children, “Parents don’t literally own their children . . . [Christian parents] ought to be held accountable by outsiders (read atheists, perhaps the drunken Hitchens himself) for their guardianship, which does imply that outsiders have a right to interfere.”

9) Christian parents have no right to teach their children about Jesus.
Psychologist Nicholas Humphrey, “ [Christian] Parents, have no god-given license to enculturate their children in whatever way they choose . . . to bring them up in an atmosphere of dogma . . . or to insist they follow the straight and narrow paths of their own faith.” While totally ignoring a Christian’s God-given mandate to raise up our children in the fear of the Lord, I’ve personally experienced this developing atheist dogma from an atheist blogger. His stated hope is that our children will be taken from us to keep them from being taught about Christianity. This of course implies the hope that someone else will raise our children and teach them the tenets of his faith.

10) Children must be taught a reverence for science.
Well, respect - yes, but reverence?

11) The universe is the single exception to the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.
True, no atheist would dare to state h/her beliefs this way. Yet, this is exactly what modern atheists in the field of origins are proposing. I had some goof propose to me just last week that the Steady State still holds promise for fundy atheists. Even though the Borde-Guth-Vilinkin theorem shows conclusively that any expanding universe has a definitive space / time boundary, atheist scientists continue to bring forth proposal after proposal that attempts to circumvent this law.

12) No Miracles!
While the universe came into being by a force that operated outside the Laws of Physics, and while this is a working definition of a miracle, in atheist dogma, No Miracles Are Allowed Or Possible. As Lee Smolin says, “Must all of our scientific understanding of the world really come down to a mythological intelligence . . . [that] wills matter into being? It seems to me that the only possible name for such an observer is God, and that the theory is to be criticized as being unlikely on these grounds.”

13) It is a given that humans would eventually evolve in conditions present on primordial earth.
Atheists believe that against literally impossible odds, it is no accident that our kind of life finds itself on earth.

14) Evolution is such a powerful force that life is now, even as we speak, coming into being on other planets and/or in other universes.

15) Material and natural reality is all that exists.

16) Science has proven that God cannot exist.
Atheist High Priest Dawkins is beginning to bend on this one as even he can no longer deny that the cause of the Big Bang, presents a strong case for a “Deist” type of God. Nevertheless, the majority of hardliners still hold that >

17) Because God cannot be discovered through scientific inquiry, God does not exist.
“Modern science directly implies that the world is organised strictly in accordance with deterministic principles of chance. There are no purposive principles whatsoever in nature. There are no gods and no designing forces rationally detectable.” William Provine.

18) Any knowledge that does not conform to materialism and naturalism will not be allowed into the discussion.
Isn’t that amazing? Atheist scientists actually want to live with an a priori rejection of evidence, if that evidence does not fit the atheist scientist’s world-view. And even if that unacceptable evidence leads to a resolution of a given problem, to the atheist mind, it’s better to do without a resolution to the problem. While remaining slaves to the thinking with which they were born, atheists dare to call themselves free-thinkers. Pure delusion.

19) Reason and scientific inquiry can tell us all that we need to know and all that we can know.

20) Atheists are smarter than anyone who believes in God.

21) There is no “I” to the human animal. We are a mass of cells and neurons that operate according to the Laws of Nature.
As atheist actor Woody Allen stated in his defence after it was discovered that he was having sex with his daughter, “That heart wants what it wants. Who can understand it?”

22) Death is the end.

23) There is no cosmic purpose.

24) There is no Divine justice or reward.

25) Free will is an illusion.

26) Evil and suffering prove that God does not exist.

27) Living by these Beliefs, Tenets and Dogma of the atheist faith is emancipating.

The following individual best describes today’s modern atheist:
S/He is a lonely, intrepid figure, deprived of cosmic hope, abandoned to h/his own wits, navigating h/her way through the heavens, pitting h/herself against the unknown, refusing to accept the tyrannical sovereignty of God, rebelling against the divine decree, and determined to build out of h/his own resources a rival empire devoted to happiness in the here and now.

This of course is Milton’s description of satan in “Paradise Lost.”

In closing, it may need to be explained that any given atheist might say, “I don’t agree that this or that point is dogmatic atheism.” So what? Show me a member of any religion who doesn’t claim the right to disagree on some points.