Just last night, a fundamentalist twitter user made the collective eyes of atheists roll by saying Atheism was a religion, dodging all responses to the contrary (why would we expect anything more?). She then dived right into a silly round of, “So why are there different kinds of flowers, huh? How did stars form? Explain that!” Oh the amusement.
When I saw this comic strip, it made me think of all the times atheists have been accused of worshiping science and using it as a religion. Clearly, some folks have their English dictionaries on layaway. Let’s clear it up, shall we?
#218 "Idol Gear"
Source: Treelobsters.com
(HT @daisiesandshit)
It snowed quite a bit yesterday. A nice, fluffy sheet a few inches thick rested undisturbed on my car all day (hoorah for time off work to sit at home like a bump on a log!). I had heard a bit of rumble about the lunar eclipse, and since I was up in the middle of the night, I thought I’d go take a peek. Alas, the sky revealed nothing but solid gray, and no stars nor any moon was visible at all.
Not to be disappointed by weather, I decided to embrace an idea that sprang on me like a gazelle in heat (I hope they do that in real life). What if I wrote a little message on my windows to see what would happen? Many folks write phrases like “Jesus!” and “Wash me!” all over their cars. But what about something a bit more heathen?
4am is as good a time as any to spread the godless news!
Voilà! Happy with my snow art, I went back inside to bed.
Twelve hours later I decide to surface once again to take out the trash and see what happened to my car.
Ta-dah! Free window cleaning!
Lo and behold, it appears that some kind person had brushed off the snow for me! What a sweetie. I’m starting to think this might be an easy way to scrape my car every morning. I could just get some offended passerby to clean it for free! Ah, godless genius.
Editor’s Note:
It has been suggested that natural causes, and not an intelligent agent, were at fault for my clean car the next day.
I don’t know who you intellectual elitists think you are, but I’m sure you’re just in denial that an Intelligent Scraper exists. Clearly he/she could be the only cause for this result. One day it was snowy, and the next day it was clean. Obviously we have a powerful, purposeful individual behind this. There can be no other explanation than the Intelligent Scraper!
Randall Munroe, the creator of the well-known webcomic, xkcd, is on a relaxed publishing schedule due to a very sick family member right now. And out of that trying experience, he draws these three awesome panels:
Hell yeah, Randall.
Something Personal
When my father was fighting cancer, he (even while being a man of faith and prayer) relied on the advances of medicine and scientific research to fight the disease and keep it at bay as much as possible. Even though he wanted God to heal him, he still knew that medical care and advanced technology would be the most important weapons in the fight.
Now I look back and think, Why did we hope for miracles when we knew medicine would do all the real work? I’m honestly not sure if there are any practical reasons for prayers. When someone you love is dying, you want them to be instantly free of illness and suffering. Who wouldn’t? A miracle is a get-out-of-cancer-free card that no believer would turn down. To faithful Christians like us, we prayed for that easy-out, but we truly trusted in the doctors, the chemotherapy, and all of the other treatments used that were backed by tested science.
When praying for healing, you never know if you’ll be heard or if it will ever happen. There can be no reasonable expectation or time table; healing either happened or it didn’t, and sometimes a “miraculous healing” looked just like something explained just fine by science anyway. So when a loved one is ill or dying, you can feel free to hope for an immediate improvement, but trust in those who have tested treatments and medicines that you know can help. Even if your loved one does die, you can at least be thankful that it wasn’t your fault, your lack of faith, or anyone’s relationship with a deity that was at fault.
Science works, bitches!
A print ad promoting peace in India
In my past life, the only causes worth dying for were one’s faith and one’s country. I remember attending a youth conference where a provocative speaker spent an hour telling heart-wrenching stories about Christian persecution around the world and how many believers go to their deaths because they refuse to give in to those who do not give them religious freedom. These stories had a great impact on me at the time. I once considered going on a bible smuggling mission trip to China so I could help people who had to be underground and hidden in order to practice Christianity.
Martyrdom is revered in Christianity very highly, and it’s not hard to find a believer who will say they would gladly die for the cause of Christ. Willingness to die for one’s beliefs is considered an honorable act by most every religion I can think of. Even secular causes (especially in times of political upheaval) can bring about this drastic act of devotion.
I do not think martyrdom—whether modern or throughout history—proves anything about the claims these people made or the beliefs they held. More death does not equal more truth. I do not think that the more one suffers for those claims, the more glorious and righteous one is.
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