Saturday, October 02, 2010
Atheism Poisons Everything
This is the first part of a debate on atheism with David Berlinski, author of The Devil's Delusion and Christopher Hitchens, author of God Is Not Great.
Berlinski (speech starts at 2.34) says Atheism poisons everything because without God there is no power beyond ourselves, there is no reason to be good, no reason to moral. Berlinski is a fierce opponent of the social consequences of Darwinism.
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Am I just imagining, but you do seem to have an awful lot of "professional" atheists over there.
There's also a discussion between me and Father Brian Harrison addressing the question of whether atheists can be saved, on the correspondence page of the magazine This Rock at:
www.catholic.com
The Devil is surely the issue. Towards the end of Lord of the Rings, the ring comes for a moment into the hands of Sam Gangee, the gardener. Looking into the desert that is Sauron's kingdom of Mordor, he has a vision of what he would be able to do with the ring - turn it into the most delectable garden that ever existed. That is the Devil's false temptation of power.
If one does not accept God, one does not accept that the Devil is at work too. So even if one would do good for all mankind, without God the enterprise will inevitably lead to a betrayal, large or small. The false temptation will be too big to resist, and the atheist will have had no warning that it is but a vain temptation.
This of course does not mean that religions are a guarantee against the Devil. Indeed, as we have seen throughout history, the converse is true. The Devil is nowhere busier than around the altar. But least we are warned about what to expect.
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