Religion

The World Atheist Convention took place in Dublin on June 3-5 last. By all accounts, it was a very successful affair.

Predictably, however, not everybody was happy to see so many atheists gather in ‘Catholic’ Ireland.

Catholic militant, Mary Kenny, writing in the Irish Catholic, makes the ridiculous claim that atheism is nothing more than an offshoot of Communism.

People of this cast of mind have been around for a long time. The only real difference between now and 50 or 80 years ago is that they have changed their category. They used to be called, and to call themselves, communists.

Her article, reproduced below, is a good example of the damaging power of religion to convince humans that the irrational is rational.

Atheisim is just another `Ism’

Mary Kenny

9 Jun 2011

It is a measure of how much Ireland has changed from its traditional image that Dublin could be the location for an international conference of atheists, as it was last weekend. And that the gathering passed uncontroversially.

I’m all for tolerance of everyone’s viewpoint, providing it is not a threat to public safety, so if the atheists’ pow-wow passed off almost unremarked, so what?

It is claimed that atheism in Ireland is growing, and that some 250,000 people are now Irish atheists, although some in that group call themselves agnostics, some humanists, some secularists. So there is a fuzzing of the definition.

An atheist is someone who says there is no Deity and no supernatural life whatsoever: there is only the material world. An atheist dismisses Shakespeare’s view that ”there are more things in Heaven and Earth than you can dream of” and usually regards human beings as merely cleverer animals than, say, apes.

An agnostic is humbler. The agnostic says he doesn’t know and does not venture to suggest he has the answers to the mysteries of the universe.

A humanist believes in humanity, but a humanist may also believe in God: humanism grew out of Christianity. A secularist is someone who calls for a non-religious state: but a secularist may have a private faith. So there are many strands in this apparently new phenomenon in Ireland.

But is this movement really new? People of this cast of mind have been around for a long time. The only real difference between now and 50 or 80 years ago is that they have changed their category. They used to be called, and to call themselves, communists.

The Communist Party and its many splinters in Trotskyism, Maoism, various international movements for ‘Peace and Progress’ – formerly a cover for Communism – encompassed a range of secularist thinkers. Communism was about many things, but it was, above all, about godlessness.

To be sure, some good people, and some well-intentioned people were Communists. And not all Communist concepts were unworthy:

Communism often promoted education, and even ideals of ”virtue” among the young. However, its fundamental value was rooted in atheism.
Then communism was seen to fail, and it duly fell. And when it fell it left an ideological vacuum in its place. Some former Marxists embraced capitalism, even with gusto.

Others turned to the new religion of environmentalism, in which everything green and associated with nature was to be sacralised (even though Marxism itself was in favour of industrialisation and most definitely against Nature: Marx would have regarded tree-hugging as ‘rural idiocy’). And others still turned to atheism in its various forms, whether it be called secularism, humanism or even ‘new ethics’.

The vacuum left by the world-wide ideology of communism remains the principle mainspring. People look for new ‘isms’ where old ones fail.
But usually the new isms, in their turn, are found wanting, and in the fullness of time faith is reborn in the hearts of men and women, as St Augustine predicted it always would. All you have to do is to live long enough to see the wheel complete its eternal return.

The Naval Chaplin, Fr. Desmond Campion spoke recently about church attendance and personal faith (iWitness).

Over the years I have seen quite a change. For example church attendance would be down but then again you have to put it in the context of the days that we’re living in and to me church attendance is important but what I think is more important is the fact that they have personal faith.

I got to know Fr. Campion during my navy days because of my strong objections at being marched down to his church and forced to participate in a religious ceremony in which I did not believe.

On one occasion when I refused to enter his church I was ordered to stand to attention, in the rain, outside the church until the ceremony was over.

I later put the following question to Fr. Campion.

Surely your god would be better pleased if he had just one genuine believer (with a genuine personal faith) attending the ceremony rather than having a hundred disbelievers who are forced to attend?

He agreed with my argument but never acted on the matter.

The key words in Fr. Campion’s quote are:

In the context of the days that we’re living in.

At the time (70s/80s/90s) he was happy to go along with ‘the context of those days’ (forced attendance) but now that his church (and the naval authorities) has lost the power of enforcement, he has fallen back on the ‘importance’ of the personal faith argument.

Fr. Campion’s thinking is a mirror reflection of the church he serves – when available, power is to be used to its fullest extent for the benefit of the organisation even if that means trampling on the rights of individuals.

I should say that Fr. Campion is, personally, a gentleman but unfortunately he never saw the necessity to challenge his religious/military overlords.

Paul O’Donoghue of the Irish Skeptics Society had a good article in yesterday’s Irish Times.

The piece considered whether science should help out god in correcting evolutionary flaws in humans.

Some quotes:

On the design of the human body:

In a world preoccupied with environmental issues one might wonder who in his right mind would construct two waste-disposal units right next to a recreational area?

Woody Allen:

If it turns out that there is a god, I don’t think that he’s evil. But the worse you can say is that basically he’s an underachiever:

More than any other time in history, mankind is at a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other, to total extinction.

Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.

Letter in today’s Irish Examiner.

In 1992 Galileo was welcomed back into the fold of the Catholic Church by Pope John Paul II and last week Homer Simpson was ‘converted’ to the faith.

Surely now it’s time that Fr Ted was made an honorary bishop?

Anthony Sheridan

Ultra conservative Catholic, Mary Kenny, is writing in today’s Irish Independent about the forthcoming visit of Pope Benedict to the UK.

Apparently, Cardinal John Newman is to be beatified by the Pope during the visit but Kenny is worried that this might prove controversial.

Cardinal Newman — who undoubtedly added to the acceptability and prestige of British Catholicism when he converted to Rome in 1845, and was a brilliant writer and intellectual — has only performed one miracle since his death in 1890, and that seems to some people to be less than decisive.

Jack Sullivan, a 70-year-old deacon in Boston, has been cured of back and leg pain after praying to Newman and doctors have testified that there is no medical explanation for his cure.

But is one such miracle enough? And doesn’t back pain sometimes heal itself spontaneously?

It’s incredible, and somewhat disturbing, to witness somebody, who most people consider to be perfectly sane, seriously suggesting that a dead man needs to do more if he’s to achieve sainthood