Democracy Has Prevailed.

September 16, 2014

Ruth Ann Gets Atheism Wrong (No Surprise)

In her non-defense defense of the "In God We Trust" legislation, P-G Columnist Ruth Ann Dailey pushes a tired old myth about atheism:
All humans are created equal, but not all ideas are. Ideas have consequences, and the consequences of secular atheism are appalling. As the 20th century demonstrated, societies based on a vaguer, God-free foundation of “human rights” tend to have slaughtered hundreds of millions of those humans.
Yes, that's right. It was Atheism that drove Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot to slaughter all those people.  A God-free foundation of "human rights" is the culprit.

Simply absurd.  Here's Sam Harris on exactly why that's absurd:
People of faith often claim that the crimes of Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were the inevitable product of unbelief. The problem with fascism and communism, however, is not that they are too critical of religion; the problem is that they are too much like religions. Such regimes are dogmatic to the core and generally give rise to personality cults that are indistinguishable from cults of religious hero worship. Auschwitz, the gulag and the killing fields were not examples of what happens when human beings reject religious dogma; they are examples of political, racial and nationalistic dogma run amok. There is no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.
And Dailey stumbled upon a thread of this idea when she wrote:
A friend’s son suggested a brilliant synthesis: If we want “In God We Trust” on the courthouse wall, we should just tape a quarter up and call it done. (Yep, it’s right there next to George Washington’s ponytail — and in the last verse of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” too.)
Well, it's not exactly the same motto in the last verse of The Star Spangled Banner.  The "motto" referenced there is, "In God is our trust."  Incidentally, it's the second half of a rhymed couplet.  The first half?  It's this:
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
So when "our cause is just" and with God on our side, we must conquer.

See the trouble now?  Look around.

6 comments:

spork_incident said...

Yeah, this one was braindead even for Ruth Ann.

Also, if she wants to quote the "Star Spangled Banner" as authoritative she should know that it also contains a rousing cheer for slavery: "No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave"


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SamStone said...

She also has no business put Hitler on the list, given that the official Nazi uniform had a belt buckle with a very similar phrase Gott mit uns (meaning "God with us"). In fact, when a society attacks a single religion, it is a good bet is because they think the someone else's god is not as good as their god.

All of which is to say that Allegheny County Council did the right thing.

Social Justice NPC Anti-Paladin™ said...

The "No true atheist" Defense

https://www.flickr.com/photos/61277278@N07/5579743895/

http://voxday.blogspot.com/2011/04/mailvox-no-true-atheist-defense.html
"In summary, not only is the No True Atheist a logically invalid defense of historical atheist crimes, but it's an haplessly ineffective one due to the characteristic preference of atheists for the very political ideology they are attempting to blame in order to exculpate their anti-religious creed."

spork_incident said...

Well, I'm glad to know we can dispense with the well-documented historical record and take the word of a openly vicious racist and misogynist science fiction writer as Gospel.

Historians, you are obsolete!


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Social Justice NPC Anti-Paladin™ said...

well-documented historical record
Like this Historian or the Soviet apologists at Davyoe favorite magazine the Nation?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdajUraK0LM
"Yet to find one crime Stalin committed."

Social Justice NPC Anti-Paladin™ said...

Progressive Feminist intellectual heavyweight on Sam "If I could wave a magic wand and get rid of either rape or religion, I would not hesitate to get rid of religion" Harris
https://www.facebook.com/amanda.marcotte/posts/10152684558857622

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/09/another-week-another-atheist-demands-we-call-his-sexism-not-sexism-this-time-sam-harris/ I never liked Sam Harris. He's always been a shit thinker and an arrogant POS who is a bad, bad spokesperson for atheism. Still, it was fun making fun of his lavish attempts to justify his own sexism.