Another Angry Atheist Sounds Off

Every once in a while, I bounce around to some of the more frequented atheist blogs and find a gem to opine on. This time around, it's the Atheist Oasis blog, formerly known as God Is For Suckers!


The poster was a guy called Ray G., and his post about the recent theater shooting in Colorado is pretty typical. He is unhappy that survivors of the incident give God credit for their survival. Ray here hates the idea that survivors of a truly horrible act would give credit to the idea of a god that Ray detests. Ray is truly offended when others don't kow-tow to the notion that our lives, in fact, our very existence, are just products of pure dumb luck.


That's nothing new, but I'd like to take on a couple of his points as examples of flawed atheist logic.


Ray posted this about Jennifer Seeger, one of the survivors:

“I have no idea why he didn’t shoot me,” she said.  Fortunately, Seeger got out of the theater safely.

Later, she told her mother, “Mom, god saved me.  God still loves me.”

Ray commented:

"When I read that quote, my heart broke.  It’s made up of only eight words, but they tell a sad story."

"For some reason, Jennifer Seeger doubted that god still loved her. It seems at one time, she was confident that he loved her, but not anymore. We don’t know why, but that’s not important.  Perhaps she’d even reached the conclusion, for whatever reason, that god had stopped loving her."

That's the point, Ray... you don't know what was going on in that girl's life. Maybe she was rebelling against her parents, or getting into trouble. God allows the world He made to be run by the people to whom He gave dominion over it, and like any good parent, He seeks opportunities to pull some good out of all the evil we throw into it. I wouldn't expect an unbeliever to understand this.

Ray says later:

"I was raised to worship and fear the same god worshiped and feared by these people.  Hardly a day goes by when I am not told or in some way made aware of the claim that I should still be worshiping this god, and that I am somehow morally deficient because I don’t.  To those of us who do not believe in gods, or perhaps worship other deities, this story of human slaughter is supposed to be an example of Yahweh’s love and mercy.  We’re supposed to see in this what a great and powerful god he really is."

Or perhaps this is supposed to be an example of how imperfect we humans really are, and what a farcical notion moral relativity is.

In his harsh criticism of survivor Pierce O'Farrill, Ray G. tries a walk-back by pointing out:

"I’m not criticizing O’Farrill personally.  I’m criticizing his interpretation of events..."

But later, Ray made this judgemental comment:

"That is perverse. It’s especially perverse coming from a religion that claims to be all about those other things — you know, love and peace and humility. There is no humility there. It is, whether James O’Farrill and Brad Strait and Jennifer Seeger are aware of it or not, an expression of breathtaking arrogance. I would go so far as to call it a kind of narcissism."

So, Ray, Pierce O'Farrill, along with Brad Strait and Jennifer Seeger are just arrogant narcissists? Is that the compassion and understanding we can expect from atheists?

I'm afraid the answer is a huge "yes".

Ray G. began his conclusion by posting:

"Silent and invisible looks a whole lot like … nothing.  And this extremely malleable god, who can be whatever you need him to be at any given moment, looks a whole lot like wishful thinking.  A god who can be whatever you need him to be is really nothing at all."

Yet one of the biggest arguments that atheists have against the existence of God is the idea that God ISN'T what atheists want Him to be: an eternal cosmic Santa Claus. How's that for irony?

By the way, Ray, the physical forces that govern our universe are for the most part silent and invisible. Their existence has been discovered and measured by those who chose to believe in those forces when others called them crazy. There's a big hint for you.

And Ray finished with this:

Below are the names of the people some Christians believe were not good enough for the Judeo-Christian god to save (Or at least, Ray assumes this much).  The ripples of pain and devastation sent out by each of these losses are immeasurable.  As far as I’m concerned, any god who could have prevented their deaths but did not is a monster."  (List of names followed)

So, Ray, is God a bigger monster than James Holmes? Who was it that actually walked into a theater with an AK-47?

Are the people who elected Hitler into power bigger monsters than Der Fuerher himself?

Nobody heard James Holmes quoting scripture as he was shooting. By all appearances, Mr. Holmes may not have any god belief. Is God a monster for letting an atheist kill 12 innocent people?

Is God a monster for letting atheist Mao Zedong send 40 million people to die growing bad crops?

God said there were grave consequences for not following a few simple commandments. Is God a monster for not behaving like a Universal Gepetto and just playing with us like mindless puppets? Ray, are you suggesting God is evil for allowing the existence of free will?

You think God enjoys when innocents suffer?

We have the moral imperative to seek out opportunities and prevent disasters like the theater shooting. If we're going to sit on our butts and expect God to fix every problem BEFORE it happens, like the premise behind the movie "Minority Report", we're nothing but perpetual babies. We wouldn't need rules at all, because God would always be there to fix the bad before it happened.

THAT is the God atheists like Ray G. would believe in.