Bill Muehlenberg wrote a Letter To The Editor of one of our top three newspapers here in Australia, and commented on the ineptitude demonstrated by leading atheists in their attempts to denigrate Christianity. Well, I decided I would "digg" his article (www.digg.com), only to discover it had already been dugg! The previous digger was an atheist who entitled his diggment "As an Atheist [I] have never been so offended".
What was it he found so offensive in Muehlenberg's Letter To The Editor? Was it something in the actual content of Bill's letter? The digger was kind enough to tell us. "An attack on Dawkins and Athiests. Final paragraph is a kicker, claims we [atheists] can not love, be truthful and moral, or see beauty" Well, had Mr Muehlenberg made such an outrageous claim, I would have joined the protestation.
But of course Bill has a brain and uses it well, and wouldn't make such groundless assertions. No, in fact, Bill's points were several and good. It was in fact the Atheistic digger and his misdirected criticism of Bill's letter who revealed the very scholastic slovenliness of which Bill spoke in his letter!
Here's a link to the original News.com.au post (Bill Muehlenberg's Letter To The Editor) : http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,20983690-5007146,00.html
Here's a link to the digg.com page where this atheist made inadvertant mockery of the atheists whose intellectual rigour he would assume he bears : http://digg.com/offbeat_news/As_an_Athiest_have_never_been_so_offended
And, since I'm new to Digg, and uncertain whether they ever delete comments (I'm sure a few folk would be keen to delete my comments if there's any easy way to do so! :) ), I reproduce below the text of my tuppence-worth, the two comments I added to the article :
Comment the first...
I remember reading "Farewell To God - My Reasons For Rejecting The Christian Faith" by Charles Templeton, and being appalled by how emotionally-laden and factually-scarce his reasoning was. It is my experience (and that of many I know) that atheists frequently exhibit stupendous ignorance of Christianity in their attempts to defame it.
As a Christian, I am extremely critical of various stupid things that are done and believed from time to time by those who also bear this name, but mindless defamation of Christianity itself is of no value.
As Bill Muehlenberg himself states, Biblical Christianity is cogent and reasonable. Yes - it extrapolates beyond what reason alone can conclusively state, but where the Bible can be tested by reason (as opposed to where witless and ignorant criticisms of supposed-but-non-existant Biblical claims can be tested by reason), the Bible holds it's own, and always has. I am a student of archeology, and archeology is just one of many fields of scientific enquiry which repeatedly confirms the accuracy of the content of the Bible.
So, I have no problem with atheists believing there is no God, and I have no problem with Christians believing there is one. But I stand with Bill Muehlenberg, concerned, no, shocked and appalled, at some of the emotionalism and straw-man-shooting that goes under the name of 'logic' in an attempt to disparage Christianity.
Comment the second...
Not wishing to be inflammatory, but Spootzta who originally "dug" this article, typifies the kind of intellectual sloppiness that quickly earns atheists and atheism a bad name. Spootzta states "Final paragraph is a kicker, claims we can not love, be truthful and moral, or see beauty". So let's have a look at this final paragraph :
"But for billions, non-material things such as truth, beauty, justice, love and even God are very meaningful realities, which the narrow world of atheism will never fully enjoy nor understand."
The question is not who will *experience* these realities. Love, truth, beauty, morality, etc are part of human existence, and of *course* both atheist and non-atheist alike will experience these realities. Bill Muehlenberg chose his words carefully when he said only that atheists will miss out on the *full* enjoyment and full understanding of these concepts.
Spootzta's claim that Bill claims that atheists cannot see beauty, experience love, etc, is intellectual slovenliness.
To the deist or theist, these concepts (love, truth, beauty, etc) have an a-temporal nature forged in the magnificent person of God himself. But to any atheist with whom I've had communication, these concepts are transient and in perpetual flux. If the atheistic worldview is correct, deists and theists well over-rate these concepts and draw too much enjoyment and pleasure from them. If the deistic/theistic view is correct, atheism denigrates some of the most compelling facets of these concepts. In either case and irrespective of whether atheism is correct or not, the deist's/theist's experience of these concepts is significantly beyond that of the atheist. Bill Muehlenberg's final paragraph is almost a tautology - the claims therein are almost true by definition.
