MCLC: Putin wins Confucius Peace Prize (18)

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Bill Goldman <billgoldman at mac.com>
Subject: Putin wins Confucius Peace Prize (18)
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Bill Goldman felt that he was misunderstood and unfairly criticized in
this thread, so I have granted him this final chance to defend himself. I
do hope, though, this is the end of it.

Kirk 

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A belated and final response (belated as I was in Morocco and then laid up
with a virus) on this issue, since it seems necessary to clarify & defend
my point of view:

I must reiterate that I never meant to imply that atheists are less moral
than Christians. Morality, to be real, has to come from within: hence, in
my view, the failure of Communism worldwide, where virtue is imposed from
without (supposedly).  The point, for me, is that with Christianity, we
have available a Figure against whom any claim to be Christian may be
measured, by anyone who has access to the Gospel.

As for yomi braester's criticizing me for somehow following Cold War US
Presidents who talked of "godless Communism" and the like - well, I am
sorry but I was not following them but referring to the official atheism
of the CCP: it is the CCP - not in my fantasy but in reality - that
forbids anyone who does not declare himself an atheist from joining the
Party and therefore the government of China.

I think that whatever humaneness exists within "secular humanism" is
possibly an unacknowledged inheritance from Christianity. Marcus Aurelius
is admired by some non-Christians for his supposedly "wise" words: but
Marcus Aurelius was a savage persecutor of Christians. Rujie seems to
admire Jefferson's words against tyranny - Jefferson the slave-owner, I
assume he refers to.

Rujie begins his post by stating "To equate atheists with people with
questionable morals the way Bill Goldman did in the previous post is an
act of intolerance".

However, I don't believe I made this equation Rujie accuses me of. I
merely said that atheism has in recent history been very useful to
mass-murderers, for the reason given above: they claim no allegiance to a
Book out of which we could prove them to be in error, nor to a Figure
whose deeds and words were opposite to theirs. If Rujie means I am
intolerant of the deeds Mao is notorious for, then yes, I certainly am. If
he means I wish to tar all atheists with the same brush as Mao, I reject
the charge.

To address Lucas Klein's post, if I did indeed write  "conscience is
precisely what atheism tends to dull" (and I do not doubt you have quoted
me correctly), then I have to admit I wrote that statement hastily. What I
should have written was something like - what I did also write: that if
you want to be unaccountable for your actions, atheism certainly isn't
going to hold you to account, since there is nothing in atheism per se to
prevent you, anyone, from behaving like Pol Pot . Whereas Jesus's deeds and
teachings are clearly directly opposed to cruelty and callous murder. But
I did NOT say that atheists all tend to be like Pol Pot, nor that their
morals are questionable: only that if you are someone who wants to behave
wickedly, atheism would suit you better than Christianity. It would,
however, according to the Bible, be a foolish move:

"The fool has said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they
have done abominable works, there is none that does good. The LORD looked
down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that
did understand, and seek God.

"They are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy: there is
none that does good, no, not one." (Psalm 14:1-3)

Bill