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Religion & Law

: Thoughts in a Haystack

Northern Lights

By John Pieret

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"Atheism: a threat to civilization."

Now, what might you think an article with such a title could be?

That's right! It's an extended complaint about how "the militant atheism of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and others who want to slam religion ... portray Christianity not only as wrong but evil."

As could be predicted, the names Lenin, Stalin, Hitler and Mao Zhe Dong get associated with atheism as well.

If you haven't suffered too much irony whiplash from that, consider the following juxtaposition:

"Their goal is to divorce political questions like abortion from moral claims and religion ..."
[Which is part of] a larger and more insidious political strategy designed to make voters fear Conservatives on the basis of individual religious choices."

Individual religious choices, of course, that Conservatives can politically impose on everyone else.

You might think this wouldn't bother me much, seeing how I'm a militantly apathetic agnostic, but I'm afraid that the author of the piece, one Fr. Alphonse de Valk, is pretty clearly conflating "secularists" with "atheists":

Atheism's common form in Canada is secularism. As we have pointed out many times in the past, modern secularism is not neutral; on the contrary, it is aggressively anti-Christian.

You might also think this wouldn't bother me much, seeing how I'm not Canadian, but I've got to have someplace to run if the lunatic right wins down here again.

Lastly, there is this, which just goes to show what difference an editor can make:

Today the Christian belief in God is under tremendous attack. It began in the 1960's with the overthrow of the age?old condom nation of contraceptives, divorce, abortion, and homosexual activism.

That's a nation I could happily pledge allegiance to.
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Full post as published by Thoughts in a Haystack on June 05, 2009 (boomark / email).