Enough Is Enough: A Sunday Tirade

     I have had it with supercilious militant atheists. It’s time to start awarding them the backs of our hands – figuratively, at least.

     Freedom of thought is the one freedom that cannot be taken away, at least until the Omnipotent State perfects artificial telepathy. And in case you haven’t noticed, the overwhelming majority of Americans believe in a Supreme Being, a.k.a. God. Even many who attend no religious services and subscribe to no recognized religion will tell you, quite candidly, that they believe in God. Their belief impacts no one else. It certainly doesn’t affect the beliefs of those who differ.

     Yet militant atheists routinely deride believers. The worst of them attempt to squelch believers’ expressions of faith. Here’s a recent and particularly odious case of such:

     September 29, 2013, is a day Lindsey and Brent Sharpton will remember forever. It’s hard to forget the day you held a miracle in your hands. But to understand the end of this story, we need to start at the beginning …

     Like most young couples, Lindsey and Brent, who live in Asheville, North Carolina, had dreamed of the day they’d add a child to their family, of precious moments when they’d kiss sweet baby cheeks and run their fingers across downy soft hair. But things didn’t go as planned. They tried for a year before doctors told them they didn’t think they could have children, so they visited a specialist and looked into various procedures they could do.

     However, it developed that this young woman could not carry a child to term. Let’s skip the intermediate material about their efforts and their attempts to adopt, and get right to the good part:

     Months went by and nothing happened – until Sept. 29, 2013, when something unusual occurred, something miraculous. Pam Ledford is women’s ministry director at the church where Brent grew up. At the end of the Sunday morning service, a church member, Tonya, walked up to Pam and said, “I know this is going to sound crazy, but I felt like God told me to bring this baby to you. It needs a home.”

     That’s the heart of the story: the couple were presented with a baby they could love and raise as their own at their church. Needless to say, they thanked God for the blessing of a child, and have continued to do so in the years since then.

     But soft! What feces-coated comment is this that through yonder website breaks?

     Whether or not you accept it, it is a fact. We have evolved from earlier species. Whether you believe in god or not.

     I agree - great story for this couple. Meanwhile my friends wife just was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. When she reads a story like this, attributing this couple's good fortune to god, I wonder how she must feel about herself (also a believer in god).

     If you want to believe god did it, maybe it is in better taste to keep it to yourself.

     I was ready to chew girders and spit rivets. I have nothing against atheists – their faith is as unverifiable and unfalsifiable as mine – but when they posture as superior to those of us who believe, especially when they strive to make an expression of faith in God unspeakable, it brings me near to exploding.

     This is the most appalling demonstration of crudity I’ve seen in quite a while – and under the aegis of “good taste,” no less! Who authorized this...person, who clearly thinks himself both more intelligent and more mannerly than the woman he catechized, to educate the rest of us both in “fact,” which the theory of evolution is not, and in “good taste,” which he wouldn’t recognize if it were to creep up behind him and bite him on the ass?

     Before all else: the theory of evolution cannot be proved to be the genesis of Mankind, nor of anything else that currently walks, crawls, swims, or flies the Earth. Neither can it be disproved. It is a possible explanation for the variety of life we see around us, but it’s neither verifiable nor falsifiable for a simple reason: the experiment cannot be repeated. The same, of course, is true for any other possible explanation for life on Earth, including creation from scratch by God. And while we're on the subject of evolution, suppose it to be a proven fact, strictly for the sake of argument. Who shall say that God Himself didn't employ it to achieve the results He sought?

     Time was, religious persons were the forward ones. We committed many offenses against charity and humility in our relations with those who did not believe as we do. We learned better, mainly through the pain that arose from the consequences. Pain and frustration are excellent teachers...if we deign to pay attention to them.

     Today it’s the militant atheists who are the arrogant ones, the ones who’ve made it their mission to “instruct” us. The worst of them simply can’t allow any expression of faith where they can hear it or read it to go unreproved. Yet they preen themselves on their superior intellects and characters – a superiority that flows entirely from their embrace of atheism!

     Quite a resemblance to left-liberalism, eh what? I don’t think it’s a coincidence. What about you, Gentle Reader?

     It is vital that decent persons, regardless of their personal beliefs, take it upon themselves to rebuke the arrogance and discourtesy of such militants. What was wrong for us is just as wrong for them, and just as likely to result in painful consequences. Worse, considering how much comfort many take from their faith in times of trouble, deriding them for it is monumentally unkind.

     The great challenge is contriving to do this effectively, thus preserving some shred of the standard of public courtesy and civility that Americans once observed, without succumbing to the uncharity and arrogance we seek to deter. I hope my Gentle Readers have some thoughts about how to go about this, because the time has come for it.

     May God bless and keep you all...whether you believe in Him or not.