The New Evangelical Militant Atheism

[RLF]

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13AjsFRR9Mk" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13AjsFRR9Mk</a>

Atheism is making another comeback raising its head in a new and vigorous attack on religious belief. Do you believe in God? How strong is YOUR belief? Can it withstand any ATTACK ? Spiritual warfare ?  Evangelical militant atheism...Religious Intolerance in Redding and Shasta County ?

The New Activism

"Starting with biologist Richard Dawkins, a group of intellectuals have recently mounted a pro-atheism, anti-religious campaign. In addition to Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens are the most visible faces of this movement, sometimes blithesomely referred to as the 'Four Horsemen'. The movement is sometimes called the 'New Atheists' or 'New Atheism'."

Antitheism may be adopted as a label by those who take the view that theism is destructive. One example of this view is demonstrated in Letters to a Young Contrarian (2001), in which Christopher Hitchens writes: "I'm not even an atheist so much as I am an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches, and the effect of religious belief, is positively harmful.  

Evangelical militant atheism

Seen increasingly in Redding and Shasta County newspapers, Online , and Television; today the term "evangelical militant atheism" may be used by theists as an epithet for the "militant evolutionists who want to silence the idea of creation". It is sometimes used pejoratively to describe people who are considered to campaign too actively, in your face and outspokenly – or militantly – for atheism and against religion: "those who advocate the elimination of religion" as opposed to "progressive, enlightened people who are simply 'nonbelievers'.

The Trouble with Atheism

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i20vLIgBt4M" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i20vLIgBt4M</a>


Atheists present themselves as enlightened and civil. But this new commercial will reveal the shocking truth to viewers. The French Revolution, Communism, Nazism, etc. have taught us that the atheistic worldview will inevitably lead to the persecution of Christians and the killing of anyone who gets in the way. What’s worse is that atheism is paving a wide road for Islam to advance in our nation and around the world.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lm1JYYIk-pI" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lm1JYYIk-pI</a>

[RLF]

In his debate with Kyle Butt, atheist Dan Barker Co-president, Freedom From Religion Foundation, admitted his moral woldview will lead him to rape millions in order to "save" humanity !

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGBrlIZRzjE" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGBrlIZRzjE</a>

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Spiritual Warfare

"And the disciples came and said to Him, “Why do You speak to them in parables?”
 
He answered and said to them, “Because it has been given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given.  For whoever has, to him more will be given, and he will have abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him. 

Therefore I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.  And in them the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled, which says:


             ‘ Hearing you will hear and shall not understand,
                And seeing you will see and not perceive;
                 For the hearts of this people have grown dull.
                  Their ears are hard of hearing,
                    And their eyes they have closed,
                      Lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears,
                        Lest they should understand with their hearts and turn,
                          So that I should heal them.’
 
 But blessed are your eyes for they see, and your ears for they hear;  for assuredly, I say to you that many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it."


Another parable He put forth to them, saying: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field;  but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way.  But when the grain had sprouted and produced a crop, then the tares also appeared.  So the servants of the owner came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?’ 

He said to them,   ‘An enemy has done this.’

Matthew 13

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"Redding man sues state over religious drug treatment program"

Rob Rogers - Record Searchlight - September 29, 2008

"A Redding man filed a lawsuit in federal court Monday, claiming his rights as an atheist were violated when he was ordered to take part in a 12-step drug treatment program that taught reliance on a higher power.

Barry A. Hazle, Jr., 40, was found to have violated terms of his parole and sent to prison for 125 days after he formally complained about the program, according to his attorneys. His legal problems began with a 2004 felony conviction on methamphetamine possession.

He was placed on parole in February 2007 and ordered to complete a 90-day live-in drug treatment program at Empire Recovery Center in Redding. Hazle said he requested a non-religious program.

When it became clear the program at Empire included religious content, he spoke to officials there about enrolling in a secular program, he said.

“It had a religious component I wasn’t comfortable with,” he said.

Empire officials told him he needed to take up his complaint with his parole officer, Mitch Crofut, Hazle said.

Hazle complained to Crofut, who told Hazle to fill out a state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation complaint form after he found no secular drug treatment program was offered locally. Hazle filled out the form, asking to be placed in a secular treatment program, Hazle said.

Three days later, “I was taken out of class and taken back to prison,” Hazle said. He had already served a year and a half in prison, a sentence that later was overturned on appeal.

Hazle said as Crofut was leading him out of class, he told Hazle he was going to make an example of him.

On the way out, Hazle said he told Crofut he’d withdraw his complaint if it meant he could avoid going back to prison. He said Crofut told him it was too late.

Crofut on Monday declined to comment on the lawsuit.

“I don’t know that I can make a comment on anything,” Crofut said.

He referred calls to the Department of Corrections’ press information officer. The spokesman there declined to comment until he had time to review the lawsuit.

Hazle is arguing his first amendment rights were violated for being required to enroll in a religious-type treatment program with no other treatment option and then sent back to prison for complaining about it. Hazle is the son of Record Searchlight City Editor Maline Hazle."

READ MORE:

http://www.redding.com/news/2008/sep/29/redding-many-sues-state-over-religious-drug-treatm/

[RLF]

Evangelical Atheism

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoGWwULiLlU" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoGWwULiLlU</a>

[schiara]

The Bible says the love of the greater number will cool off in the end times.  I have heard it said recently that 75 percent of College students are losing their faith.

I pray for all of those who are losing their faith, that God instill in them his wisdom of his teachings, in Jesus name, amen.

ScottC 

[RLF]

"The so-called Brights are coming, and it's something to be concerned about"...

On New Atheist movement:

http://christiancadre.org/newatheism.html

On Richard Dawkins' "God Delusion":

http://atheismsucks.blogspot.com/2006/12/book-reviews-of-richard-dawkins-god.html

On Christopher Hitchens' "God is not great":

http://atheismsucks.blogspot.com/2007/05/book-reviews-of-christopher-hitchens.html

On Sam Harris' "Letter to a Christian Nation":

http://atheismsucks.blogspot.com/2006/12/book-reviews-of-letter-to-christian.html

Reasons to Believe...Science-Faith Think Tank.

http://www.reasons.org

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ATHEIST ORGANIZATIONS' AGENDA

"Militant atheism is becoming an ever-increasing dynamic and powerful foe of religion worldwide. Militant atheists are determined to free the world of any vestige of religion and God. To do so, some atheistic organizations are adopting an evangelical approach meant to proselytize and convert. Their organizations are well funded and well organized. Though they hide their true intents behind a veneer of seemingly honorable aims, such as defending human rights, their final intentions are far from honorable and innocuous. This section is meant to make manifest their true intentions and their long-term agenda."

http://atheismexposed.tripod.com/atheist_agenda.htm

[RLF]

Atheists spend a lot of time thinking about the motives for belief. Why do religious people believe these ridiculous things? When you turn the tables on atheists and ask them why they don't believe, they will answer, "Because we don't have enough evidence. We don't believe because there's no proof." But if you think about it, this is an inadequate explanation, because if you truly believe that there is no proof for God, then you're not going to bother with the matter. You're just going to live your life as if God isn't there.
I don't believe in unicorns, so I just go about my life as if there are no unicorns. You'll notice that I haven't written any books called The End of the Unicorn, Unicorns Are Not Great, or The Unicorn Delusion, and I don't spend my time obsessing about unicorns. What I'm getting at is that you have these people out there who don't believe that God exists, but who are actively attempting to eliminate religion from society, setting up atheist video shows, and having atheist conferences. There has to be more going on here than mere unbelief.

If you really look at the motivations of contemporary atheists, you'll find that they don't even really reject Christian theology. It's not as if the atheist objects to the resurrection or the parting of the sea; rather, it is Christian morality to which atheists object, particularly Christian moral prohibitions in the area of sex. The atheist looks at all of Christianity's "thou shalt nots"—homosexuality is bad; divorce is bad; adultery is bad; premarital sex is bad—and then looks at his own life and says, "If these things are really bad, then I'm a bad guy. But I'm not a bad guy; I'm a great guy. I must thus reinterpret or (preferably) abolish all of these accusatory teachings that are putting me in a bad light."

http://www.salvomag.com/new/articles/salvo7/7segelstein.php

[RLF]

"Recently, I noticed a similarity between atheists and homosexuals that hadn't occurred to me before. It has to do with the way they wage their wars. Basically, they erect straw men, put words in their straw mouths, and then engage in battle with these creatures they've cobbled together with spit and glue.

It just seems to me that it's high time we began setting the record straight. To begin with, there is no such thing as homophobia. A phobia is defined as a fear or anxiety that exceeds normal proportions. Concocting the word was simply a rather sly way of suggesting that it is heterosexuals who are deviant. The other lie that is parroted with some frequency is that those who don't fully support the gay agenda are most likely latent homosexuals, which is supposed to suggest, I assume, that lurking inside every heterosexual man is an interior decorator screaming to get out and do something about those curtains.

Odd, isn't it, that you never hear about latent heterosexuals?

Even the ancient Greeks, to whom modern-day gays enjoy comparing themselves, never engaged in anything quite as bizarre as same-sex marriages.

The proof that heterosexual men aren't all sitting around fantasizing about being seduced by Boy George or Richard Chamberlain is that every heterosexual man I know prefers having his cavity worked on by a dentist than by a proctologist.

Homosexuals like to picture themselves as the innocent victims of the oppressive majority. The recent unpleasantness on behalf of same-sex marriages doesn't happen to be a response to laws depriving gays of any rights or privileges to which they are otherwise entitled. They are as free as they've always been to marry members of the opposite sex. For several millennia, everyone has understood marriage to mean the sacred union of a man and a woman. I have asked on more than one occasion if the institution of marriage is to be turned on its head to accommodate the ludicrous demands of a very small number of people, on what moral or legal basis does society then deny fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, or, say, your cousin Phyllis and a dozen Elvis impersonators, from tying the knot. If the parties merely need to be consenting adults, on what basis could you prevent Hugh Hefner and his bevy of blonde companions from pledging their troth before man and God? I have yet to receive a response.

One other point should be made. In spite of all the rioting and all the whining in the wake of Proposition 8, only a few thousand same-sex marriages have taken place in Massachusetts, Connecticut or even here in California, where it was permitted for a while. And most of those marriages involved lesbians. Yet the way their male counterparts have been carrying on, you'd have thought the gay bars had all been padlocked.

This brings us to atheists and their own brand of hypocrisy and lies. It's silly enough when they feel they can use logic to disprove the existence of God. But it's worse when in voicing their angry opposition to organized religion, they begin sounding exactly like the religious zealots they claim to despise.

Still, it's when they begin blaming all the evils of the world on religion that my own sense of reason and logic kick in. Inevitably, they bring up the Spanish Inquisition, as if the new year we just rang in was 1478. Ask them to make a slightly more contemporary case and they'll bring up Nazi Germany with a "gotcha" gleam in their eye. While it's true that Germany had been a traditionally Christian nation, Hitler was neither German nor Christian. He and his followers were pagans. They didn't march and murder under the cross of Jesus Christ, but under the swastika of Adolf Hitler.

Whenever atheists blame religion for causing most of the world's mass murders, they merely prove that they're not only bigots, but ignoramuses. While nobody knows exactly how many millions of innocent people have been butchered in the past 90 years, we do know that the vast majority died at the hands of Stalin, Hitler, Mao and Pol Pot, atheists all.

The only exceptions to that rule, of course, are those who have been gassed, beheaded and blown up, by the Muslim faithful. And yet Islam, interestingly enough, is the one religion that doesn't seem to enrage atheists! Could the reason possibly be that, for all their huffing and puffing about how awful all religions are, even the atheists understand that Jewish and Christian martyrs will die for their beliefs, whereas Islamics will kill you for theirs?"

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=86029

[RLF]

"Judge: Atheist's rights violated"

Scott Mobley - April 8, 2010

California State parole officers violated a Redding atheist’s rights when they imprisoned him for refusing to participate in a religious drug treatment program, a federal judge has ruled.

Barry Hazle Jr., a 40-year-old computer services specialist, has sued his parole officer and nearly a dozen others in connection with his 125-day imprisonment in 2007 after he declined to participate in a 12-step treatment program at Empire Recovery Center. In his recent ruling, the judge dropped Empire Recovery Center from the suit, which is scheduled for trial in late June.

“I am very gratified with the judge’s determination as to the parole defendants,” said Hazle, son of Maline Hazle, Record Searchlight metro editor. “I’ve always known that my First Amendment rights were violated.”

John Heller, a San Francisco-based attorney representing Hazle, said the case goes to the heart of Establishment Clause protections against forced participation in religious activities.

“This is one of the most important protections from government intrusion you can imagine,” Heller said. “You don’t get to trample on somebody’s constitutional rights just because they happen to be on parole.”

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation in late 2008 declared that placing parolees in religious-based drug treatment programs over their objections is unconstitutional, based on a 2007 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling for a Hawaiian Buddhist who had objected to a 12-step program.

The CDCR has ordered parole officers to find alternative programs for such parolees.

The order came too late for Hazle, who will seek damages and an injunction “prohibiting the illegal expenditure of state money to fund unconstitutional parole practices” at trial in June.

U.S. District Judge Garland E. Burrell Jr. had denied that injunction in his summary judgment in the Hazle case, ruling the CDCR’s order made the issue moot.

Heller, Hazle’s attorney, said he wants something more ironclad than the state order.

“We want to make sure this never happens again,” Heller said.

Hazle had asked for a secular drug treatment program just before he was released from the California Rehabilitation Center in Norco in February 2007. He had spent a year at the center on drug possession charges that had earlier been overturned by an appeals court, according to court documents.

A representative of WestCare California Inc., a Las Vegas-based nonprofit that coordinates substance abuse programs under contract with the CDCR, had recommended that Hazle attend Empire Recovery Center in Redding.

Hazle went to Empire and quickly discovered the treatment center uses a 12-step program that appeals to God and “higher powers,” according to court documents.

Hazle asked both his parole officer, Mitch Crofoot, and WestCare whether he could transfer to a non-religious drug treatment center. Crofoot and WestCare both told him there were no secular alternatives.

Hazle filed a formal appeal with the state asking for transfer. If transfer wasn’t possible, Hazle wanted to be excused from the residential drug treatment requirement.

Meanwhile, Hazle resisted participating in the treatment program at Empire. Employees there told Crofoot that Hazle had been “disruptive, though in a congenial way, to the staff as well as other students ... sort of passive-aggressive,” according to court documents.


Read More:

http://www.redding.com/news/2010/apr/08/judge-atheists-rights-violated/