Monday, March 18, AD 2024 11:10pm

National Atheist Day 2015

 

 

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A happy National Atheist Day to all our atheist readers!  I hope you will have a fun filled day yelling about the Flying Spaghetti Monster in the sky, writing to papers 5000 word letters claiming that Hitler was a believing Christian, trolling Catholic websites to use atheist proof texts that work against Baptists to establish that the Bible is absurd and all the other fun filled activities in which believers in the Great Nothing seem to derive enjoyment from.  Today I would like to direct your attention to a man that deserves honor by all atheists:  Aldous Huxley.

The grandson of “Darwin’s Bulldog”, T. H. Huxley, Huxley deserves to be remembered and not just as the author of the increasingly prophetic Brave New World, but also as being a far seeing and honest atheist.  First as to his honesty.  Huxley in Ends and Means explains why he and so many of his elite contemporaries embraced atheism:

For myself, as, no doubt, for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaningless was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom; we objected to the political and economic system because it was unjust. The supporters of these systems claimed that in some way they embodied the meaning (a Christian meaning, they insisted) of the world. There was one admirably simple method of confuting these people and at the same time justifying ourselves in our political and erotical revolt: we could deny that the world had any meaning whatsoever.”

The interesting thing about Huxley is that while he remained an atheist he became intensely interested in mysticism, along with hallucinogenic drugs, in the latter part of his life.  He even argued 1n 1945 in a best selling book that all religions incorporated what he called the Perennial Philosophy, and that a man could be an adherent of that philosophy while believing in none of the theological aspects of any of the religions.

This was a brilliant attempt to square the circle for atheism.  The great weakness of atheism is that it leads to the conclusion that existence is ultimately meaningless.  Huxley demonstrated how an atheist could derive meaning to the world by stealing borrowing from religions their trappings while ignoring the substance.

CS Lewis, who was a contemporary of Huxley and who died on the same day he did, along with John F. Kennedy, summed up this type of atheism in his The Screwtape Letters:

I wonder you should ask me whether it is essential to keep the patient in ignorance of your own existence. That question, at least for the present phase of the struggle, has been answered for us by the High Command. Our policy, for the moment, is to conceal ourselves. Of course this has not always been so. We are really faced with a cruel dilemma. When the humans disbelieve in our existence we lose all the pleasing results of direct terrorism, and we make no magicians. On the other hand, when they believe in us, we cannot make them materialists and sceptics.
At least, not yet. I have great hopes that we shall learn in due time how to emotionalise and mythologise their science to such an extent that what is, in effect, a belief in us (though not under that name) will creep in while the human mind remains closed to belief in the enemy. The “Life Force,” the wor¬ship of sex, and some aspects of Psychoanalysis may here prove useful. If once we can produce our perfect work—the Materialist Magician, the man, not using, but veritably worshipping, what he vaguely calls “Forces” while denying the existence of “spirits”—then the end of the war will be in sight.

Ah, but this is too philosophical for a day of celebration!  Time for some atheist kid songs!

 

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Mary De Voe
Wednesday, April 1, AD 2015 4:27am

Correct me if I am wrong. At the end of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, the Christian committed suicide. Huxley liberated himself from loving God and his neighbor as himself. Huxley allowed that the neighbor be hanged by himself.
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The liberation Huxley sought was from the tentacles of atheism and from the cowardice that caused him to refuse the faith. The imposed strictures of being related to the Huxleys of Darwin, strictures that John Henry Cardinal Newman threw down for the Holy Eucharist.
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Huxley sought liberation but refused to consider his free will and God Who created his free will. Huxley refused gratitude to God Who created time; his time on earth.
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Perhaps, Aldous Huxley was a deathbed convert, given the liberation of death, and shedding his mortal coil.
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Atheism is worse than nothing. Atheism is indentured service to the devil, enslavement to the perjury told by the demon, that God is non-existent and that the devil does not exist.
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To those who worship The Flying Spaghetti Monster in the sky: Have a good day…God created time.

Don Lond
Don Lond
Wednesday, April 1, AD 2015 4:54am

I always get a chuckle out of the reality that the more professional and public the intellectual atheist–the more he contradicts himself by spending his entire life fighting that which he insists does not exist.
it simply comes down to echoing his master: “I will not serve.”

Don Lond
Don Lond
Wednesday, April 1, AD 2015 4:56am

BTW, let us never forget that even Satan and his demon ilk have never doubted the existence of God.

Paul W Primavera
Wednesday, April 1, AD 2015 6:36am

“I hope you will have a fun filled day yelling about the Flying Spaghetti Monster in the sky…”
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History indicates that Bobby Henderson, a 24-year-old Oregon State University physics graduate from Corvallis, OR had sent in 2005 an open letter regarding the Flying Spaghetti Monster to the Kansas State Board of Education to protest against the teaching of Intelligent Design.
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I have been to Corvallis, OR. Physically it is a very beautiful area. But it is dominated by liberal progressive secular humanist materialist Democrats (I repeat myself excessively). Most buildings look like dilapidated run-down structures from the 1950’s and 60’s that were never renovated. The environmentalists permit few if any upgrades. The most of the college youth are wholly given over to atheism. People there brag that the term Flying Spaghetti Monster was first coined at their University. On weekends all the sexual perverts, drop-out dope smoking white haired hippies of the 1960’s, and Planned Parenthood representatives in bright pink show up for downtown’s natural organic market festival. One weekend I went downtown and one of the Planned Parenthood representatives was going to approach me to sign some petition; I looked at her and from the anger on my countenance she quickly thought better of her action. I am intolerant – completely, totally and wholly – of baby murdering.
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There is one Catholic Church – St Mary’s. I hate its modernist architecture, but it has two wonderful priests from Argentina who are holy and devout men of God (not everyone from Argentina is a Peronist). Going to Confession with them is something I would recommend for anyone. They regularly go to OSU Campus as part of the local Newman Center program of youth outreach and dialogue with the atheists. I could not do what these priest do. I would lose my temper. The one thing I miss about Corvallis is these priests, and 24 hour Adoration. Say a prayer for them at St. Mary’s as they work to reach the lost in the Devil’s backyard.

Michael Dowd
Michael Dowd
Wednesday, April 1, AD 2015 9:24am

Here’s an Aldous quote on which most will agree:

It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one’s life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than ‘Try to be a little kinder.”
― Aldous Huxley, Moksha: Writings on Psychedelics & the Vision

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Wednesday, April 1, AD 2015 10:33am

Aldous who?
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You can’t take that stuff seriously. They made us read the crap in HS. Alas, that was before the serious brainwashing and I had been taught faith/morals by my parents and teachers using the old Baltimore Catechism. Ergo that garbage didn’t make a dent in my thick skull.
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Finally (Thank God!), April Fools Day is atheist day. Coincidence? I think not.

Penguins Fan
Penguins Fan
Wednesday, April 1, AD 2015 3:25pm

Tow Mater to Lightning McQueen: “Tractors is so DUUUUUMB!”
Penguins Fan to any and all atheists: “Atheism is so DUUUUUMB!”

They don’t believe now. They will when they face The Last Four Things.
I doubt that there are atheists in hell.

Clay
Clay
Wednesday, April 1, AD 2015 3:52pm

There hasn’t been an honest atheist since Nietzsche, and he, they say, couldn’t stay one as he died. Would that latterday antiprophets were as honest as him.

Philip
Philip
Thursday, April 2, AD 2015 4:10am

Paul W. Primavera.

Prayers offered for them and you.

I had a very similar encounter at Madison Wisconsin’s Farmers Mkt. one Spring morning many years ago. The ambassador for Death Inc. smirked at me as I recounted the sacredness of every human life. John 15:16; “You did not choose me, I have chosen you…..”

When it comes down to free will and choosing to Not believe vs. believe, I’m humbled that Our gracious God has picked me to bear fruit, a lowly sinner, a nobody. Thank God for God!

Tom D
Tom D
Thursday, April 2, AD 2015 9:14am

Thank you Paul!

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