Sunday, November 26, 2006

Is there a God?

I have been thinking about writing this for a while. I’ve wanted to talk about Richard Dawkins. In fact when Thanksgiving came around last Thursday, this funny question came to mind: Do atheists (in US) celebrate Thanksgiving? It sounded amusing to me. I didn’t care and wasn’t curious about the answer. I was just looking for a way to properly address this issue. Is there a God? I think I know the answer to both questions and what an atheist would say, but according to one of my friends, that is the mother of all questions. I think Man has been questioning that for ever (at least some have and I can tell you that I have.)

Now, is this a coincident that I happen to see this program today and other (related, if there is such a thing) coincident I discover looking more in to this? I think it was the Fox news channel today, that was reporting and dedicating a whole program to this (well known) evangelist called Rick Warren and his great success with his book, A Purpose Driven Life. These two people and their belief are on the opposite end of this question. I have a hard time with religion and I find it comforting and reassuring when I find people like Richard Dawkins. I don’t want to think I’m the only person who feels this way. Then I see people like Pastor Rick Warren and his followers, right under my nose, in southern California and I feel despair. PURPOSE DRIVEN LIFE I know that this evangelist is not alone and there is a lot of that going around. I just chose not to think about it. It’s equally amazing (to me) the Pastor Warren’s web site mentions Richard Dawkins, as a stamps of approval and as a justification of their deity.

Under PURPOSE DRIVEN CAFÉ, you will find the following paragraph (description, which accompanies Richard Dawkins related stories.) Here it is:
In the magazine Free Inquiry, British biologist Richard Dawkins calls religion a mental virus – a false belief that infects your mind the way a virus infects your body. Consider the symptoms, Dawkins writes. People don’t adopt a religion after carefully weighing the evidence; faith is “caught” the way a cold is...
But of course, in the subsequent paragraphs, the writer of that article is presenting his opposite views and arguing to the contrary.

I mention this because I see myself and free thinkers like me as a minority. The program today showed how religious people follow this (and other) evangelical super stars and subscribe to his preaching and satisfy their spiritual needs. This time of year, this spiritual and jovial feeling, is all around you, with Christmas around the corner. For example, The new Christmas movie, The Nativity Story.

Here is the real story, an article about Richard Dawkins, the Atheist, evolutionary biologist.

3 comments:

Mehrabaneman said...

Hi and welcome to blogger. I was writing something for you about if god exist and it became so lenghty that I just published it in my blogg!

bijan said...

Hi there! Thank you. I don't mind lengthy comments.

Mehrabaneman said...

Thank you for taking the time and reading my prev. bloggs.