Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Look who the atheists are broadcasting with -- 950 AM Air America

A January 14 story in the Pioneer Press and carried in a number of local newspapers statewide highlights a new radio program by Minnesota Atheists on 950 AM, Air America. The story was entitled, "Erasing the atheist stigma". Interestingly, the story is no where to be found on the Internet.

I thought there were a number of interesting aspects to the story.

One, it's scheduled for Sunday mornings when of course the atheists' chief protagonists, Christians, are in church. August Berkshire, founder of the show and Minnesota Atheist, is quoted as saying, ""We're not trying to convert people, We're trying to engage them in a discussion. We want people to realize atheists are their neighbors, family, nice people, and that they should get to know us." So much for efforts at dialogue when their chief protagonists are in church. That last line is also what one generally hears from homosexual activists.

Second, it's being aired on the local Air America affiliate. Air America is the radio network for the political and cultural Left in America and I think there's a natural, philosophical affinity between the left and atheists. (The story's author writes, "Berkshire said Air America liberals are a natural audience.") They both reject, generally speaking, a transcendent authority in life, a natural law which is embedded in the creative order, the Declaration's "Laws of nature and nature's God." Atheists outright reject the existence of a Creator and the left rejects the implications of such a Creator for human existence, e.g. the existence of binding ethical authority beyond man. Both groups have drunk deeply at Darwin's well of evolutionary naturalism which holds that man and everything else in the material world are simply the result of a mindless, purposeless, chance process.

And third, the goals of the radio program include the usual "warn people about... erosion of the wall between church and state" but also "anti-gay marriage laws, restrictions on embryonic stem cell research and creationism in schools." That's standard liberal fare. It again shows the natural affinity between the left and atheism.

Atheists are and always will be a small percentage of the general populace, because their beliefs don't line up with the evidence of design and order in creation which point to a Creator. I would argue it takes much more faith, even a faith blind to the evidence, to suggest that the universe and human existence is merely the result of a blind, purposeless, chance process.

1 comment:

Dan Contreras said...

You said, "...their beliefs don't line up with the evidence of design and order in creation which point to a Creator," and that atheists exhibit a, "...blind faith to the evidence."

Please submit the evidence for your claims or retract them with an apology.

Thank you,

Dan Contreras