A Response to the ‘Top 10 Awkward Facts About the Atheist Monument’

[Rob H.]

The whole thing is excellent. Excerpt:

A Response to the ‘Top 10 Awkward Facts About the Atheist Monument’
By Hemant Mehta

...

8. But the symbol actually shows an atom. J.J. Thomson won the 1906 Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering the electron. He was a churchgoer who read the Bible every night. Which is awkward for atheists.

Niels Bohr discovered the structure of an atom and he was an atheist. Checkmate!

Why would Thomson’s Christianity be awkward, anyway? Science works despite religious beliefs. Isaac Newton was a religious man, but that doesn’t mean atheists find it awkward to do math.

Maybe someone should remind Hoopes that the structure of DNA was discovered by atheists… and he has DNA inside of him… OHMYGOD, SO AWKWARD!

[onager]

1. Thanks! This is sort of weird...

A quote on the monument says atheists “Want war eliminated.” Which is awkward because warriors like Stalin and Lenin and Mao and Hoxha and Ceaușescu — were all atheists.

Hoxha and Ceaușescu? They terrorized their own people very effectively, but AFAIK they aren't exactly in any list of the world's greatest warriors.

Quite a difference between those 2 and Stalin, who lost 20 million citizens in his war with the Nazis. And Mao, who warriored pretty much continually from 1927 to 1949, IIRC.

In the case of Hoxha, I'm guessing Hoopes is just using that name as a dog-whistle because Albania declared itself an officially atheist state.

Ceaușescu? Damned if I know what point Hoopes is trying to make by dragging him in. Even that cheap thug got a couple of things right, though - like denouncing the 1968 Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia. An act which could have easily earned Romania a visit from Russia, in the Spirit of Fraternal Socialism. With tanks.*

Anyway, thanks for posting this. I'm a big fan of Mr. Mehta.

*Bonus Irrelevant Movie Tip! I recently saw a good Romanian movie from 2006, "The Way I Spent the End of the World." It takes place in the months leading up to the fall of Ceaușescu.

A smart teen girl and her boyfriend accidentally break a marble bust of The Great Leader. She is tried by the Student Council, denounced as a "bad Communist" and expelled to a low-rent vocational school. I really liked it, but I'm weird. As you all know.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0799991/

[AtheistCrusader]

4. Stalin wasn't really an Atheist.

He simply substituted The Party for Religion, and himself for what most would call god. He constructed a political theocracy, with himself at the head.

He may have been an atheist, after all, but that's not how he operated. He mimicked a theocratic state religion in every way.

[awoke_in_2003]

7. Not only that...

but Stalin didn't invade Germany- he didn't start the fight. Not trying to defend the murderous bastard, BTW.

[SwissTony]

2. Thanks for the post, Rob.

I'm not American, so I can plead ignorance, but weren't the Founding Fathers a mix of Christians, deists and atheists?

OT: under Ceaușescu, Romania had a pretty decent rugby team. He personally supported it. It's gone downhill since then.

[LostOne4Ever]

5. Its hard to classify some of their veiws exactly

however, there definitely a few Deists and Unitarians. Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Hamilton, and Paine would probably be the best examples.

Jefferson's views were definitely deistic but he saw Jesus as a great moral guide. He redid a version of the new testament where he took out all references to supernatural. I guess you could call him a philosophical Christian? Unitarians like to claim him alot and there are quotes from Jefferson praising Unitarianism.

John Adams was a Unitarian, and is sometimes regarded as a Christian Deist.

Madison was known for owning some deist material.

Franklin called himself both a deist and a Christian in his autobiography. I guess another case of philosophical Christianity?

Paine wrote the age of reason in which he criticized the bible and promoted Deism. No one in their right mind even attempts to deny that he was a deist.

Hamilton is suspected of being a deist but using the language of Christianity for political ends.

So you are going to come across alot of conflicting statements on their religious views if you try to hunt them down. Some of them were members of their state churches (Jefferson), referring to themselves as Christians and deists, and well it can be a mess =P

Almost all of them denied the divinity of Jesus though.

[rexcat]

3. Tom Hoopes, former editor of the National Catholic Register...

says it all.

[sakabatou]

6. Do much ignorance on the religious side

[awoke_in_2003]

8. I love...

the Billy Madison quote at the end.