“I’m no kin to the monkey!”

the zombie kitten apocalypse!

Quotable author

Everyone probably knows C.S. Lewis dabbled with atheism (at least doubted his faith enough to think he was) for a while before getting further into Christian writing. I found this quote via Natalie Asplund (which makes it sound like we’re friends, heh):

“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”
— C.S. Lewis

I could say much the same thing and mean it. Why? Because the sun doesn’t rise; the earth rotates. I believe in Christianity as much as I believe the sun rises.

She also includes this quote by the same man:

“Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning…”

Actually, I have no idea what this means. I don’t particularly mind if the universe has no meaning. Why does it need one? Why is it necessary to think we’re special in any kind of way? Why is it necessary to think the whole universe exists so we can see it by the light of God’s balls of flaming gas?

Okay, I find that very funny. I have to remember I wrote that.

From Secular Humanism (breaks added):

If it is true that Lewis at one time considered himself an atheist, his ignorance of the subject is a glaring indictment of atheism’s failure to educate even its own adherents about the true merits of our position. For instance, in Lewis’s The Case for Christianity, he makes this ludicrous statement: “When I was an Atheist, I had to persuade myself that the whole human race was pretty good fools until about one hundred years ago.”

Perhaps C.S. Lewis, the naïve naive but skeptical student, could labor under the fantasy that there had been no unbelievers until the nineteenth century, but how could the mature, academician Lewis, expert on the subject of religious philosophy, fail to recognize the history of non-belief, which probably stretches back as far as religion itself?

Whom other than atheists did Lewis suppose his Bible was referring to in Psalms 14:1: “The fool hath said in his heart there is no God?” And did he not consider the possibly chilling effect such pronouncements may have had upon expressions along these lines? Did he not draw any conclusion from the fact that the Christian predilection for murdering anyone critical of their faith waned at about the same time he recognizes the appearance of atheism?

Thoughts?

The following article needs a warning label

so I made one:

A student was suspended from school recently on account of an art project. The student happens to be eight years old.

A Taunton father is outraged after his 8-year-old son was sent home from school and required to undergo a psychological evaluation after drawing a stick-figure picture of Jesus Christ on the cross.

The father said he got a call earlier this month from Maxham Elementary School informing him that his son, a second-grade student, had created a violent drawing. The image in question depicted a crucified Jesus with Xs covering his eyes to signify that he had died on the cross. The boy wrote his name above the cross.

“As far as I’m concerned, they’re violating his religion,” the incredulous father said.

He requested that his name and his son’s name be withheld from publication to protect the boy.

But it’d be easier to protect the boy if this didn’t make world-accessible headlines, and anyone in his class has already spread the word around about how he got in trouble. And, I don’t think his suspension qualifies as a violation against a religion. I think it’s a teacher’s screw up and a ridiculous reason to give a kid the boot, and a ridiculous thing to drag into the media – except for people who want to try and claim somebody’s being persecuted and suppressed on account of a religion.

The student drew the picture shortly after taking a family trip to see the Christmas display at the National Shrine of Our Lady of La Salette, a Christian retreat site in Attleboro. He made the drawing in class after his teacher asked the children to sketch something that reminded them of Christmas, the father said.

Why would the kid draw Christ on a cross at Christmastime? Anyone else his age would be into reindeer and Santa and elves, or even the nativity scene stuff, albeit badly rendered. If the kid thinks of a cross, it’s evidence of how his folks have trained him to think.

“I think what happened is that because he put Xs in the eyes of Jesus, the teacher was alarmed and they told the parents they thought it was violent,” said Toni Saunders, an educational consultant with the Associated Advocacy Center.

Saunders is working with the boy’s parents after a mutual acquaintance referred them to her.

“When I got that call, I was so appalled that I had to do something,” Saunders said.

“They weren’t looking at the fact that this is an 8-year-old child with special needs,” she added. “They made him leave school, and they recommended that a psychiatrist do an evaluation.”

Interesting. What kind of special needs? Or would that make it too obvious to know which family this is? Here it seems the special need is 24 hours of religious pampering a day or the folks have a conniption (see the real reason below).