This week I was given the knock down stunning argument against Christianity – wait for it….(cue drum roll)….it will knock you for six and destroy your faith or confirm your genius in being an unbeliever. Can’t stand the suspense? Ok, here it is – an official of the National Secular Society tweeted me the following link.
It must be important because the SSS (Scottish Secular Society) also gave the story prominence. A 68 year old former teacher is charged with possessing indecent images of children. Sadly it is a story that is all too common – but why was this one (amongst the many such stories) cited by the Secularists? What does it have to do with secularism? The logic (?) is simple. The man concerned was a church organist (cure crude comments on SSS Fb page). Now a reasonable person might ask what this has to do with Christianity. The trouble is we have no idea – we don’t know if he is guilty (that will be for a court to decide), we don’t know what his faith is, if he is a Christian or believes anything about Christ (I know church organists who are atheists) or that if he professed to be a Christian, his Christianity was in anyway a motivating factor. But that does not stop the atheist secularists who, although they also don’t know, nonetheless seek to make the link.
In a pathetic attempt at self-justification SSS stated “This is not so much about pulling up all the instances of sex crimes involving religionists – before I’m asked – as it is about demonstrating that there is something fundamentally wrong with organisations that promote such socially conservative attitudes to sex.” Therefore making a direct link between the alleged use of child pornography and the church. Unproven, unsubstantiated and unreasoning. It is the classic ad hom tactic. And it is typical of the atheist secularists. 95% of SSS posts are against religion, and many are ad hom attacks of this nature.
The latest in this trend is if a Transgender commits suicide the immediate response is to blame ‘oppressive religion’. In another example sent to me one atheist declares that an apparent suicide by a transgender in the US means “Isn’t it time to start banning and burning holy books and incarcerating those who preach from them?”
So lets take a deep breath and think about this. I will just make the following obvious points, and I apologise if they are too obvious for you, but it seems that sometimes prejudice can blind one to the obvious.
1) Using highly personal emotive individual stories (selectively reported) to accuse a whole group of people is dishonest and in one sense unanswerable. It is the ‘when did you stop beating your wife?’ type question.
2) Can you imagine what would happen if every time a black man/homosexual/Jew committed a crime it was pointed out that they were black, homosexual or Jewish? What would be the relevance of that? In the Dundee case cited above it is noticeable that the Secularists post it because of the ‘church organist’ part of his life (which has no relevance whatsoever) and don’t mention the fact that he was a teacher (which given the nature of the accusation is far more significant!).
3) You will also note that they don’t post the numerous stories about ‘non-religious’ people who commit abuse. For example in the news today is the story of the mother and her Lesbian lover who killed her daughter. Would I post this story because it shows that lesbianism can lead to child murder? Of course not. That would make me as bad as the Secularists! I don’t know the woman. I don’t know her motivation. I don’t know if her lesbianism had anything to do with it. So I would not even attempt to make the link. The story won’t be posted on the Solas FB page or the Free Church web page. This is not to say that there might not be a link, just as sometimes there might be a link between an abusers religious beliefs and their abuse. But to make or hint at such a judgement without knowledge, is not only ignorant but evil.
Last week I wrote a piece in which I wondered whether to some militant atheists, Christians who believe the Bible, are just one step above paedophiles. One of the secularists immediately responded, why one step above? and then stated that we were the same, giving as evidence an example of one ‘gospel singer’ who had had sex with a 15 year old. In the narrow, closed and twisted world in which they live, when they cannot answer the arguments, and when people don’t back down in the face of their bullying intolerant rants, they just reinterpret everything to confirm their own bias. And so in order to justify their stance they ended up labelling me as a closet atheist homosexual who is on an equivalent level with a paedophile. I guess to such people a church organist being accused of having child pornography is just further ‘proof’. God have mercy when we are faced with such illogicality and hatred. How can we ‘reason’ in the face of such evil?