The New Atheism (Ho-Hum)

My comment on this great essay, by Edward Feser, about the new atheists

Great post. I just ordered your book (from the library :). I used to listen to a lot of atheist audio in my mp3 player in an attempt to find intellectual stimulation--Point of Inquiry, Atheist Experience, Free Thought Radio. Recently, though, I gave it up because their infallible inability to get theistic arguments correctly turned from mere frustration into crushing boredom. They are so self-congratulatory in their intellectual superiority while they TOTALLY misunderstand that which they deride as beneath them. After countless hours of this, I just couldn't go on. I don't know how atheists live and breath in such an environment. As a former atheist, I also purchased the God Delusion, hoping for some semblance of intellectual stimulation. This uneducated union laborer was shocked at how a man of Dawkins reputation and learning can fill a book with fatuous rants and call it argument. He appears to be pathologically incapable of properly characterizing the opposing view. My 12 y/o daughter could out philosophize Dawkins. "If one gives answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame." -Proverbs 18:13

BTW, I'm interested in finding some arguments for atheism that are rigorous and compelling. If you know of any, or have some yourself, speak up in the comments.

FREE audio recording of the first part of the Summa Theologica

LibriVox » Summa Theologica, Prima Pars, Initial Questions by Thomas Aquinas

Let the Right One In (2008)

Let the Right One is a beautifully shot horror/drama set in mid 1980s Sweden about Oskar, a 12 y/o emotionally neglected outcast who befriends a vampiress of the same age. The achievement of this film is not its scares or thrills, but its power to draw you into the world of the disattached child as he finds succor in the deleterious. And so, quite uncomfortably, and against your better judgment, you find yourself rooting for Oskar's relationship with a homicidal vampiress. I find the film to be an indictment against the adult world that preaches against all kinds of sins while simultaneously predisposing its children to them. As much as I admired this aspect of the film, I found the plot to be kind of sketchy (and some scenes absurdly foolish), however it will be fun for any fan of the genre. 7.5 out of 10.

Chesterton mocks liberalism 100 years before its time.

Liberalism advocates for animals, earth, and a sundry of hypothetical rights while it champions the killing of actual, living people. Chesterton, as usual, was prophetic—this time in his novel, The Man Who Was Thursday—when he wrote, in 1908, about a bomb-throwing anarchist murderer who died as a martyr of compassion for animals.

He organised the great dynamite coup of Brighton which, under happier circumstances, ought to have killed everybody on the pier. As you also know, his death was as self-denying as his life, for he died through his faith in a hygienic mixture of chalk and water as a substitute for milk, which beverage he regarded as barbaric, and as involving cruelty to the cow. Cruelty, or anything approaching to cruelty, revolted him always.