Posted yesterday on her Facebook page by the congressional representative from my district in Missouri, Congresswoman Vicky Hartzler:
“Today is the National Day of Prayer. Join me in praying for our great nation.”
And a comment posted by someone very near and dear to my heart (okay, it was me…)
“Today is the National Day of Reason. Join me in hoping for (and working toward) the day that our great nation will elect officials who rely on reason and logic rather than superstition and myth.”
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Surprise, there were folks that didn’t much care for my comment!
“Ron. What is the source of ‘reason’? You atheists are so amusing because it takes more superstitions and “faith” to believe your ignorance that to accept the possibility and probability of a supreme being.
“Prove to me there is no God. Use reason and logic. Oops, you can’t.”
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So, in order to believe in reason, one must be an atheist? Yes, that’s SO amusing. The natural progression of that line of thought is that theists do NOT believe in reason (I don’t agree, but I suppose that would explain why he challenged me to prove a negative). My reply…
“Rational, reasonable atheists do not claim there are no gods…we simply lack belief in them since there is no evidence to support their existence. (And no – the Bible contains no proof of a god…no more than a Harry Potter novel contains proof of wizards.) Those who make the positive claim (e.g., “there IS a god” or “Bigfoot DOES exist” or “Professor Plum did it in the Library with the Candlestick”) have the responsibility for providing the evidence to support that claim if they expect anyone else to believe it. Therefore, the challenge you pose is simply a turnaround of that which theists themselves have failed to meet in the 200,000 years of human existence – to provide evidence that there IS a god in a way that makes sense to those who understand the nature of evidence.
“And my source of reason, as well as my sense of morality comes from my evaluation of the real world and the impact of my actions (and the actions of others) on society – certainly not from the stories told around the campfires of some tribe of Bronze Age nomadic sheep herders…stories which were (are) no more than a coping mechanism for ignorant people trying to understand the natural world and trying to justify their own bigotry.”
by Ron Millam, guest contributor