Atheism: a threat to civilization.

By the Editor

Atheism's common form in Canada is secularism. As we have pointed out many times in the past, modern secularism is not neutral; on the contrary, it is aggressively anti-Christian. While they use the term humanism, there is nothing "humanistic" about atheism. Lenin, Stalin, Hitler and Mao Zhe Dong prove that. Atheism is destructive of the human person, as well as of society at large.

The root cause of this prideful arrogance goes right back to the beginning of human history. When Jesus was tempted in the desert by Satan immediately following his baptism, the tempter besought Jesus to declare himself independent from God. Jesus refused. (Matthew. ch. 4. See also Pope Benedict, Jesus of Nazareth, 2007, pp. 28-29.) Earlier in history, Satan had applied the same temptation successfully to Adam and Eve; if they disobeyed the commandment of God not to eat from "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil," they would become like God themselves: "When you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil" (Gn. 3:5).

John Paul II 

Pope John Paul II dealt with the subject at some length in his encyclical Dominum et vivificantem. (On the Holy Spirit in the life of the Church and the world), May 1986 (transcribed as in the original);

37." ... Here we find ourselves at the very centre of what could be called the "anti-Word," that is to say the '"anti-truth:" For the truth about man becomes falsified: who man is and what are the impassable limits of his being and freedom. This "anti-truth" is possible because at the same time there is a complete falsification of the truth about who God is. God the Creator is placed in a state of suspicion, indeed of accusation, in the mind of the creature. For the first time in human history there appears the perverse "genius of suspicion." Man seeks to "falsify" Good itself the absolute Good, which precisely in the work of creation has manifested itself as the Good which gives itself in an inexpressible way: as bonum diffusivum sui, as creative love. Who can completely "convince concerning sin," or concerning this motivation of man's original disobedience, except the one who alone is the gift and the source of all giving of gifts, except the Spirit, who "searches the depths of God" and is the love of the Father and the Son?

38. "For in spite of all the witness of creation ... the spirit of darkness is capable of showing God as an enemy of his own creature, and in the first place as an enemy of man, as a source of danger and threat to man. In this way Satan manages to sow in man's soul the seed of opposition to the one who "from the beginning" would be considered as man's enemy--and not as Father. Man is challenged to become the adversary of God!

"The analysis of sin in its original dimension indicates that, through the influence of the "father of lies," throughout the history of humanity there will be a constant pressure on man to reject God, even to the point of hating him: "Love of self to the point of contempt for God," as St. Augustine puts it. Man will be inclined to see in God primarily a limitation of himself, and not the source of his own freedom and the fullness of good. We see this confirmed in the modern age, when the atheistic ideologies seek to root out religion on the grounds that religion causes the radical "alienation" of man, as if man were dispossessed of his own humanity when, accepting the idea of God, he attributes to God what belongs to man, and exclusively to man! Hence a process of thought and historico-sociological practice in which the rejection of God has reached the point of declaring his "death." An absurdity, both in concept and expression!

"But the ideology of the "death of God" is more a threat to man, as the Second Vatican Council indicates 'For without the Creator the creature would disappear ... when God is forgotten the creature itself grows unintelligible." The ideology of the "death of God" easily demonstrates in its effects that on the "theoretical and practical" levels it is the ideology of the "death of man."

Christian belief in Canada

Today the Christian belief in God is under tremendous attack. It began in the 1960s with the overthrow of the age-old condemnation of contraceptives, divorce, abortion, and homosexual activism (1967-1969). Today in Canada, the leaders of three out of four political parties are agnostics or atheists. The print and visual media are overwhelmingly agnostic atheist, with the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, and the CBC in the lead. Catholic Insight's March article, "The Frankfurt School" indicates the prevailing ideas now dominant in educational circles. The worldwide elitist hostility towards the Pope for contradicting the folly of the condom is good example of atheists at work. (see above).

Gary Goodyear, Minister of Science

As noted in the March 2009 editorial, theists started a poster campaign using buses in several countries, with the slogan "There is probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."

Some people take the current atheist propaganda campaign lightly. Others, wisely, do not. The Catholic Bishop of Calgary, Fred Henry, put his finger on what is wrong with this sloganeering. It is grounded, he says, in the militant atheism of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and others who want to slam religion and drive it from the public square. "Their goal is to divorce political questions like abortion from moral claims and religion; to control school curricula so that a secular ideology can be promoted; and to portray Christianity not only as wrong but evil."

"Their strategy," he goes on to say, "is not to argue with religious views or to prove them wrong but to treat them with scorn so that they are pushed outside the bounds of acceptable debate and to liberate oneself from moral constraint and indulge one's appetites by portraying religion as a form of repression." (Feb. 15, 2009).

An example of trying to deny the Christian a place in the public forum was the Globe & Mail's recent attack on the Minister of Science, Gary Goodyear. This was joined by agnostics in the Canadian Press, the National Post and the Toronto Star. "Minister won't confirm belief in evolution," cried the headline in the Globe & Mail, going on to quote "some" unnamed "senior researchers" who supposedly expressed concern that Goodyear is somehow "suspicious of science."

When Goodyear attempted to move the interview off the topic, Globe reporter Anne McIlroy demanded clarification "and then charged him with being "evasive," quoting unnamed individual figures who supposedly said they were "shocked" and "flabbergasted" by the minister's comments--(or, more accurately, non-comments).

They asserted that (Darwinian materialist) evolution is an unquestionable, testable and provable fact (Globe & Mail, March 17, 2009).

The witch hunt was picked up by the Canadian Press, which exclaimed that there was a "brewing controversy" that echoed the "trouble" that creationist beliefs have allegedly caused the Conservative party and its predecessors in the past. In the November 2000 election, the Christian leader of the Canadian Alliance party, Stockwell Day, was lampooned by Liberal strategist Warren Kinsella, who suggested Day believed the earth was 6,000 years old and that humans shared the earth with dinosaurs (Toronto Star, March 17, 2009).

Goodyear was also criticized by National Post columnist Colby Cosh and John Moore, a CFRB radio talkshow host (National Post, March 18, 2009). He subsequently faced a grilling on the CTV program Power Play with Jane Taber (Globe & Mail, March 18, 2009) and was caricatured in the National Post (March 20, 2009) and twice in the Globe Mail (March 18 and 19, 2009).

If that was not enough, the National Post depicted the situation as degenerating into an "uproar" and further pressed Goodyear to clarify his point of view (March 19, 2009).

David Asper

Goodyear did attract some defence, however, about the harangue against him. The most effective contribution came from David Asper, executive vice-president of Can West Global Communications Corp., owner of the National Post, in a piece entitled, "The liberal war on faith." Asper cited "sensationalized non-sequiturs" in the original Globe article, which led to a "gratuitous attack ... on the basis of religious beliefs." Asper harkened back to the Stockwell Day episode, in which Day was vilified by the press for being an Evangelical Christian, as well as to a 2006 incident in which MP Bill Graham attacked a senior staffer in Rona Ambrose's office because of his evangelical Christian beliefs.

"There has been a festering undercurrent of anti-religious bigotry in the methods of attack used by left-wing critics," Asper observed. "This stuff has to stop ... What happened this week is part of a larger and more insidious political strategy designed to make voters fear Conservatives on the basis of individual religious choices" (National Post, March 19, 2009).

National Post columnist Jonathan Kay chimed in, charging, "McIlroy and her editors went up and got some sexed-up reaction quotes from outraged secularists who could be depended on to slam any inkling of spirituality as a portent of theocracy ... This particular Globe story is a disgrace. Indeed, there is an air of witch hunt about it ... (This was) just a journal-concocted pseudo-scandal aimed at the one group in society that is fair game for abuse in the mainstream Canadian media: white, male, English, Christians." (National Post March 18, 2009).