Good will to all men? Not from the grumpy atheists! (Thank God not all atheists are grumpy but there sure seems to be a lot of them)
Why is it that so many in the atheist community cannot bring themselves to get past their anger whenever they engage in discussions? The language of many of their contributions in public debate is laced with invective and dripping with sarcasm and bile. There are exceptions of course, but they tend to fall more into the category of being the 'exception that proves the rule' when compared to the hostility of many of today's atheist posters. Comment offered by the theists in the public square is often depicted as being 'malicious' or 'venomous' and intended to enslave the 'feeble minded and weak' by those who post. Nothing could be further from the truth. Venom is something that is oriented to death. Christians are oriented in a 180 degree different direction. We speak not to the culture of death that grips our world but rather for the culture of life and light which ends with the gift of eternal life. For example, the Catholic Church in its hum...
Indeed the one sidedness of science would lead to a stifled existence. We need to balance that out against art, literature, music, all creations of the human mind that fully explore our shared humanity. What we need to guard against is the exclusion of science (of which Fr. Tim certainly does not) or the sole reliance only on religious literature. I know of very few scientific people who shun the humanities. Richard Dawkins has numerous references to poetry and literatire, Daniel C Dennett loves Bach's Cantatas and the late Christiopher Hitchens was an ardent avocate for the teaching of the Bible as literature in schools.
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