正文
Mapantsula是VT的一個教授。針對Dinesh D’Souza在VT事件後對無神論者的攻擊，有以下回複。在美根據Mapantsula的網絡日記整理。
Thu Apr 19, 2007 at 03:55:16 PM PDT
Mapantsula：I am an atheist and a professor at VirginiaTech. Dinesh D’Souza says that I don’t exist, that I have nothing tosay, that I am nowhere to be found.
But I am here.
Dinesh D'Souza 在VT事件後對無神論者攻擊到:
“Notice something interesting about the aftermath of the Virginia Techshootings? Atheists are nowhere to be found. Every time there is apublic gathering there is talk of God and divine mercy and spiritualhealing. Even secular people like the poet Nikki Giovanni use languagethat is heavily drenched with religious symbolism and meaning.
The atheist writer Richard Dawkins has observed that according to thefindings of modern science, the universe has all the properties of asystem that is utterly devoid of meaning. The main characteristic ofthe universe is pitiless indifference. Dawkins further argues that wehuman beings are simply agglomerations of molecules, assembled intofunctional units over millennia of natural selection, and as for thesoul--well, that's an illusion!
To no one's surprise, Dawkins has not been invited to speak to thegrieving Virginia Tech community. What this tells me is that if it'sdifficult to know where God is when bad things happen, it is even moredifficult for atheism to deal with the problem of evil. The reason isthat in a purely materialist universe, immaterial things like good andevil and souls simply do not exist. For scientific atheists likeDawkins, Cho's shooting of all those people can be understood in thisway--molecules acting upon molecules.
If this is the best that modern science has to offer us, I think we need something more than modern science.”
Mapantsula 回答到：
It is hardly surprising that Dinesh D’Souza is once again not onlyprofoundly mistaken but also deeply offensive. But I thought itworthwhile to say something in response, not because most people wouldput the point in the same morally reptilian manner as D’Souza, butbecause there is at least some vague sense amongst people that weatheists don’t quite grasp the enormity of Monday’s events, that wetend towards a cold-hearted manner of thinking, that we condescend toexpressions of community, meaning, or bereavement.
So I will tell you, Mr D’Souza, what I grasp and where I am to be found.
I understand why my wife was frantic on Monday morning, trying tocontact me through jammed phone lines. I can still feel the tenor ofher voice resonating in my veins when she got through to me, how sheshook with relief and tears. I remember how my mother looked the lasttime she thought she might have lost a son, so I have a vivid image ofher and a thousand other mothers that hasn’t quite left my mind yet.
I am to be found in Lane Stadium, looking out over a sea of maroon andorange, trying not to break down when someone mentions theinviolability of the classroom and the bond between a teacher and hisstudents. Thatis my classroom, Mr D’Souza, my students, my chosen responsibility inthis godless life, my small office in the care of humanity and itsyouth.
I know that brutal death can come unannounced into any life, but thatwe should aspire to look at our approaching death with equanimity, witha sense that it completes a well-walked trail, that it is a privilegeto have our stories run through to their proper end. Idon’t need to live forever to live once and to live completely. It isprecisely because I don’t believe there is an afterlife that I am sohorrified by the stabbing and slashing and tattering of so many livesaround me this week, the despoliation and ruination of the only thingeach of us will ever have.
We atheists do not believe in gods, or angels, or demons, or souls thatendure, or a meeting place after all is said and done where more can besaid and done and the point of it all revealed. We don’t believe in thepossibility of redemption after our lives, but the necessity ofcompassion in our lives. Webelieve in people, in their joys and pains, in their good ideas andtheir wit and wisdom. We believe in human rights and dignity, and weknow what it is for those to be trampled on by brutes and vandals. Wemay believe that the universe is pitilessly indifferent but we knowthat friends and strangers alike most certainly are not. We despiseatrocity, not because a god tells us that it is wrong, but because ifnot massacre then nothing could be wrong.
I am to be found on the drillfield with a candle in my hand. “AmazingGrace” is a beautiful song, and I can sing it for its beauty and itspeacefulness. I don’t believe in any god, but I do believe in thosepeople who have struggled through pain and found beauty and peace intheir religion. I am not at odds with them any more than I am at oddswith Americans when we sing the “Star-Spangled Banner” just because Iam not American. I can sing “Lean on Me” and chant for the Hokies injust the same way and for just the same reason.
I know that the theory of natural selection is the best explanation forthe emergence and development of human beings and other species. I knowthat our bodies are composed of flesh, bone, and blood, and cells, andmolecules. I also know that this does not account for all aspects ofour lives, but I know no-one who ever thought it did. That is why wehave science, and novels, and friendships, and poetry, and practicaljokes, and photography, and a sense of awe at the immensity of time andthe planet’s natural history, and walks with loved ones along theHuckleberry Trail, and atheist friends who keep kosher because, welljust because, and passionate reverence for both those heroes whobelieved and those who did not, and have all this without needing a god to stitch together the tapestry of life.
I believe this young man was both sick and vicious, that his actionswere both heinous and the result of a phenomenon that we must try tounderstand precisely so that we can prevent it in future. I have nosympathy for him. Given what he has done, I am not particularly sorryhe has spared the world his continued existence; there was nopossibility of redemption for him. Youthink we atheists have difficulty with the concept of evil. Quite thecontrary. We can accept a deion of this man as evil. We just don’tthink that is an explanation. That is why we are exasperated at yourmindless demonology.
I feel humbled by the sense of composure of a family who lost someoneon Monday. I will not insult that dignity by pretending there is senseto be made of this senselessness, or that there is some greaterconsolation to be found in the loss of a husband and son.
I know my students are now more than students.
You can find us next week in the bloodied classrooms of aviolated campus, trying to piece our thoughts and lives and studiesback together.
With or without a belief in a god, with or without your asininebigotry, we will make progress, we will breathe life back into ouruniversity, I will succeed in explaining this or that point, slowly,eventually, in a ham-handed way, at risk of tears half-way through, mystudents will come to feel comfortable again in a classroom with nowindows or escape route, and hell yes we will prevail.
You see Mr D’Souza, I am an atheist professor at Virginia Tech and aman of great faith. Not faith in your god. Faith in my people.
Dinesh D’Souza 又煽動到:
“And boy the atheists are up in arms! They're mad as hell about my post"Where is Atheism When Bad Things Happen." Many responders informed methat tragedies are normally considered a problem for religion, notatheism. Where is God when bad things happen? Yes, people, I know this.My point was that if evil and suffering are a problem for religion--andthey are--they are an even bigger problem for atheism.
The reason is suggested from the quotation given above. When there is atragedy like the one at Virginia Tech, the ones who are sufferingcannot help asking questions, "Why did this have to happen?" "Why isthere so much evil in the world?" "How can I possibly go on afterlosing my child?" And so on.
In my post I noted that Richard Dawkins had not been invited to addressthe mourners at Virginia Tech. Several atheists--who haven't yet losttheir fundamentalist habit of reading--took this sarcastic statementliterally. "So what? The Pope hasn't been invited either!" My point wasthat atheism has nothing to offer in the face of tragedy except C'estla vie. Deal with it. Get over it. This is why the ceremonies weresuffused with religious rhetoric. Only the language of religion seemsappropriate to the magnitude of tragedy. Only God seems to have thepower to heal hearts in such circumstances. If someone started to readfrom Dawkins on why there is no good and no evil in the universe,people would start vomiting or leaving.
One clever writer informs me that atheists don't deny meaning, theysimply insist that meaning is not inherent in the universe, it iscreated by us. Okay, pal, here's the Virginia Tech situation. Go createsome meaning and share it with the rest of us Give us that atheistsermon with you in the pulpit of the campus chapel. I'm not beingfacetious here. I really want to hear what the atheist would tell thegrieving mothers.”
Mapantsula回答到：
We think the pain is complete and absolute. We know it is.
We think that nothing can heal these hearts, that time can only takethe sharpness off the agony, that only in time can beauty bewholeheartedly seen again or laughter felt deep inside.
We insist there is no sense or meaning to be made of this massacre.There was only sense and meaning to be created within the lives of eachperson gunned down. That is why we are horrified by it. That isprecisely why it is so horrific.
We don't believe these people have died for anything: God'splan, as a beacon to the rest of us, to be a vivid memento mori forall. We just believe they have died, brutally and without mercy. Werefuse to lie to grieving mothers out of some patronising sense that apleasant myth is more respectful than a terrible truth.
Those of us with the slightest shred of deceny do not tell widows todeal with it, to get over it. That the world can be callous is noreason to be so myself. I know that no family could ever get over thisloss, that no family should ever be expected to get over this loss --either by themselves, by religious rhetoricians bearing falseplatitudes, or by inane political pundits -- but that not getting overthe loss does not preclude some other kind of happiness, some othersource of joy, at some other time. Not now, not in this moment, notwhen they have moved on, but only when it comes to them one day, likelight dawning slowly.
We know the world is cold, and that only people can make itwarmer. We believe we can live in this imperfection, like a child canlive without fulfilling her desperate wish for wings. We rail againstinjustice and tragedy, not the absence of deeper guarantees.
Some of us are those grieving mothers and wives and friends andcolleagues. Some of us are inconsolable, but dignified for all that.
There is no language appropriate to the magnitude of the tragedy. Not stories about a poor man nailed to a cross,not fine words about a time for healing and a time for dying, not eventhe lines of the poet who, in the midst of his own horror, struggles toask:
How can I embellish this carnival of slaughter,
How decorate the massacre?
But it is that same poet who also writes of death:
I have certainly
no faith in miracles, yet I long
that when death come to take me
from this great song
of a world, it permits me to return
to your door and knock
and knock
and call out: "If you need someone
to share your anguish, your simplest pain,
then let me be the one.
If not, let me again
embark, this time never
to return, in that final direction,
forever.
Spring has come to Virginia. Monday morning was the last snow we willhave this season. All those who have come to Blacksburg this week havetold us how beautiful our countryside is. They're right, of course,there is all this terrible, unforgiving beauty here.
Dinesh D’Souza又說到:
“Actually my point was a simple one, and it seems to be unrefuted.Atheism seems to have nothing to say to people when there is seriousbereavement or tragedy. Of course atheists have feelings and there wereundoubtedly atheists among the mourners at Virginia Tech. But theRichard Dawkins philosophy--that we live in a meaningless world wherethere is no good and no evil--whatever its intellectual merit, seemsarid and unconsoling when human beings are really hurting. ”
Mapantsula回答到：
Atheists are hurting here themselves, and we don't see much to consoleourselves or our colleagues and students and their families. But thereis nothing arid in what we believe. Our lives are replete with colour,and friendships, and loving relationships, and curious books to read,and papers to write, and difficult points to figure out. There may be no deity, but there is a world of wonder to take its place.
And this week, our lives have also been trashed by this brutal man, sopart of that world is heartache and horror, and in the middle of thatheartache and horror we will spurn your trite consolations, yourhappily-ever-after fairy tales, as a denial of our grief, as arepudiation of the reality of this pain.
Dinesh D’Souza侮辱無神論者到：
“Atheists like to portray themselves as devotees of reason, but readthe responses and see how much reason you discover there. Rather, itlooks like these fellows hate God, and this hate spills over to anyonewho brings up God's name. Call it the atheism of revenge. They blameGod for screwing them over in some way, and unbelief is their form ofpayback. ”
Mapantsula回擊到：
How can I hate an entity that I don't believe exists? If I did actuallyblame a god for something, then I could hardly be an atheist. Atheismis not high school silent treatment, Mr D'Souza. It is not therejection, forsaking, or loathing of a god, but the belief that thereis no god there to reject, forsake, or loathe.
We atheists are liberated from the belief that these events must makesense, that there must be something else to it other than the eruptionof a psychopathic impulse. We are horrified, not puzzled, by itsabsurdity.
I don't blame a god for screwing over my campus, for murderingmy colleagues, for terrorising my students, Mr D'Souza, I blame the manwho thought he was your new christ.
Thu Apr 19, 2007 at 03:55:16 PM PDT
Mapantsula：I am an atheist and a professor at VirginiaTech. Dinesh D’Souza says that I don’t exist, that I have nothing tosay, that I am nowhere to be found.
But I am here.
Dinesh D'Souza 在VT事件後對無神論者攻擊到:
“Notice something interesting about the aftermath of the Virginia Techshootings? Atheists are nowhere to be found. Every time there is apublic gathering there is talk of God and divine mercy and spiritualhealing. Even secular people like the poet Nikki Giovanni use languagethat is heavily drenched with religious symbolism and meaning.
The atheist writer Richard Dawkins has observed that according to thefindings of modern science, the universe has all the properties of asystem that is utterly devoid of meaning. The main characteristic ofthe universe is pitiless indifference. Dawkins further argues that wehuman beings are simply agglomerations of molecules, assembled intofunctional units over millennia of natural selection, and as for thesoul--well, that's an illusion!
To no one's surprise, Dawkins has not been invited to speak to thegrieving Virginia Tech community. What this tells me is that if it'sdifficult to know where God is when bad things happen, it is even moredifficult for atheism to deal with the problem of evil. The reason isthat in a purely materialist universe, immaterial things like good andevil and souls simply do not exist. For scientific atheists likeDawkins, Cho's shooting of all those people can be understood in thisway--molecules acting upon molecules.
If this is the best that modern science has to offer us, I think we need something more than modern science.”
Mapantsula 回答到：
It is hardly surprising that Dinesh D’Souza is once again not onlyprofoundly mistaken but also deeply offensive. But I thought itworthwhile to say something in response, not because most people wouldput the point in the same morally reptilian manner as D’Souza, butbecause there is at least some vague sense amongst people that weatheists don’t quite grasp the enormity of Monday’s events, that wetend towards a cold-hearted manner of thinking, that we condescend toexpressions of community, meaning, or bereavement.
So I will tell you, Mr D’Souza, what I grasp and where I am to be found.
I understand why my wife was frantic on Monday morning, trying tocontact me through jammed phone lines. I can still feel the tenor ofher voice resonating in my veins when she got through to me, how sheshook with relief and tears. I remember how my mother looked the lasttime she thought she might have lost a son, so I have a vivid image ofher and a thousand other mothers that hasn’t quite left my mind yet.
I am to be found in Lane Stadium, looking out over a sea of maroon andorange, trying not to break down when someone mentions theinviolability of the classroom and the bond between a teacher and hisstudents. Thatis my classroom, Mr D’Souza, my students, my chosen responsibility inthis godless life, my small office in the care of humanity and itsyouth.
I know that brutal death can come unannounced into any life, but thatwe should aspire to look at our approaching death with equanimity, witha sense that it completes a well-walked trail, that it is a privilegeto have our stories run through to their proper end. Idon’t need to live forever to live once and to live completely. It isprecisely because I don’t believe there is an afterlife that I am sohorrified by the stabbing and slashing and tattering of so many livesaround me this week, the despoliation and ruination of the only thingeach of us will ever have.
We atheists do not believe in gods, or angels, or demons, or souls thatendure, or a meeting place after all is said and done where more can besaid and done and the point of it all revealed. We don’t believe in thepossibility of redemption after our lives, but the necessity ofcompassion in our lives. Webelieve in people, in their joys and pains, in their good ideas andtheir wit and wisdom. We believe in human rights and dignity, and weknow what it is for those to be trampled on by brutes and vandals. Wemay believe that the universe is pitilessly indifferent but we knowthat friends and strangers alike most certainly are not. We despiseatrocity, not because a god tells us that it is wrong, but because ifnot massacre then nothing could be wrong.
I am to be found on the drillfield with a candle in my hand. “AmazingGrace” is a beautiful song, and I can sing it for its beauty and itspeacefulness. I don’t believe in any god, but I do believe in thosepeople who have struggled through pain and found beauty and peace intheir religion. I am not at odds with them any more than I am at oddswith Americans when we sing the “Star-Spangled Banner” just because Iam not American. I can sing “Lean on Me” and chant for the Hokies injust the same way and for just the same reason.
I know that the theory of natural selection is the best explanation forthe emergence and development of human beings and other species. I knowthat our bodies are composed of flesh, bone, and blood, and cells, andmolecules. I also know that this does not account for all aspects ofour lives, but I know no-one who ever thought it did. That is why wehave science, and novels, and friendships, and poetry, and practicaljokes, and photography, and a sense of awe at the immensity of time andthe planet’s natural history, and walks with loved ones along theHuckleberry Trail, and atheist friends who keep kosher because, welljust because, and passionate reverence for both those heroes whobelieved and those who did not, and have all this without needing a god to stitch together the tapestry of life.
I believe this young man was both sick and vicious, that his actionswere both heinous and the result of a phenomenon that we must try tounderstand precisely so that we can prevent it in future. I have nosympathy for him. Given what he has done, I am not particularly sorryhe has spared the world his continued existence; there was nopossibility of redemption for him. Youthink we atheists have difficulty with the concept of evil. Quite thecontrary. We can accept a deion of this man as evil. We just don’tthink that is an explanation. That is why we are exasperated at yourmindless demonology.
I feel humbled by the sense of composure of a family who lost someoneon Monday. I will not insult that dignity by pretending there is senseto be made of this senselessness, or that there is some greaterconsolation to be found in the loss of a husband and son.
I know my students are now more than students.
You can find us next week in the bloodied classrooms of aviolated campus, trying to piece our thoughts and lives and studiesback together.
With or without a belief in a god, with or without your asininebigotry, we will make progress, we will breathe life back into ouruniversity, I will succeed in explaining this or that point, slowly,eventually, in a ham-handed way, at risk of tears half-way through, mystudents will come to feel comfortable again in a classroom with nowindows or escape route, and hell yes we will prevail.
You see Mr D’Souza, I am an atheist professor at Virginia Tech and aman of great faith. Not faith in your god. Faith in my people.
Dinesh D’Souza 又煽動到:
“And boy the atheists are up in arms! They're mad as hell about my post"Where is Atheism When Bad Things Happen." Many responders informed methat tragedies are normally considered a problem for religion, notatheism. Where is God when bad things happen? Yes, people, I know this.My point was that if evil and suffering are a problem for religion--andthey are--they are an even bigger problem for atheism.
The reason is suggested from the quotation given above. When there is atragedy like the one at Virginia Tech, the ones who are sufferingcannot help asking questions, "Why did this have to happen?" "Why isthere so much evil in the world?" "How can I possibly go on afterlosing my child?" And so on.
In my post I noted that Richard Dawkins had not been invited to addressthe mourners at Virginia Tech. Several atheists--who haven't yet losttheir fundamentalist habit of reading--took this sarcastic statementliterally. "So what? The Pope hasn't been invited either!" My point wasthat atheism has nothing to offer in the face of tragedy except C'estla vie. Deal with it. Get over it. This is why the ceremonies weresuffused with religious rhetoric. Only the language of religion seemsappropriate to the magnitude of tragedy. Only God seems to have thepower to heal hearts in such circumstances. If someone started to readfrom Dawkins on why there is no good and no evil in the universe,people would start vomiting or leaving.
One clever writer informs me that atheists don't deny meaning, theysimply insist that meaning is not inherent in the universe, it iscreated by us. Okay, pal, here's the Virginia Tech situation. Go createsome meaning and share it with the rest of us Give us that atheistsermon with you in the pulpit of the campus chapel. I'm not beingfacetious here. I really want to hear what the atheist would tell thegrieving mothers.”
Mapantsula回答到：
We think the pain is complete and absolute. We know it is.
We think that nothing can heal these hearts, that time can only takethe sharpness off the agony, that only in time can beauty bewholeheartedly seen again or laughter felt deep inside.
We insist there is no sense or meaning to be made of this massacre.There was only sense and meaning to be created within the lives of eachperson gunned down. That is why we are horrified by it. That isprecisely why it is so horrific.
We don't believe these people have died for anything: God'splan, as a beacon to the rest of us, to be a vivid memento mori forall. We just believe they have died, brutally and without mercy. Werefuse to lie to grieving mothers out of some patronising sense that apleasant myth is more respectful than a terrible truth.
Those of us with the slightest shred of deceny do not tell widows todeal with it, to get over it. That the world can be callous is noreason to be so myself. I know that no family could ever get over thisloss, that no family should ever be expected to get over this loss --either by themselves, by religious rhetoricians bearing falseplatitudes, or by inane political pundits -- but that not getting overthe loss does not preclude some other kind of happiness, some othersource of joy, at some other time. Not now, not in this moment, notwhen they have moved on, but only when it comes to them one day, likelight dawning slowly.
We know the world is cold, and that only people can make itwarmer. We believe we can live in this imperfection, like a child canlive without fulfilling her desperate wish for wings. We rail againstinjustice and tragedy, not the absence of deeper guarantees.
Some of us are those grieving mothers and wives and friends andcolleagues. Some of us are inconsolable, but dignified for all that.
There is no language appropriate to the magnitude of the tragedy. Not stories about a poor man nailed to a cross,not fine words about a time for healing and a time for dying, not eventhe lines of the poet who, in the midst of his own horror, struggles toask:
How can I embellish this carnival of slaughter,
How decorate the massacre?
But it is that same poet who also writes of death:
I have certainly
no faith in miracles, yet I long
that when death come to take me
from this great song
of a world, it permits me to return
to your door and knock
and knock
and call out: "If you need someone
to share your anguish, your simplest pain,
then let me be the one.
If not, let me again
embark, this time never
to return, in that final direction,
forever.
Spring has come to Virginia. Monday morning was the last snow we willhave this season. All those who have come to Blacksburg this week havetold us how beautiful our countryside is. They're right, of course,there is all this terrible, unforgiving beauty here.
Dinesh D’Souza又說到:
“Actually my point was a simple one, and it seems to be unrefuted.Atheism seems to have nothing to say to people when there is seriousbereavement or tragedy. Of course atheists have feelings and there wereundoubtedly atheists among the mourners at Virginia Tech. But theRichard Dawkins philosophy--that we live in a meaningless world wherethere is no good and no evil--whatever its intellectual merit, seemsarid and unconsoling when human beings are really hurting. ”
Mapantsula回答到：
Atheists are hurting here themselves, and we don't see much to consoleourselves or our colleagues and students and their families. But thereis nothing arid in what we believe. Our lives are replete with colour,and friendships, and loving relationships, and curious books to read,and papers to write, and difficult points to figure out. There may be no deity, but there is a world of wonder to take its place.
And this week, our lives have also been trashed by this brutal man, sopart of that world is heartache and horror, and in the middle of thatheartache and horror we will spurn your trite consolations, yourhappily-ever-after fairy tales, as a denial of our grief, as arepudiation of the reality of this pain.
Dinesh D’Souza侮辱無神論者到：
“Atheists like to portray themselves as devotees of reason, but readthe responses and see how much reason you discover there. Rather, itlooks like these fellows hate God, and this hate spills over to anyonewho brings up God's name. Call it the atheism of revenge. They blameGod for screwing them over in some way, and unbelief is their form ofpayback. ”
Mapantsula回擊到：
How can I hate an entity that I don't believe exists? If I did actuallyblame a god for something, then I could hardly be an atheist. Atheismis not high school silent treatment, Mr D'Souza. It is not therejection, forsaking, or loathing of a god, but the belief that thereis no god there to reject, forsake, or loathe.
We atheists are liberated from the belief that these events must makesense, that there must be something else to it other than the eruptionof a psychopathic impulse. We are horrified, not puzzled, by itsabsurdity.
I don't blame a god for screwing over my campus, for murderingmy colleagues, for terrorising my students, Mr D'Souza, I blame the manwho thought he was your new christ.
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