Barry Duke, the Angry Atheist

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   “The curriculum had already drawn tensions among the county’s religious parents, with some worrying about appropriateness and arguing the material…

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   As someone who produced dozens of nativity plays as a teacher and a Sunday School leader, that title ‘A Gay…

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   The defence of a Christian view never seems to be settled by debate: exchange of facts, reference to historical events.…

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   But …… Rwanda is a safe place: Parliament says so.https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2024/8/contentsSafety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024 S 2 Safety…

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   Religion can survive only on the most unquestionable assumptions. The statements made on Sundays on the BBC as if they…

PROOF that wisdom does not necessarily come with age was provided this week by once fiery atheist Ali, above.

In an article that that saddened non-beievers and delighted Christians, she declared that she turned to Christianity because she ultimately “found life without any spiritual solace unendurable—indeed very nearly self-destructive. Atheism failed to answer a simple question: what is the meaning and purpose of life?”

This is an extremely poor reason reason for discarding the atheism that, in 2010, earned her a major award from the Freedom of Religion Foundation.

Poor, because, put simply, Christianity does not, and never has provided a satisfactory answer to the meaning of life. What is does provide is shedloads of fear, and Ali decided that atheism was robbing of her fears.

A product of Muslim Brotherhood schooling in Kenya, Ali wrote:

You can see why, to someone who had been through such a religious schooling, atheism seemed so appealing. Bertrand Russell offered a simple, zero-cost escape from an unbearable life of self-denial and harassment of other people. For him, there was no credible case for the existence of God. Religion, Russell argued, was rooted in fear: ‘Fear is the basis of the whole thing—fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death.’

As an atheist, I thought I would lose that fear. I also found an entirely new circle of friends, as different from the preachers of the Muslim Brotherhood as one could imagine. The more time I spent with them—people such as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins—the more confident I felt that I had made the right choice. For the atheists were clever. They were also a great deal of fun.

So, what changed? Why do I call myself a Christian now?

Part of the answer is global. Western civilisation is under threat from three different but related forces: the resurgence of great-power authoritarianism and expansionism in the forms of the Chinese Communist Party and Vladimir Putin’s Russia; the rise of global Islamism, which threatens to mobilise a vast population against the West; and the viral spread of woke ideology, which is eating into the moral fibre of the next generation.

Curious, is it not, that she should mention Russia, which is way more steeped in Christianity than the West? Indeed, many have noted that its invasion of Ukraine is a de facto religious war. Indeed, last March OnlySky published an article of mine, Ukraine invasion part of a crusade for ‘Christian internationalism.’

Since the appearance of Ali’s article, secular analysists have pointed out that she does not question the veracity, of lack thereof, of Christianity. Indeed, she concludes:

I still have a great deal to learn about Christianity. I discover a little more at church each Sunday. But I have recognised, in my own long journey through a wilderness of fear and self-doubt, that there is a better way to manage the challenges of existence than either Islam or unbelief had to offer.

Writing for OnlySky, Jonathan M S Pearce pointed out that Ali had aligned her self with the far-right causes—such as recently sacked British Home Secretary Suella Braverman, above—and said:

There is not just a little whiff (and an erroneous one) of functionality to her newfound belief. It is not anything to do with the evidential truth of the Christian narrative or any rational argument for it, but that it is a useful tool—a necessary one—to fight the evil of Islamism. For her, secular Enlightenment thinking is not a sharp enough tool to cut through the falsity of Islam.

A couple of days ago two members of the Ayn Rand Institute dissected Ali’s article. It makes for very interesting watching.

Hat tip: Peter Sykes

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