So, Archbishop Sheehan doesn’t believe in atheists. That’s as self-serving as Wal-Mart’s CEO disparaging unions.

I certainly don’t expect to prove that Sheehan is part of the problem. However, to the “you can’t prove a negative” argument, I say, “so, what?” The efforts of the vast majority of the human race have failed to prove the existence of god — and with very good reason.

Sheehan places the Inquisition and Communism on the scales of justice and pronounces the Inquisition ‘not so bad after all.’ I wonder if his god admits the trivial murders and torturers into heaven while barring the door to the really bad cases. “Lord, it was only a few thousand people and we did it in your name.” The absolution of scoundrels.

Equating communism with atheism comes as no surprise from a religious zealot. It is ‘militant regionists’ who have polarized the entire world. In truth, humans pick and choose their beliefs and behaviors with maddening inconsistency. People of great faith and people without faith turn out to be heroes and ax murders. You can look back and say, “see, of course he did that because ….” It really proves nothing. The Virginia Tech mass murderer came from a deeply religious family and saw himself as christ-like. That’s a specious remark but no less so than blaming the behavior of brutal despots on atheism. Humankind is a murderous breed that embraces lies as readily as the truth. Even if we grow out of our religious infancy, we’ll find new reasons to brutalize each other. mjh

ABQjournal: Letters to the Editor
Atheists Spit Into Rising Wind

The May 26 article on militant atheist writers making an all-out assault on religious faith moves me to respond.

Christopher (an odd name for a nonbeliever!) Hitchens’ book “God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything,” Richard Dawkins’ book “The God Delusion” and others seem to be selling briskly according to the article.

Michael Novak, writing in the June issue of the magazine “First Things,” notes that there is an odd defensiveness about these books, as though they were a sign not of victory but of desperation.

Everywhere on earth except Europe, religion is surging. According to a 2007 Princeton survey for Newsweek, at least 91 percent of Americans believe in God. Only 3 percent say they are atheists. In fact, the whole group of nonbelievers including agnostics and those of no religion is only 10 percent.

These atheistic authors are kind of like men spitting against the wind. Each trots out his arguments for atheism, it might seem, to convince himself. Maybe the books are selling well because there are always people that are curious about authors who attack the respected and the sacred.

Religion throughout history has brought about the establishment of great movements for civilization— the establishment of universities and education, hospitals and various means of helping the sick and the poor.

The atheists typically bring out the sad reality of the Inquisition, but the death inflicted by the Inquisition is a mere pinprick (at most 1,500) compared to what was done by atheists in our times. In the 20th century alone communist atheism has been responsible for the deaths of more than 100 million people.

In reality it is hard to prove the nonexistence of God as one can’t possibly prove a negative. And agnosticism, humanisticly attractive to some, leads to a moral indecisiveness leaving the religion question up in the air. It is hard also because there is a universal hunger in the human heart for the Transcendent.

There will always be the village atheists but those who believe in God, the vast majority, will continue to experience joy and strength in their belief in God.

MICHAEL J. SHEEHAN
Archbishop of Santa Fe
Albuquerque”

http://www.abqjournal.com/opinion/letters/567122opinion05-31-07.htm