Those vigorous Irish atheists have won another victory: they’ve slapped down a set of bigoted and stupid statements that were part of teacher training in Ireland, and are going to be contributing some accuracy to the training.
Hibernia College, the online teacher-training institution, has removed slides from its religion module for primary teachers at the request of Atheist Ireland.
Dr Nicholas Breakwell, vice-president for academic affairs and knowledge management, said yesterday that “some offending slides identified by Atheist Ireland have been removed pending the annual review process” to which all courses at the college are subject.
He also said Atheist Ireland had been asked to prepare a module for the college “on atheism, what it believes and does not”.
That’s progress! What’s appalling, though, are the original statements, composed by an ignorant Catholic priest, and recited at the students.
Atheism seems to be fashionable in Ireland at present. It is seen as rational, progressive and compassionate. But above all, it is ‘in’, not to mention convenient since, as Dostoevsky said in 19th century Russia, where it was likewise ‘in’, that if there is no God then anything can be justified.
What bothers very few of its latter-day exponents is the fact that atheist humanism produced the worst horrors history has ever witnessed, namely Nazism, fascism and Marxism, the latter alone responsible for some 100 million lives, according to The Black Book written by French ex-Marxists. Atheism is not a benign force in history.
It’s not that it’s offensive so much as it is stupid, wrong, and misleading. I haven’t met a single atheist who thinks that way because it excuses ‘anythng goes’ behavior — not one, and I know a lot of atheists. And then, of course, there are the obvious lies: Nazis were mostly Catholic and Lutheran, not atheists, and Marxism is an ideology that insisted on atheism, not the other way around. I have never before seen Marxists labeled as humanists — the author of that bit of propaganda clearly had no idea what a humanist is, so why was he writing the module on atheism?