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Since When Did We Require Faith To Wish Well Upon Others?

In light of Chris Hitchens' bout with oesophageal cancer a proclaimed Christian fundamentalist took it upon himself to write a rather touching blog post in which he claims to pray for Hitchens' recovery. First of all, I believe that it should have remained a private matter as it was obviously politically motivated, but that's beside the point. At one point in his post he stated: "I know the irony is not lost on [Hitchens] that the same faith he so
ruthlessly savaged is the same faith that compels me to wish him good
will during this terrible trial he is suffering."

My response to the post was as follows: "I rather doubt that it is exclusively your faith that would incite such good will. I'd suggest that it is your humanity. You're selling yourself
short in implying that without faith you would wish to spite others."

The resultant conversation was one of him trying to convince me that the natural man is a savage and that we require faith to be civil. I disagreed and I hope you might as well.

Now, what I suppose I wish to say is that we have no reason to assume that we cannot be decent to one another without fear of divine retribution beyond death. Although I acknowledge that I am certainly not the first to say this.

You can view the entirety of our exchange here: http://www.sodahead.com/living/a-prayer-for-an-atheist/blog-396495/...

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Comment by feralboy12 on August 11, 2010 at 3:06pm: Possibly the most irksome thing about Christianity is their assumption that they somehow invented everything good--morality, law, marriage, whatever. Too often they act like none of these things existed before Christianity came along, never mind that half their holy scripture predates Jesus and in fact was the basis of an older religion that still exists.
Al Gore has a better case for inventing the internet.

Comment by IAmTheBlog on August 11, 2010 at 2:41pm: Good response to him. I really don't get it how people can honestly think that without god watching over them, that they would do all sorts of nasty things: from wishing ill on cancer patients to rape and murder. I guess they're so brainwashed they don't realize it.

I used to be brainwashed about this, so I kind of understand. In my church growing up, we often used to recite the following: "We are by nature sinful and unclean. We have sinned against you in thought, word and deed, by what we have done and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We justly deserve your present and eternal punishment." Then came the words that were meant to make us feel saved: "But for the sake of your Son, Jesus Christ, have mercy on us [blah blah blah].

I used to really take that to heart and have a very negative view of humanity. So he probably learned crap like this and still actually believes it. Very sad that he only sees the bad in human nature and none of the good.