It’s hard to understand why Dinish D’Souza is called one of the prominent thinkers of the American Right, when he writes absolutely amazingly dumb things like this:
Notice something interesting about the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shootings? Atheists are nowhere to be found. Every time there is a public gathering there is talk of God and divine mercy and spiritual healing. Even secular people like the poet Nikki Giovanni use language that is heavily drenched with religious symbolism and meaning.
Atheists are nowhere to be found? How does Dinish know?
By the way, here’s what poet Nikki Giovanni said — in its entirety — at the Virginia Tech convocation on April 17. Dinish says this is "heavily drenched with religious symbolism". See if you can spot it:
We are Virginia Tech.
We are sad today, and we will be sad for quite a while. We are not moving on, we are embracing our mourning.
We are Virginia Tech.
We are strong enough to stand tall tearlessly, we are brave enough to bend to cry, and we are sad enough to know that we must laugh again.
We are Virginia Tech.
We do not understand this tragedy. We know we did nothing to deserve it, but neither does a child in Africa dying of AIDS, neither do the invisible children walking the night away to avoid being captured by the rogue army, neither does the baby elephant watching his community being devastated for ivory, neither does the Mexican child looking for fresh water, neither does the Appalachian infant killed in the middle of the night in his crib in the home his father built with his own hands being run over by a boulder because the land was destabilized. No one deserves a tragedy.
We are Virginia Tech.
The Hokie Nation embraces our own and reaches out with open heart and hands to those who offer their hearts and minds. We are strong, and brave, and innocent, and unafraid. We are better than we think and not quite what we want to be. We are alive to the imaginations and the possibilities. We will continue to invent the future through our blood and tears and through all our sadness.
We are the Hokies.
We will prevail.
We will prevail.
We will prevail.
We are Virginia Tech.
Moving words, but is that "heavily drenched with religious symbolism"? I think not.
But then Dinish sinks to even lower levels of illogical delusion. In his column, he skewers noted evolutionist Richard Dawkins, and then adds:
To no one’s surprise, Dawkins has not been invited to speak to the grieving Virginia Tech community. What this tells me is that if it’s difficult to know where God is when bad things happen, it is even more difficult for atheism to deal with the problem of evil. The reason is that in a purely materialist universe, immaterial things like good and evil and souls simply do not exist. For scientific atheists like Dawkins, Cho’s shooting of all those people can be understood in this way–molecules acting upon molecules.
Oh this is going to be fun. Let’s apply Dinish’s logic to other people, as in:
"To no one’s surprise, Pat Robertson has not been invited to speak to the grieving Virginia Tech community. What this tells me is that if it’s difficult to know where God is when bad things happen, it is even more difficult to predict when He will send hurricanes to strike the Gulf Coast."
or how about
"To no one’s surprise, Jeff Foxworthy has not been invited to speak to the grieving Virginia Tech community. What this tells me is that if it’s difficult to know where God is when bad things happen, it is even more difficult to know whether or not you’re smarter than a 5th grader."
Really, Dinish. There’s no reason to treat the non-invitation of someone as a rebuke of what they stand for.
This has been another installment in a continuing series known as "The Virginia Tech Killings Prove Everything I’ve Always Believed To Be True".
UPDATE: Another response to Dinish:
Then again we had an indifferent God who allowed thirty-two innocent people to be slaughtered and He couldn’t even bother to raise a finger
If this is the best God that religion has to offer, I think we’re gonna need a better deity…