A New York man is linking the suicide of his 22-year-old son, a military veteran who had bright prospects in college, to the anti-Christian book "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins after a college professor challenged the son to read it.
"Three people told us he had taken a biology class and was doing well in it, but other students and the professor were really challenging my son, his faith. They didn't like him as a Republican, as a Christian, and as a conservative who believed in intelligent design," the grief-stricken father, Keith Kilgore, told WND about his son, Jesse.
"This professor either assigned him to read or challenged him to read a book, 'The God Delusion,' by Richard Dawkins," he said.
...
"He was pretty much an atheist, with no belief in the existence of God (in any form) or an afterlife or even in the concept of right or wrong," the relative wrote. "I remember him telling me that he thought that murder wasn't wrong per se, but he would never do it because of the social consequences - that was all there was - just social consequences.
"He mentioned the book he had been reading 'The God Delusion' by Richard Dawkins and how it along with the science classes he had take[n] had eroded his faith. Jesse was always great about defending his beliefs, but somehow, the professors and the book had presented him information that he found to be irrefutable. He had not talked … about it because he was afraid of how you might react. ... and that he knew most of your defenses of Christianity because he himself used them often. Maybe he had used them against his professors and had the ideas shot down."
He then explained to Jesse his own personal journey of seeking "other explanations of God's existence" and told of his ultimate return.
"I told him it was my relationship with God, not my knowledge of Him that brought me back to my faith. No one convinced me with facts. ... it was a matter of the heart."
That last paragraph irritates me to no end. *This* is why it is so important for students to understand that there *are* apologetic arguments that support their religious faith and utterly demolish the BS being pushed on them by atheist evangelists like Dawkins.
"Academic freedom" in the secular universities means nothing. True academic freedom would mean that ID and arguments against the ridiculous claims made by naturalists would be allowed in the classrooms as well. The liberal bozos running our universities provide little balance these days when presenting evolutionary "facts". AND, if professors are going to suggest books like the God Delusion, they should also suggest books refuting that BS....like Vox's The Irrational Atheist or any number of other outstanding books along the same line.
Students are impressionable during their college years, and it's a shame that only one worldview is allowed in the classrooms of our college campuses.
HT: Vox
