Posted on 03/15/2008 3:22:10 PM PDT by forkinsocket
An atmosphere of moral panic surrounds religion. Viewed not so long ago as a relic of superstition whose role in society was steadily declining, it is now demonised as the cause of many of the world's worst evils. As a result, there has been a sudden explosion in the literature of proselytising atheism. A few years ago, it was difficult to persuade commercial publishers even to think of bringing out books on religion. Today, tracts against religion can be enormous money-spinners, with Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion and Christopher Hitchens's God Is Not Great selling in the hundreds of thousands. For the first time in generations, scientists and philosophers, high-profile novelists and journalists are debating whether religion has a future. The intellectual traffic is not all one-way. There have been counterblasts for believers, such as The Dawkins Delusion? by the British theologian Alister McGrath and The Secular Age by the Canadian Catholic philosopher Charles Taylor. On the whole, however, the anti-God squad has dominated the sales charts, and it is worth asking why.
The abrupt shift in the perception of religion is only partly explained by terrorism. The 9/11 hijackers saw themselves as martyrs in a religious tradition, and western opinion has accepted their self-image. And there are some who view the rise of Islamic fundamentalism as a danger comparable with the worst that were faced by liberal societies in the 20th century.
(Excerpt) Read more at books.guardian.co.uk ...
Yes, religion has a future. Those holding to atheism aren’t having enough kids to propogate their belief system; the religious faithful are.
Interesting twist. Something based on faith rather than imperical evidence is okay. And not believing in it is delusional. Allllrighty then.
Anti-theism is often rooted in a bad childhood experience with a parent or authority figure who was religious.
Check the childhood bios on Freud, Stalin, Darwin, Pullman (Golden Compass), and you see a pattern.
(Anti-theism = virulent hatred of religion, not mere agnosticism.)
Your post is proof of the correctness of the headline!
(This from someone who can still recite the suscipiot)
I hate to point it out to an enlightened atheist, but my Catholic school education taught me that it’s spelled “empirical”.
Not one word about this book.
What’s So Great About Christianity by Dinesh D’Souza
The best refute to atheists out there IMHO.
“The 9/11 hijackers saw themselves as martyrs in a religious tradition, and western opinion has accepted their self-image”
Translation: Western lefties finally got around to believing the terrs’s own reasons, not the reasons they wished the terrs had.
“Always Ready” by Greg Bahnsen is an excellent read as well.
You're talking about global warming, right?
A couple threads up is an article on the current financial panic. Nevertheless, our balanced portfolio is doing fine and our house is still worth 4 times what I paid for it.
And of course there are all the threads on global warming panic. But I notice the forsythia and daffodils in the yard are right on schedule for this growing zone.
Now here's a thread on moral panic. But my Sunday school class is full of eager young people, hungry to learn more about their Lord and living a Christian life.
Why is it that I just don't feel all that panicked? I must be doing something wrong...
By examining the biographies of a score of outstanding theorists of modern atheism, Vitz findes that a disproportionate number of them suffered a striking deficit of "fathering" -- whether because of the early death of their fathers, or because of absence, abandonment, or maltreatment.
His thesis is not that atheism is psychologically determined, which would be foolish. Vitz does note, though, that atheists often attribute religious faith to irrational, psychological needs to which the atheists, themselves, are conspicuously vulnerable.
You can correct me until an enlightened atheist comes along.
This is all pretty funny. You are just as much of an atheist as I am, except that you still believe in one of the Gods :) Or do you believe in all of the Gods out there?
Actually I think the evidence on global warming is contrary to the publicized view, unlike the faith-based view on religion.
As I said one is based upon faith and the other is a response to a lack of evidence.
Yup, I can't disagree with that.
Oh, you are quite right. I am an obstinate, stiff-necked atheist with regard to all the goddesses and gods except, at most, one.
As long as people worry about what is going to happen to them after death there will be religion.- Tom
Welcome to the ranks of the Atheists :) See, we aren't that deluded are we? You agree with us 99.9999 percent of the time.
Absolutely true. The First Commandment of the Decalogue commands 99.9999 percent atheism. Remember, though, the impressive difference -— especially in functions involving multiplication and division -— between 0 and 0.000001.
Most modern atheists are probably children of atheists or non-religious households. Their children are more likely to be atheist, just as most people keep their parents’ beliefs.
I think it's common for children to rebel against some of the things their parents taught them especially from about 17-25. I saw a lot of that amongst Catholic shool graduates.
If you have some research, then I'll reconsider.
Yes you are right : ) Multiplying the number of Gods by zero gives the correct answer.
I have a question. If I ask a Jew if he believes in the God of Abraham he will say he certainly does, and I believe him. If I ask a Christian if he believes in the God of Abraham, he will say that he certainly does, and I believe him. If I ask a Moslem if she believes in the God of Abraham, she will say that she does and I believe her.
So my question is, is it the persons belief that determines and defines the nature of the God of Abram? Can faith create and bring something into existence?
I believe you when you say that you believe in the God of Abraham. It is impressive really, you have no evidence, no logic, nothing to back up that belief except stories that make no sense. A willing suspension of disbelief can be very powerful.
I think that is Religions strength and weakness, blind devotion is a very interesting thing.
Are those odds for human life or life in general? The extremes life can survive in are truly staggering. I wonder what the odds are of some crippled old man sending me a message on Free Republic are? : )
There is a funny thing about odds, seemingly anyone can come up with them and they are generally wrong. May I suggest the book, The Black Swan, by Taleb.
May I suggest the books by Gerald Schroeder for your 'amusement'? You might want to google and follow one or two of Hugh Ross's presentations, as an extra for your enlightenment (reasonstobelieve.org)
This came to me today as my husband and I were on our way into the parking lot of church for a pretty big Liturgy: Palm Sunday.
Say you had huge screen before your eyes displaying a scene with a confused, noisy, and maddeningly unfocused quality: many impossible-to-identify figures scurrying here and there, darting, flying, disappearing; faces in glee or grief or gawping with idiocy; sounds like you'd get on an old staticky radio set between two stations, sounds and words evidently, but intermittent, fragmentary and garbled: a scene inevitably leaving you headachey with boredom and imbecility.
Say you could adjust the controls so you'd get one channel or another from a selection of 10,000, and most of them produced merely a change of palette, making the whole nightmare yellowish or purplish, changing the audio qualities to a higher or lower pitch, but always that same scene --- a scene in which you find yourself now immersed --- of a madcap, makeshift, miserable macbeth, "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
But you found there was one channel which allowed you to make out the words and, even when the words were silent, to catch a melodic structure, and the words turned into a story with thematic unity and a true narrative arc; a story in which you are, as I said, immersed, but now you have a part which will make the whole plot turn out one way or another, a part of honor and responsibility or of cowardice and treason, for weal or woe.
What do you do with this, your life? Do you take your part? Or do you turn back to one of the 9,999 channels of surd and chaos where where it finally makes no freaking sense, saying, "I don't mind being immersed in ultimate meaninglessness. I have no need for metanarrative, no need for the comprehensible word."
I think you need to ping Swordmaker and get on his Electric Universe ping list. Lots more atheists there : )
I do pity the soul who thinks himself so immnue to the vagaries of life that he can so easily try to use the affliction of another to further the ego pushing his atheism.
Me? Immune from the vagaries of life? I simply refuse to use my afflictions for pity or excuses. Life is short and I intend to live it to the fullest : )
“I simply refuse to use my afflictions for pity or excuses.” Ah, something we can finally agree upon. So why would you even bring up the affliction of another with derision in your posting?
Ahh, the search for meaning. I guess you would say that I found it in the chaos, a smile from my daughter, the light dawning when I finally understand a scientific principle, carrying corn out to the wild Turkeys, fighting with my darling wife. Life is messy and chaotic, it is the uncertainty and the lack of understanding that make it worth living.
Following the script of a Fairy Tale is easy and comforting. I can see the seduction. I prefer to write my own story and it isn't a Fairy Tale. It is real, full of mistakes and rewrites, chaotic and messy, and best of all it has an unfinished ending : )
It is, as well, only fey for you to speak of your "unfinished ending" when as far as a materialist cosmology can teach you, your relationships will come to a dead stop then when your loved ones lie rotting in the grave, and you'll go past your personal event horizon when your EEG goes flat.
You will never be aware of our sun swelling past the orbit of Mars in the red giant stage, which will happen thousands of years after your memory is forgotten and your species is extinct.
No, you are not writing that ending. Someone else wrote your ending as well as your beginning: you are in a middle-predicament you did not choose, but to which you must respond one way or another.
I can certainly admire the 19th century atheists, Ingersoll and Julian Huxley and the rest, my father's intellectual inspirations. I was raised on the "Little Blue Books" of E. Haldeman-Julius -- Darrow! a thrill! They were so sure that Free Thought, Science, and Progress would bring the Final Solution to the world' ills. It's touching, really, but it did turn out well.
They were also sure their personal lives would end when their congestive heart failures or cerebral ischemic events took them out. I suppose they puzzled about why Natural Selection and Evolution had put in their heads concepts, longings, and affinities for things which do not exist in this material plane: pi, the perfect circle, the infinity of primes, justice, a lasting love.
My father was reconciled with God and the Church and knew, in his latter years, that his ischemic event would not end him. I hope they, the Blue Book atheists, knew it, too.
I wouldn't have known about your afflictions if you hadn't brought them up earlier. Obviously they are important to you.
Unfortunately for you, I don't pity or feel sorry for people with handicaps. I used to teach people with handicaps how to ski. One of my students once snapped his artificial leg off and when I picked it up a bystander was so shocked she collapsed.
The people who I do feel pity for are the ones who are capable of doing anything they want to, but do nothing out of laziness or fear.
Your spin is rather transparent condescension: “Unfortunately for you, I don’t pity or feel sorry for people with handicaps.” I don’t recall anyone expecting you to have pity or feel sorry over a handicap. ‘Unfortunately’? You expose more of your nature with every post!
I can walk where Buddha once walked. I can trod the forests of the German Gods. I can sail the seas and visit the cities of the Norse Gods. I have seen the foot prints and the bones of the Greek Titans. Mount Olympus is a real place, where Zeus once ruled. I could travel to Mecca (it might be the last trip I make though) and visit the lands Mohamed lived in.
I think you would agree with me that while actual geographic places, historic times and persons existed, that does not necessarily make the accounts true. What has to be evaluated are the accounts themselves. Did Noah collect pairs of all of the animals of the world and then go sailing for a year while all of the land in the world was covered with water? Did God Create the world in seven days six thousand years ago? Is there a single unambiguous prophecy that has ever clearly come to pass? You know the answers as well as I do : )
No, you are not writing that ending. Someone else wrote your ending as well as your beginning: you are in a middle-predicament you did not choose, but to which you must respond one way or another.
You may be right, but we may be just now on the edge of discovering what consciousness is and what it means to be alive. Epigenetics and signaling pathways are giving us tantalizing clues. We live in exciting times as the Chinese curse goes.
This cannot be stressed enough!
The idea of human history as teleological, held in common by Communists, secularist liberals, Randian capitalists, and non-ideological believers in "the mission of science," is a radically non-scientific concept taken from religious messianism. Even the very notion that there is some moral obligation to accept "scientific truth" over "religious lies," is an idea that exists totally outside science.
However, as much as the writer of this article has done to expose this, his obvious non-Theistically based moralism (religions "shouldn't" do so-and-so) show him to be a hypocrite, since non-Theism ultimately has no business using the words "should" and "shouldn't."
Exactly. This is an important distinction: Gautama Siddhartha actually existed. He is an historic person, and the founder of what I take to be the noblest of all the man-made religions. He did not claim to be a god, for which I respect him because, in truth, he was not God. And his noble eight-fold path is a valuable and beautiful human cultural good, and not a fairy tale.
"I can trod the forests of the German Gods. I can sail the seas and visit the cities of the Norse Gods. I have seen the foot prints and the bones of the Greek Titans. Mount Olympus is a real place, where Zeus once ruled."
Of these I am more sceptical, not myth-wise but history-wise. I would like to see --- not proof --- but substantiation which conforms to the ordinary evidentiary rules of historiography.
I understand the Norse/Germanic/Icelandic gods to be neither fairy-tales nor history, but heroic sagas about real men whose personal histories were retold in the manner of Euhemerus to convey moral and tribal themes. Such, I think, is the case with Baldur, whose story emerged in literary form only in the Middle Ages, and whose evocative themes in some ways echo those actually lived by Christ.
I find this delightful, because it is like seeing the glinting of a shard of mirror found in the grass. Dying/rising god, coming again for the final victory of the good, to create a new world. That's quite a piece of it, isn't it?
About the creation of the earth in six days, Noah and the flood, etc: the Church does not consider the first 11 chapters of Genesis to be literally historical, but to be based on things which actually happened, as re-told in all Ancient Middle Eastern literatures, and of course other literatures as well.
Sumerian and Babylonian stories, the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Atrahasis Epic, the Enuma Elish, etc. were in fact source materials for the related accounts in the first 11 chapters of the Torah, BUT this is not a matter of merely transcribing into a different language and cultural context, but a subversive retelling.
(For a little background, compare-and-contrast, here's a pretty interesting discussion of the creation themes.)
For instance, in other Middle Eastern literature, the Tower of Babel was a glorious achievement; the Hebrews re-tell the story as a satire, almost as a farce, showing the futility of Babylonian "greatness."
The Creation account in Genesis responds to, or even in a sense, debates that of other Middle Eastern literature, insisting that
The upshot was, if you compare the texts and isolate the differences or contrasts, at every point it's the contrasts which convey the message the Torah is designed to convey.
In effect, the Babylonian epic is the fairy-tale, and the Genesis account the later, "critically redacted" version, altered to convey cosmological and moral truths.
"You may be right, but we may be just now on the edge of discovering what consciousness is and what it means to be alive. Epigenetics and signaling pathways are giving us tantalizing clues. We live in exciting times as the Chinese curse goes."
You may be right about that, too. Have you read "The Quantum Brain" by Jeffrey Satinover? He's written some of the best stuff on consciousness I've ever read. Here's an intro page on Satinover, from which you can follow a link to "Psychology and the Abolition of Meaning" --- great stuff.
Enjoy!
In effect, the Babylonian epic is the fairy-tale, and the Genesis account the later, "critically redacted" version, altered to convey cosmological and moral truths.
::sigh:: I give up.
And yet I can find no such assertion in my Catechism.
Most modern leftist atheists believe what they believe in order to define right and wrong for themselves instead of having an objective standard of behavior to live up to.
I find it hard to debate with someone who is so reasonable : )
Sumerian and Babylonian stories, the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Atrahasis Epic, the Enuma Elish, etc. were in fact source materials for the related accounts in the first 11 chapters of the Torah, BUT this is not a matter of merely transcribing into a different language and cultural context, but a subversive retelling.
That is an interesting twist. I will have to ponder what you are saying. Are you actually saying that the Torah is a subversive retelling? I will make a good atheist out of you yet : )
For instance, in other Middle Eastern literature, the Tower of Babel was a glorious achievement; the Hebrews re-tell the story as a satire, almost as a farce, showing the futility of Babylonian "greatness."
Slaves like to do that : )
Thanks for the link to the Quantum Brain. I have been trying to follow Penrose and his theories.
What I did wrong was this: I mixed my opinion with Catholic doctrine, without giving any indication which was which. Readers would do well to put confidence in Catholic doctrine and take Mrs. Don-o with the appropriate grains of salt. Let me try to untangle the spaghetti as follows:
It is better to click on the links which take you to the whole document to read in context, but you'll notice it does say this:
"The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man."
"...the first three chapters of Genesis occupy a unique place. From a literary standpoint these texts may have had diverse sources. The inspired authors have placed them at the beginning of Scripture to express in their solemn language the truths of creation..."
And the Vatican Council decree Dei Verbum taught:
"In composing the sacred books, God chose men and while employed by him they made use of their powers and abilities, so that with him acting in them and through them, they, as true authors, consigned to writing everything and only those things that he wanted. Therefore, since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully, and without error that truth that God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation (DV 11)."
I put in these quotes in order to illustrate that the Church is convinced that all of Holy Scripture teaches, through various literary and cultural forms, the truths necessary for our salvation.
Ahem. (Cough.) A-HEM. Now we get to the troublesome part. There's a Teaching Document from the Bishop's Conference of England, Wales and Scotland called The Gift of Scripture. It expressed the view that the first 11 chapters of Genesis constitute an account told not from a historical, but rather from a primeval, point of view.
As soon as this 60-page document was published (and I've never got my hands on it, I've only read long quotes) it was critiqued by a BUNCH of Catholic authors who said there were parts that were in apparent contradiction to previous Magisterial documents, or in any case so confusing as to mislead. Typical critiques are here and also here.
To this, I added some opinions I formed under the influence of Edith Black's article in Homiletic and Pastoral Review --- opinions, and pretty good opinions, too.
But not dogma.
Sorry for any resulting confusion.
Now I'm outta here because my son wants to use the computer. I'll pick up on this tomorrow if you have any questions?
Fallible fingers.
If the TaNa"KH is so subversive then perhaps the chr*stians should have left it alone instead of claiming it for themselves only to have to deny its facticity later.
I notice that despite the blatant claim of being members of an "ancient and unchanging" church, most Catholics get their Biblical "knowledge" from modern irreverent "scholars." Orthodox Jews get their information from Tradition (which Catholics invoke but apparently don't listen to, at least when it comes to the Bible). This ancient, continuous Tradition dates to Sinai and there is no need to second-guess it.
As to the nonsensical modern assumption that the first eleven chapters of the Torah are different from all the rest (in being "myth" or "fable" rather than history, which allegedly begins only with Chapter 12), Ancient Authentic and Trustworthy Jewish Tradition tells us that Noah died when Abraham was 58 years old. Noah's son Shem actually outlived Abraham by 32 years. Abraham's grandson Jacob spent years studying in the academies of Shem and `Ever.
So much for the "myth/history" dichotomy that disconnects the first eleven chapters of the Torah from the rest of it.
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