Posted on 06/06/2009 6:35:47 PM PDT by rhema
We're increasingly uncomfortable with religion these days.
As a society, we tolerate pastors, priests, rabbis and other religious folks, so long as they confine their message to a vanilla "God is love" theme and bless babies, brides and caskets.
But when religious leaders speak out on the issues of the day -- especially using morally tinged language -- the elite gatekeepers of public opinion in the media, government and academia warn shrilly that a new Dark Age is upon us.
More and more, we see outright hostility to religion -- particularly to Christianity. Consider the wild popularity of a recent spate of best-sellers by "New Atheist" superstars, including Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion" and Christopher Hitchens' "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything."
Far from being dispassionate critics of faith, the New Atheists are zealous crusaders for their own creed: materialism. They are passionately committed to the idea that the universe is a random accident, that transcendent truth is a myth, and that man's life has no inherent purpose or meaning.
Why the growing audience for notions like these?
Religion poses a serious challenge to our cherished idea of personal autonomy. Unlike our forebears, we define freedom as the right to live as we choose -- to "be ourselves" -- unconstrained by social norms or a morally grounded sense of guilt or shame.
Judeo-Christianity throws a wrench in this, teaching that universal standards of right and wrong trump our personal desires.
In addition, it raises troubling questions about the vision of scientific "progress," so central to our modern age. The mere fact that we are capable of, say, genetically altering or cloning human beings doesn't give us moral license to do so, it cautions.
(Excerpt) Read more at startribune.com ...
At least when we screw up we know we're wrong and we have to make amends for it.
fruits of the communist agenda
G. K. Chesterton must have seen our pallid, small-souled, politically correct society coming. He wrote, “When you break the big laws, you do not get freedom; you do not even get anarchy. You get the small laws.” “The truth is, of course, that the curtness of the Ten Commandments is an evidence, not of the gloom and narrowness of a religion, but, on the contrary, of its liberality and humanity. It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted: precisely because most things are permitted, and only a few things are forbidden.”
The problem in America is not a few loud atheists.
The problem in America is the Christian church openly embracing sin and calling it tolerance. The problem in America is the church is on the side lines for the culture war. The church is where the biggest moral deline exists.
That is because the Seminaries were opened to draft dodgers who did not have any religious convictions.
Those are now the ones in charge.
Ain't it the truth. John 3:19-20 states as much: "This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed."
The natural law, the Old Law and the New Law are not restricting but emancipating.
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And the colleges and universities associated with those apostate denominations have hit the skids with them.
...when Arthur Goldberg left the Supreme Court he held a farewell press conference....in it he warned against “a growing hostility within the judiciary against religion”...at the time I thought he was way off base....that can never happen in America; right?....well, time has proved him right as rain.
It’s not that the bad people keep getting worse, it’s that the good people have gotten worse.
"If you don't change your ways, destruction will follow."
From a logical standpoint, enough people today realize that destruction can follow regardless of how we behave. But that doesn't mean that we will all run wild and ignore our societal obligations.
It only means some of us will.
Quoting myself: (Advice to a young woman)
"All men are wired to respond the same way, up to a point. The real definition of a gentleman is that he can control his behavior in a civilized manner. Men who can control their behavior and their appetites only under threat of force or punishment are dangerous men. You need to be able to spot the difference."My perception of why our society is getting rapidly more uncomfortable is this:
We don't have a dearth of guidance in regard to proper, acceptable behavior. We have not totally forgotten the lessons of our churches, our historical figures, and our grade school teachers.It isn't Power that corrupts; it's impunity.
What we have stopped doing is punishing people for doing wrong things, for hurting people and making others uncomfortable. We've stopped smacking the butts of the tantrum-throwing brats among us, and they are running wild.
Impudent children, impudent teenagers, impudent politicians.
" impudence - the trait of being rude and impertinent; inclined to take liberties"
They have all gone unpunished too long.
And sadly, we see that kind of hostility towards religion here on FR, especially on the evolution threads.
bookmark
The new religion is: Don’t Hold Me Accountable
No protests or complaints from the secular humanists, atheists, or Separation-of-Church-and-State fanatics about the U.S. being "one of the largest Muslim countries" according to Obama??? You would think Sharia coming to the U.S., hailed and praised by Obama, would have them a little concerned and alarmed. They have a...er...different view on same-sex unions and liberal attitudes.
bttt
Why anti-semitism?
Good observations, Bob.
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