Lamh Foistenach Abu!
Posted on 06/10/2009 5:33:38 PM PDT by WesternCulture
The role of religion in public life in Sweden has been brought into sharp relief by a provocative ad campaign questioning the existence of God.
Earlier this week, billboards went up in several Stockholm subway stations and elsewhere around the city proclaiming, “God probably doesn’t exist” (Gud finns nog inte).
Accompanying the proclamation are images of three flags featuring symbols from Judaism, Islam, and Christianity fashioned in the same shades of blue and yellow found on the Swedish flag.
The ads come from the Swedish Humanist Association (Humanisterna), and are part of a campaign to further debate about the impact of religion on public life and recruit new members to the organization.
“We want to get people to reflect on the fact that religion plays a bigger role that they think,” Humanist Association chair Christer Sturmark told the magazine Resumé.
The Swedish Humanists claim in the ad that less than 20 percent of Swedes are religious.
As a result, the group thinks it’s worth considering how religion affects the lives of the remaining 7 million Swedes when it comes to issues such as abortion, homosexuality, and religious independent schools ('friskolor').
Humanism, according to the group, is a secular worldview which emphasizes democracy and human rights and rejects the notion that supernatural beings play a role in life events.
The Humanists also believe that democratic values are often limited by fundamentalist trends and religious dogma.
“It’s not that we want to stop the religious community, but we want to level the playing field,” said Sturmark.
“Religious groups get huge sums from the state every year. We’re dependent on our members.”
Sturmark explained that the campaign was paid for by donations from some the association’s roughly 5,000 members, each of which pay an annual membership fee of 3,000 kronor ($390).
The Swedish campaign echoes a similar campaign in London which a UK-based humanist group sponsored earlier this year.
The London ads, which also challenged the existence of God, prompted several Christian groups to organize a competing campaign arguing that God does in fact exist – something which Sturmark thinks could also happen in Sweden.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if they answered our campaign here too. But we gladly welcome that. We want very much to start a debate,” he told Resumé.
Åke Sander, a religion professor at Gothenburg University, believes that atheism has become more aggressive in the western world and in Sweden in particular.
He believes the trend depends in part on an increase in the number of instances in which different religions run into one another due to increased immigration, but also because of the earlier belief that secular society would eventually wipe out all religions.
“The last two decades have proven that to be totally wrong. It’s probably more accurate to say that this increase in atheism is a reaction to the increased level of religion in public life,” Sander told the TT news agency.
Swedish archbishop Anders Wejryd, on the other hand, while not commenting directly on the Humanist’s campaign or the role of religion in society, did inform TT that he believes God exists.
This is what happens when society abandons God and moves toward socialism and statism.
They are both to be viewed as post-medieval theological teachings as they do not leave the fate of man up to God (at least not his fate here on Earth).
On the other hand, neither Renaissance Neoplatonist intellectuals or Swedish Lutherans were drawn to Atheism.
Instead, one could well argue that Atheists of today act very much as usurpers when trying to establish an equals sign between Atheism and Humanism.
By sheer logical necessity, there's no conflict between Atheism and Humanism, but doing so is very much like trying to say music equals ABBA.
In an indirect manner, a bold Christian, 15th century, spirit like Pico della Mirandola went as far as to claim that while God might encompass the Universe, man actually was at the center of creation (and thus had been awarded with the task of fulfilling God's will).
Many Atheists do not love mankind and many Lutherans and Catholics do not hold each other in high regards, but at least, I believe most people would agree that a Florentine Renaissance revolutionary mind like Pico della Mirandola wasn't all wrong.
According to della Mirandola, God loves mankind so much, that God has blessed us with the greatest gifts of all;
Freedom.
Freedom to think for ourselves and shape our own future.
``We have given you, O Adam, no visage proper to yourself, nor endowment properly your own, in order that whatever place, whatever form, whatever gifts you may, with premeditation, select, these same you may have and possess through your own judgment and decision. The nature of all other creatures is defined and restricted within laws which We have laid down; you, by contrast, impeded by no such restrictions, may, by your own free will, to whose custody We have assigned you, trace for yourself the lineaments of your own nature. I have placed you at the very center of the world, so that from that vantage point you may with greater ease glance round about you on all that the world contains. We have made you a creature neither of heaven nor of earth, neither mortal nor immortal, in order that you may, as the free and proud shaper of your own being, fashion yourself in the form you may prefer. It will be in your power to descend to the lower, brutish forms of life; you will be able, through your own decision, to rise again to the superior orders whose life is divine.’’
(”Oration On the Dignity Of Man”/”Oratio de hominis dignitate”, 1486)
Yawn. Again?
At least the atheists could have the backbone to really take a stand and say it for sure.
From the title I sense a hedge bet; it’s start.
Oh I think thousands year old religions can handle a few posters.
Not good enough. I’d like to see them put up posters that say “Allah probably doesn’t exist.”
After all, all religions pose the same problems, right? So what’s the diff?
God does not probably exist and we need more of your money.
- Well said.
My conclusion is that it is up to every Freedom loving person, whether he or she is American, European (like me), or belongs to another part of the world, to stand up for true freedom.
We can not afford to let people like Obama, radical Imams and EUrocrats play God.
I will take the chance. In fact I know He exists. In the end, we will all find out. In the mean time, why be a smarmy humanist and try to demean those of us who believe? Take that step and live the good life!
lulz, lame attempt...best they could come up with was “probably”?
...but as the old mobster in “Casino” says...why take the chance?
Swedish Humanists soon will not exist: God.
Lamh Foistenach Abu!
"It is foolish, generally speaking, for a philosopher to set fire to another philosopher in Smithfield Market because they do not agree in their theory of the universe. That was done very frequently in the last decadence of the Middle Ages, and it failed altogether in its object. But there is one thing that is infinitely more absurd and unpractical than burning a man for his philosophy. This is the habit of saying that his philosophy does not matter, and this is done universally in the twentieth century, in the decadence of the great revolutionary period. General theories are everywhere contemned; the doctrine of the Rights of Man is dismissed with the doctrine of the Fall of Man. Atheism itself is too theological for us to-day. Revolution itself is too much of a system; liberty itself is too much of a restraint. We will have no generalizations. Mr. Bernard Shaw has put the view in a perfect epigram: "The golden rule is that there is no golden rule." We are more and more to discuss details in art, politics, literature. A man's opinion on tramcars matters; his opinion on Botticelli matters; his opinion on all things does not matter. He may turn over and explore a million objects, but he must not find that strange object, the universe; for if he does he will have a religion, and be lost. Everything matters--except everything...
This was certainly not the idea of those who introduced our freedom. When the old Liberals removed the gags from all the heresies, their idea was that religious and philosophical discoveries might thus be made. Their view was that cosmic truth was so important that every one ought to bear independent testimony. The modern idea is that cosmic truth is so unimportant that it cannot matter what any one says. The former freed inquiry as men loose a noble hound; the latter frees inquiry as men fling back into the sea a fish unfit for eating. Never has there been so little discussion about the nature of men as now, when, for the first time, any one can discuss it. The old restriction meant that only the orthodox were allowed to discuss religion. Modern liberty means that nobody is allowed to discuss it. Good taste, the last and vilest of human superstitions, has succeeded in silencing us where all the rest have failed...Then we talk about Lord Anglesey and the weather, and call it the complete liberty of all the creeds."
- GK Chesterton
True wisdom from God tells us that Obama, etc., cannot play God. No one can.
1. I’d like to see the “Allah Probably Doesn’t Exist” campaign.
2. You don’t have to be religious to oppose abortion.
That’s too offensive.
You know, it’s no longer “cutting edge” or “hip” to bash Christianity.
If these “artists” really want to push the envelope and be av avante-garde, they need to take on Islam like they have Christianity.
Religion is a powerful bulwark against tribal outsiders that habor antipathy to our ways.
It’s partly because of the decline in Christianity that Swedes have not been able to repel an incessant onslaught of people who not only sponge off of hard-working, law-abiding blonde people there, but also calmly declare to Sweden that they intend to destroy the country, as in Malmo.
Even if there are all kinds of crazy, unproven stuff about Christianity, it helps people to make in group/out group distinctions, something that our two countries both will have to remember how to do.
Well, at least they have the courage of their convictions.
Really?!
Who knew?
There are two competing understandings of Liberty, in my view. That God is the enemy of Liberty, versus the belief that God is the author of Liberty.
In the one view, you can not be free while you are in bondage to God or religion, whereas in the view of the American founders, you could not fully fulfill the destiny God gave you without Liberty.
Its my view that we are on this earth to join in the creation, that we are agents of creation. That only a free man can be truly moral, and only a moral man can be truly free. And that both life and liberty are God’s gift to humanity.
David Meece’s song ( Come that day ) basically says it all.
I'll be more impressed with Atheist "aggressiveness" when Atheists criticize Islam. Until then, it's spitwads thrown by children.
“..only a free man can be truly moral, and only a moral man can be truly free(..) Both life and liberty are God’s gift to humanity.”
- True.
In twenty years, Sweden probably doesn’t exist.
God is Alive....we don’t need any sweedish assholes telling us different.
You rock and your country rocks. I hope you guys never go away, and I hope your (real Swedish) women have....like 15 kids per family. That would be great!
It really sucks how athesists have stolen the term “Humanism” as a synonynm (sp?) for their ideology.
As the previous comment noted the term came about during the Renaissance and had a very strong religious component. Saint Thoman More and Erasmasus were considered humanists who saw no conflict between reason and faith.
“It’s partly because of the decline in Christianity that Swedes have not been able to repel an incessant onslaught of people who not only sponge off of hard-working, law-abiding blonde people there, but also calmly declare to Sweden that they intend to destroy the country, as in Malmo.”
- It ought to be remembered that the most extreme Muslims are not only the enemies of us blond, blue eyed, Swedes but also the parasites of those immigrants who are Muslims “in name only”, people who seek to adapt to Swedish culture and wish to create something resembling a future for themselves.
I wonder what the athesists will say when they have to stand before God during the final judgment.
Maybe God just “ists”.
People always know that it’s safe to pick on Christians.
Christians don’t have any nasty habits like sawing off your head or blowing you to smithereens.
All they’ll be left with is putting their fingers in their ears and saying, “La,...la,la,la,la,....la,la, la, laaaaaa.....I can’t hear you........”
“You rock and your country rocks. I hope you guys never go away, and I hope your (real Swedish) women have....like 15 kids per family. That would be great!”
- Thank you.
A certain lady I’ve known for some time recently told me her grandmother gave birth to 23 children.
I won’t ask the same of every young woman here in Sweden, but despite all of the stupidity that has come out of my country the last decades, I feel the World could benefit from housing some more of us.
“In twenty years, Sweden probably doesn’t exist.”
- You believe God is that angry with us?
And there’s this really big probability that Swedes find out they’re WRONG!
- Is that Swedish chef really employing proper halal techniques?
No, I just think that Sweden’s unsustainable level of debt combined with an increasing Muslim population will doom Sweden as we know it.
Now that I am a Christian I do not have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable, but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable." (Mere Christianity)
God still loves them, I think, and if a sinner like me can say a little prayer for them, they have more hope than they know. They may end up praying for me. I could use it.
;-)
I blame the beer.
“No, I just think that Sweden’s unsustainable level of debt combined with an increasing Muslim population will doom Sweden as we know it.”
- What debt?
Today, Sweden doesn’t have a huge national debt in relation to our total GDP.
We had some problems in this domain around 15 years ago, but today we have much less of a deficit problem than most other European countries.
I’ll bet these little twits don’t have the balls to put up a billboard saying, “ALLAH Doesn’t Exist”
Sincere thanks for that thought-provoking C.S. Lewis quote and God bless the proud state of Idaho!
“God probably does not exist.” I just love those bold assertions! I guess the next sign will be: You problem do not exist.
Islam is God’s punishment on nations that have renounced their Christian heritage.
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