Why God Isn’t Doing Well. Our Creator isn’t very popular in our secularist, left-wing culture.

National Review ^ | 04/05/2011 | Dennis Prager

[SeekAndFind]

God is not doing very well these days.

Here are four reasons why:

The first is that increasingly large numbers of men and women attend university, and Western universities have become essentially secular (and leftist) seminaries. Just as the agenda of traditional Christian and Jewish seminaries is to produce religious Christians and religious Jews, the agenda of Western universities is to produce (left-wing) secularists. The difference is that Christian and Jewish seminaries are honest about their agenda, while the universities still claim they have neither a secularist nor a political agenda.

The more university education a person receives, the more likely he is to hold secular and left-wing views. The secular Left argues that this correlation is due to the fact that a college graduate knows more and thinks more clearly and therefore gravitates leftward and toward secularism. But if you believe that the average college graduate is a clear and knowledgeable thinker as a result of his or her time at university, I have more than one bridge to sell you. A radio talk-show host for 29 years, I long ago began asking callers who made foolish comments what graduate school they had attended. It takes higher education to learn that America and Israel are villains, that men and women have essentially the same natures, that human nature is good, that ever-larger governments create wealth, etc.

A second reason God is not doing well among Westerners these days is that many members of the Jewish and Christian clergy decided that their primary role was not to advocate their religion’s moral and religious standards, but rather (1) to make congregants comfortable (“Don’t call me ‘Pastor’ [or ‘Rabbi,’ or ‘Father’], call me Jerry”) and (2) to promulgate the values they learned at their secular left-wing universities.

A third reason God is not doing well is that most of the men and women who are products of this secular left-wing education (meaning a large majority of Western men and women) are theologically, intellectually, and emotionally ill-prepared to deal with all the unjust suffering in the world. I will never forget a Swedish pastor’s reaction to the 1994 sinking of the Estonia, a ferry that capsized in the Baltic between Estonia and Sweden leaving 852 passengers and crew dead. He said he could not believe in a God who allowed such injustice to take place.

This pastor spoke for vast numbers of modern Western men and women. The existence of so much unjust suffering in the world has strongly contributed to their rejecting belief in God. And undoubtedly the devastation caused by the Japanese earthquake and tsunami has further reinforced many individuals’ rejection of God.

Of course, none of us has a fully coherent solution to the problem of theodicy. But the problem is not exactly new. Every great religion has dealt with it, and most of the brilliant minds in history retained their faith in God despite all the unjust suffering they saw.

The difference today is that life has been so good for most Westerners that suffering is no longer regarded as part of life, but as an aberration that can be done away with. Meanwhile, the liberal wings of Christianity and Judaism are too influenced by secularism to make an effective religious case for God, whom the religious Left has largely rendered a celestial buddy.

The fourth reason is Islamic violence and the tepid response to it by the liberal churches and synagogues. It would seem pretty clear that a major, albeit almost never acknowledged, reason for the huge audiences for recent books advocating atheism has been the massive amount of evil committed in God’s name by radical Muslims. Nothing creates atheism as much as evil done in God’s name.

That is why the pathetically weak responses from within mainstream — i.e., liberal — Christianity and Judaism have only added to the contempt for God and religion sown by beheadings and suicide bombings in Allah’s name. The liberal Christian and Jewish responses have been to attack fellow Christians and Jews who have focused on Islamist terror. Instead of drawing attention to the damage radical Islam does to the name of God, liberal Christians and Jews focus their anger on co-religionists who do speak out on this issue and label them “Islamophobes.”

That God is not doing well in the Western world may trouble God. But it is we humans who should be most troubled. The moral, intellectual, artistic, and demographic decline in Western Europe (people in secular countries don’t even have the will to reproduce themselves) is only gaining momentum. And the consequences of that decline will be far more devastating than all the tsunamis and all the earthquakes that may come our way.

— Dennis Prageris a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist.

[utherdoul]

I personally feel that the leftist feel good spirtuality type Christian churches have done more damage than the university. Jesus was a femminist, Jesus was an environmentalist, god shouldn’t be referred to as He. The church my mother made me go to for most of my childhood embraced every bit of revision and PC feeling they could shove down ones throat. Its what turned me into the agnostic I am today and made my brother an atheist. Most of the kids I went to church with that I’ve talked to feel the same way for various reasons.

[svcw]

What a moronic title to a story. God is perfect, His Will is perfect, God is perfection.

[ozark hilljilly]

I just talked to Him and He’s feeling fine n dandy...it’s just the rest of you’ns that He’s worried about.
; )

[Cronos]

imho, I don't think it's only true for the Western world, but indeed for much of the "westernised" world.

I like the second reason stated in the article quite a lot as I see that many people are actually attracted to stricter congregations.

[Cronos]

I will never forget a Swedish pastor’s reaction to the 1994 sinking of the Estonia, a ferry that capsized in the Baltic between Estonia and Sweden leaving 852 passengers and crew dead. He said he could not believe in a God who allowed such injustice to take place.

This article hits it on the head when it places the blame on secular left-wing education leaving are theologically, intellectually, and emotionally ill-prepared to deal with all the unjust suffering in the world

[onedoug]

Prager ping....

[allmendream]

http://www.halfsigma.com/2010/11/exit-poll.html Whites without a college degree voted 62% Republican, compared to 57% of whites with a college degree. The Republican Party is clearly the favored party of blue collar whites. This is a significant increase from 2008 when only 54% of whites without a college degree voted Republican, and the gap between college and non-college graduate whites grew from 2% to 5%. It's counterintuitive that Republicans are both the party of the rich as well as the party of blue collar whites.

[Soothesayer]

How can a perfect God create the leftist vermin? I’ve been struggling with this question for a long time.

We are all terrible sinners but there is something innately defective about the vermin. They are utterly demented, selfish, violent, and cruel. They have no capacity for spirituality and goodness whatsoever. They are not just “sheep gone astray” but the total incarnation of evil and depravity. They behave exactly as any primitive animal in nature but with a cruel murderous style that would make a black widow aghast.

I truly do not believe that all humans were created in God’s image. It’s more likely that some sinners were created in God’s image and the rest are lousy imitations resulting from the chaos of nature. They cannot be saved and simply need to be defeated.

[svcw]

God did not create sin. It is called free will. Unfortunately we can all suffer because others are stupid in their choice of will.

[wintertime]

If children attend GODLESS government K-12 schools they **will** learn to think and reason godlessly. They must do this simply to cooperate with the classroom instruction and complete assignment.

Result: Do this for a few generations and we will have a population that thinks godlessly. At best, we have a population that is well trained to compartmentalize their faith.

If conservatives shut down the government schools and worked to see that every child had access to a **private** and **conservative** education that thoroughly integrate their specific Judeo Christian faith and our Founding Fathers’ principles we would soon see the following:

**In 10 to 12 years our nation's college classrooms would be filled to the brim with students capable of defending their faith and our nation's founding principles. Their Marxist professors would wither before their righteousness.

** in !0 to !2 years our campuses would be filled with Judeo Christian oriented fraternities and sororities and service clubs, and conservative activist clubs.

** In 20 years these righteous youth will have taken their places in the cultural leadership positions of our nation.

[allmendream]

You can become a pastor in Sweden with only a secular education?

[workerbee]

Why God Isn’t Doing Well. Our Creator isn’t very popular in our secularist, left-wing culture.

God is doing just fine, thanks. I think it's the secular left who will find He has the last laugh on this topic.

[SeekAndFind]

Those are very interesting stats. But what does God’s popularity have to do with it?

[Soothesayer]

I don’t buy the free will argument at all!

Behavior is not random. It is the product of genetics and the environment. Every one of us is familiar with evil deeds that are incomprehensible. There is a reason they are incomprehensible!

I’ll admit that I’m a terrible sinner. I break every one of the ten commandments a few thousand times a day. I break “thou shall not kill” a billion times a minute.

However, there are some sins that are completely outside of my nature: the desire to kill children, the desire to seek total fulfillment through atheism and hedonism, and racism. I am 100% certain that these 3 things do not exist within my soul in any form. The rest are a different story.

[Dunstan McShane]

The difference today is that life has been so good for most Westerners that suffering is no longer regarded as part of life, but as an aberration that can be done away with.

Bingo! The people I know who are most distressed by the possibility of suffering are the ones who are farthest from the actual thing--and I suspect (perhaps unjustly) that their concern is not so much for the sufferings of others, as for the possibility of their own suffering.

To prevent this from ever happening, they will embrace any Draconian and restrictive policy to stave off even the possibility of suffering, and define this as virtue, or at least, "common sense.".

Trust or faith in God is not a practical option for them, as He is not controllable, nor can He be guaranteed to answer prayer according to your specifications or with your particular ends in mind, but may have to consider others as well. So God is left out of the equation--they're going to have to handle this as efficiently and effectively as the human mind can define the problem and devise a solution to it with the expenditure of as little energy and unpleasantness (for them) as is possible.

In the real world, this usually results in restriction of freedoms (for the people they define as the greatest threats to their lives and safety--which, oddly, sometimes seem not to be the persons actually desirous of killing them, but those people who speak against those who have called for their deaths and the destruction of their way of life--as well as for anyone who challenges any of the assumptions of the Doctrine of Our Un-Suffering). God is not a reliable datum in the equation because He cannot be guaranteed to work as ordered (or at all--He may have different ideas altogether, which is why they think it better not to invite Him at all, and to jeer at those who do put their faith in Him as being unrealistic and unproductive).

Once you've assumed that humans can understand and prevent all suffering through the exercise of the human intellect and human power, you have the basic building blocks for a truly repressive and inhuman (and frankly, boring) culture: a culture for the "thinking" (i.e., "degreed") elite who think they can avoid suffering, and that other people are the tools to effect this end--and they can salve their consciences (if any) with the mantra used by all oppressive regimes: that "it's for their own good, as well" even if they don't realize it, and maybe even especially if they don't--and the more it hurts 'em, the better it's doing 'em.

[dfwgator]

This is news?

[trisham]

This article is in the Religion forum. :)

[Tulane]

God is fine. It’s us that have the problem.

[wintertime]

How can a perfect God create the leftist vermin?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Here's the recipe:

**Take innocent child

**Remove him from his parents at a tender age and segregate him into age segregated groups of other children when he learns to model the behavior of children. (Make certain that this ingredient is completely free of an contamination from Judeo Chrisitan based thinking. )

** Throw in heaps and heaps of godless thinking and reasoning.

** Make sure the child is stirred thoroughly for 13 or more years from pre-K to 12 th grade in this godless worldview. This is an important step because the child must think and reason godlessly simply to cooperate with the godless classroom indoctrination.

**To be certain that the above steps happen, tax the parents heavily so that it is necessary for both parents to work in the salt mines just to pay the taxes.

** For extra richness send to college for more godless indoctrination for another 4 or more years.

P.S. God is not needed for the above to happen. We can do this all by ourselves! :-)