Posted on 10/18/2006 5:25:05 PM PDT by wagglebee
CHICAGO (Reuters) - A fresh wave of atheistic books has hit the market this autumn, some climbing onto best-seller lists in what proponents see as a backlash against the way religion is entwined in politics.
"Religion is fragmenting the human community," said Sam Harris, author of "Letter to a Christian Nation," No. 11 on the New York Times nonfiction list on October 15.
There is a "huge visibility and political empowerment of religion. President George W. Bush uses his first veto to deny funding for stem cell research and scientists everywhere are horrified," he said in an interview.
Religious polarization is part of many world conflicts, he said, including those involving Israel and Iran, "but it's never discussed. I consider it the story of our time, what religion is doing to us. But there are very few people calling a spade a spade."
His "Letter," a blunt 96-page pocket-sized book condensing arguments against belief in quick-fire volleys, appeared on the Times list just ahead of "The God Delusion," by Richard Dawkins, a scientist at Oxford University and long-time atheist.
In addition, Harris' "The End of Faith," a 2004 work which prompted his "Letter" as a response to critics, is holding the No. 13 Times spot among nonfiction paperbacks.
Publishers Weekly said the business has seen "a striking number of impassioned critiques of religion -- any religion, but Christianity in particular," a probably inevitable development given "the super-soaking of American politics and culture with religion in recent years."
Paul Kurtz, founder of the Council for Secular Humanism and publisher of Free Inquiry magazine, said, "The American public is really disturbed about the role of religion in U.S. government policy, particularly with the Bush administration and the breakdown of church-state separation, and secondly with the conflict in the Mideast."
They are turning to free thought and secular humanism and publishers have recognized a taste for that, he added.
"I've published 45 books, many critical of religion," Kurtz said. "I think in America we have this notion of tolerance ... it was considered bad taste to criticize religion. But I think now there are profound questions about age-old hatreds."
The Rev. James Halstead, chairman of the Department of Religious Studies at Chicago's DePaul University, says the phenomenon is really "a ripple caused by the book publishing industry."
"These books cause no new thought or moral commitment. The arguments are centuries old," he told Reuters. Some believers, he added, "are no better. Their conception of God, the Divine-Human-World relationship are much too simplistic and materialistic."
Too often, he said, the concept "God" is misused "to legitimate the self and to beat up other people ... to rehash that same old theistic and atheistic arguments is a waste of time, energy and paper."
Dr. Timothy Larsen, professor of theology at Wheaton College in Illinois, says any growth in interest in atheism is a reflection of the strength of religion -- the former being a parasite that feeds off the latter.
That happened late in the 19th century America when an era of intense religious conviction gave rise to voices like famed agnostic Robert Ingersoll, he said.
For Christianity, he said, "It's very important for people of faith to realize how unsettling and threatening their posture and rhetoric and practice can feel to others. So it's an opportunity for the church to look at itself and say 'we have done things ... that make other people uncomfortable.' It is an opportunity for dialogue."
Larsen, author of the soon-to-be-published "Crisis of Doubt," added that in some sense atheism is "a disappointment with God and with the church. Some of these are people we wounded that we should be handling pastorally rather than with aggressive knockdown debate."
These are also probably some of the same people Harris says he's hearing from after his two books.
"Many, many readers feel utterly isolated in their communities," he said. "They are surrounded by cult members, from their point of view, and are unable to disclose their feelings."
"I get a lot of e-mail just expressing incredible relief that they are not alone ... relieved that I'm writing something that couldn't be said," Harris added.
"As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries."
The "Golden Rule" is so simple that more than one pre-Christian culture came up with a version. It's not so much "self-preservation" as "enlightened self interest." Human beings, being social critters, have to get along to survive. The Golden Rule is simply the the distilled-down essence of what it takes to live together.
Now, as for what happens when the other guy doesn't hold to the Golden Rule? Exactly what happens now -- he is dealt with by those around him. God doesn't come down on His magic cloud and smite the fellow. The bad guy's fellow human beings do it.
I never called God a liar. I simply pointed out what was said in the Bible. Not my interpretation of what was in the Bible, but exactly what was said therein. Jesus' death was temporary, like a video game death. His suffering was not all that great compared with the sufferings of others back then, or even nowadays. He died relatively quickly (a few hours), when the method of execution (crucifixion) was reknowned for allowing people to linger for days. Three days later he's up and hanging with his buds, and forty days later he inherits the whole shebang. Not bad for what amounts to a short period of mild discomfort.
They have a similar idea that our souls are pre existant somewhere, and just WAITING for some humans to copulate so they'll have a body to enter.
What 'confusion'? Esau saw no value in what was rightfully his.
Today's people, for the most part, see no value in their souls.
Huh?
No, I do not.
Think is QUITE specific...
Genesis 2
1. Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array.
2. By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work.
You're comfortable leveling that charge against the majority of you fellow man?
Not that I can find.
There are references to men talking to angels and not realizing it til later.
In the NT there's a verse containing... 'entertaining angels unaware'.
I don't know.
Meanwhile, Joe over here is a Buddhist. We both gamble our eternal destinies on the claim the Buddha was a liar.
I sure miss him and Calvin...
Try 250 instead.
I believe I am going to heaven, but that doesn't mean I want to be tortured to death.
Even atheists who look at death as just a big sleep wouldn't want to be tortured, even though they believe that they ultimately will not feel anymore pain.
He endured more than a simple death by lethal injection.
Yes I am.
You need to read the plain words of that paragraph.
Buddha never claimed to be able to forgive sins, so Joe is still stuck with that little problem.
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