John Robson today:
In a way it’s a backhanded tribute that, to the modern mind, Christianity is like a train wreck: gruesome, but they can’t look away. Newspapers don’t greet major Buddhist festivals with claims that Siddhartha Gautama was a cokehead, or open Ramadan by saying Mohammed was — (do NOT fill in this blank). As we said while not reprinting the infamous Danish cartoons, never would we insult someone’s beliefs or faith tradition — and by the way did you know that Jesus wasn’t resurrected, plus he had sex with Magdalene.
Truer words have never been spoken.
The new religion is Global Warming. Articles that bring AGW into question never see the front page. Christianity is yesterday’s religion, and stories that suggest that it is fading get equal billing with the IPCC.
There is a good reason why the secular extremists at the Globe and Mail print this stuff; they don’t like competition from another faith that does not promote statism. In fact, Christianity teaches that we are accountable for our actions and Christianity opposes the secular extremists’ view of moral relativism . Christianity is bad for the welfare statists at the Globe.
Christianity works for a couple of reasons:
There is a lot of competition amongst Christian sects for worshipers. Christian capitalists believe competition is a good thing.
Christianity eventually learned to separate Church and state.
What doesn’t work is Islamofascism because Mosque and State is one and the same. Ditto for the post modern secular extremist moral relativists .. so they’ve temporarily partnered wiht Islam. Secular extremism has religious qualities; High Priests like Mo Kyoto Strong, Temples like the UN. Most importantly these secular extremists try to shut down competition like Christianity (they don’t worry yet about the 700,000 Muslims in Canada because the are still a minority, so the Globe and Mail doesn’t offend their new partners with Danish Cartoons).
The Globe’s secular extremists do not like competition from Christianity and they do not believe in the separation of their quasi-religion and the state .. they are one and the same.
There’s a reason why it’s called the “Protestant Work Ethic”, well, prior to the United Church anyway.
Too many United Church poobahs are pink-underwear socialists living in Tarawna. Once you get past Oakville things settle down a bit, eh?
Al least Christians have had a middle ages “reformation” period which produced spritual and moral renewal that gave rise to the most socially tolerant and technologically advanced culture on the planet. Judeo Christian principle produced liberal democracy, recognition of the natiral rights of man, universal commoner sufferance, ended slavery and other human cultural mile stones.
Other belief systems remain mired in stone or bronze age mysticism and continue to confuse sypathetic magic for justice…they have produced theocracies which are both brutal and imperially aggressive.
Post modern secular political philosophies have offered little to the advancement of the human condition other than repression or abandonment of human spirit and political genocides.
But by all means, follow the 5th column left and scape-goat Christianity for all the ills of the world…when it’s erradicated we will be one step closer to the true god….Big Brother.
Perhaps the reason Christianity is the focus of criticism is that Christianity is the predominant local superstition. Buddhism is hardly relevant in North America.
Jim,
Interesting point. Where Buhdism is predominant do you get the same kind of counter reaction?
Nondenet: “There is a good reason why the secular extremists at the Globe and Mail print this stuff; they don’t like competition from another faith that does not promote statism.”
On the money Nom!
Statists are largely belivers who have abandoned faith in the spirit of god and place all responsibility for human evolution in the hands of government and political solutions. Without doubt political dogma is their bible, bureaucracy is their saviour and government their god.
But like all myopic “identitiy politics” people they make a mistate in trusting the affairs of the cosmos to something as frail and fallible as as the human intellect and the feeble machinations of man….nature is still a mighter force, and human nature a more demanding master.
For man to step into God’s roll (as all secular statists wish) is truly an apocolypse in the making.
Right, Stephen, in your reply to Jim’s silly comment. Where Islam is predominant, do you get the same kind of criticism of Islam? You sure don’t; it’s a capital, ie, death, crime to criticize Islam in Muslim countries. It’s a capital crime to even change from Islam to another religion. So, jim, kindly get your facts straight before you say something as silly as you did.
However, I think it is important to consider that Christianity allows and enables criticism of Christianity. It keeps its axioms open to the constant ‘gaze’ of reason (as Pope Benedict said in his famous speech on the importance of reason). Theocratic cult-like religions, such as Islam (and Kyotoism) reject reason, reject thought, reject criticism and insist on blind emotional enslaved obedience.
Therefore, it is a strength of Christianity that it can allow criticism, can allow even mockery. It acknowledges the fallibility of the human experience, even the fallibility of the human experience of religion. That’s a strength, not a weakness.
Jim: “Perhaps the reason Christianity is the focus of criticism is that Christianity is the predominant local superstition.”
Profoundly flawed observation….Christianity is the ONLY religious belief system which is NOT a superstition, but a reconing of the human condition in the larger scope of cosmic events.
You may confuse the trappings and ritual of some ancient Christian sects with the teachings of the refomed Chritian churches ( which were the basis of Anglo-American constitutions and law)….which teach the trinity…this is not superstition this is the result of centuries of intellectial reconing with man’s nature and his divine purpose.
Now, I’m not particularly religious and I haven’t been in a Church for years but if you read the writings of the philosphers of the enlightenment which gave us modern rule of law and liberal democracy, you can’t miss their influence by the writings of the Christian teologians of the day.
Islam and other religions are certainly “superstitious” bacause they all rely on sympathetic magic….even sects of buddism ( which started merely as a philosophy) belive thay can shape shift and conjure demons.
Everyone has some kind of an agenda these days.
More so now than every before, people now have access to the media and therefore can be reached, deceived, intimidated, ripped-off, coerced, and influenced – if they are not grounded.
Short Story:
When I was a kid, I went to see something called “Chariots of the Gods” by a guy named Von Daniken.
I was blown away by all the evidence of aliens having come to earth; the great pyramads; the landing strips in Chile; the carvings and paintings of ancient astronauts and aliens in space suits and on launch platforms – and all over the world even. I I think even references from the Bible were all over the place to support the theory that space travellers and empregnating our women and started the human race, etc. etc. etc – and even the movie music was awe inspiring.
I ran home and told my parents about this great movie and about aliens being on earth and that the evidence was irrefutable. I even talked them into coming to see it with me again so that they could understand the truth.
After seeing the movie (and I was now doubly awestruck), I asked my parents what they thought – did they now undestand the importance of these discoveries?
My parents, and themselves being dumb ditchdigger types, said, “We’re Catholic and we believe in our faith – to us it is the true faith – and we’re not buying this stuff”.
Years later, I managed to see this movie again. I had just finished a masters degree in engineering. This movie was the silliest non-scientific piece of crap I’d ever seen.
Moral:
So it just shows, that if you are grounded in faith or even real science and engineering, it’s hard for people to screw you around with secret agendas.
I’ve not seen this new movie, but if it is an agenda thing, it will influence a lot of non-grounded people – and this can really cause damage and it just increases the confusion we call relativism.
Drinking the Kool-Aid: mass suicide of the Left-Socialists:
Find the words, “social justice.”
Citizen Dion has drunk the Kool-Aid:
OTTAWA — Liberal Leader Stephane Dion will deliver what his party is billing as a major speech on “social justice” in Dartmouth today,…
(chronicleherald.ca)
Peoples Temple Christian Church
“Jim Jones initially relied upon the prophetic texts of the Holy Bible to exhort his congregation to work for social justice. The letterhead of Peoples Temple Christian Church bore the words of the Parable of the Last Judgment (Matthew 25:35-36). Jones eventually rejected the Holy Bible, however, believing it full of lies and contradictions (see “The Letter Killeth”). He turned to Pravda, the news organ of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union, and to radical sources as his “sacred” texts once the group moved to Guyana.” …-
http://religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu/nrms/Jonestwn.html
cconn: a rebutal lesser know work ‘crash go the chariots’ came out afterward and pretty much demolished vondaniken’s evidence.
on the other hand, feel free to watch ‘crop circles: quest for the truth’ or whatever.
these babies are cropping up (pun intended) all over the world for decades and getting more and more complex in the design. like Polly the farmer says, no mistakes, no practice sites and no incomplete ones. square THAT with xian faith.
analysis of plant stems show microscopic iron particles embedded, deeply wedged in the folds. explain THAT in addition to any claims its all hoaxery.
alternatively, try to explain how the plant stems were subjected to sudden extreme heat which caused the nodes to deform or explode depending on the age and dryness of the plant, and was the mechanism that bent them.
Im waiting !!
check out IMBD internet movie database for the reviews.
If you want to prove to everyone just how tolerant you are with respect to your religion there’s a simple way to do it, don’t get into a twist when someone criticizes it.
The whole DaVinci code style nonsense isn’t a refutation of christianity. People who subscribe to that bs are clearly into Jesus, they’re largely having a run at undermining the vatican’s take on things.
There is another possibility that doesn’t get mentioned: the gospels never happened and Jesus as desribed never exsisted. It’s impossible to prove but it has the virtue of satisfying Ockam’s Razor based on what has been factualy established about the origins of Christianity (and the inconvienent fact that King Herod died in 4 B.C whereas Pontius Pilot didn’t show up ont the scene until 30 years later).
cconn… it sounds like you saw through the movie because of your education, not because of your religious grounding! most people I’ve met who claim to be “grounded” in their faith are mostly close minded unless things fit their particular beliefs…
The truth is that stories about Christianity sell, whether good or bad. Newsmagazines best selling issues are ones that feature front page stories about Christianity.
Unfortunately the anti-Christian bent of the staff seems to get the most play these days.
“Now if Christ is preached
that He has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there
is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead,
then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is
vain and your faith is also vain… For if the dead do not rise, then Christ
is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile;”
1 Corinthians 15:12-20
Looks like St. Paul was right on the money. Modern society likes to hammer the ‘your faith is futile’ proposition, you will be assimilated by the state.
Christianity stands or falls in the wind, on the Christ is risen proposition. It is a radical statement against the culture of ‘life is cheap’.
Rather it radically proposes life is very dear.
For the Mop & Pail crowd G K Chesterton comment comes to mind:
“There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions.” – ILN, 1/13/06
The vacuity of the faith is futile proposition is underscored by the following:
“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.” – Chapter 5, What’s Wrong With The World, 1910
Jose, you are confusing Herod the Great with Herod Antipas who was a contemporary with Pilate (not Pilot, BTW). They are two different people. Check Wikipedia.
Unfortunately the same level of thinking is often behind these new stories about Jesus.
As I’ve often said, the distance between a free country and tyranny is a good ad campaign.
The Islamofascists have a REALLY good ad campaign for the Third World. They sell pride and war to the poor, always popular with the Great Unwashed. Well, as long as they don’t have to do the dying anyway.
The Western Lefties conversely are selling guilt and poverty to the comfortable, a much harder sell. They have to sex it up with lots of naked babes just to get people to pay attention.
Recently they seem to have figured this out and are switching over to the old fall back, hate.
Hate the Joooos, hate America, hate the red necks, hate the eeeeevile Conservatives, hate Bush/Harper. Hate is always a big seller.
Christians (and Conservatives) meanwhile are selling freedom, moral probity and personal responsibility. That’s a crappy ad campaign, unless you’ve got some years under your belt and have figured out there’s more to life than money and babes. Hence the skew toward middle age in the Conservative voter profile.
We need to work on that a bit. Rona Ambrose swimsuit calendar?
Hahhaaa you guys are hilarious! Read Harris’ “Letter to a Christian Nation”.
If you want to believe in things that defy any reasonable explanation, based on ancient superstition written thousands of years ago, that is fine as far as it goes. If it helps you cope, then go for it. But don’t pretend that one religion is any less mockable than any other. “Faith” is a ‘compliment’ passed between people who reward irrationality.
Jose “If you want to prove to everyone just how tolerant you are with respect to your religion there’s a simple way to do it, don’t get into a twist when someone criticizes it.”
I’ll get into a twist if I want to, you should learn to “tolerate” my twist… as long as I won’t blow things up. The irony is that you tolerate “blowing things up” by your new partners in statism.
WLM says “on the money”. Yes that’s it, follow the money:
The reason the Globe likes statism is because Government controls 42% of the economy and the Globe only has to wine and dine one customer, the government, to sell advertising to, the Globe/MSM has a huge investment in the status quo of that customer.
The Globe knows that those Christian Capitalists will shrink government and shrink the 2-way patronage that has gone on for decades between the Liberals and the left wing MSM. In return for media editorial support the Liberals reward the Globe with some full page ads for EDC for example. EDC is government monopoly, as is the Post Office, they don’t need to advertise, and their customers know where the mail box is. But it is another way to keep the money flowing under the table in 2-way patronage support.
So the Globe slams people of faith, especially if they have faith in themselves and not the government.
Back under your bridge, Anon.
Phantom:
How about some campy depictions of Mary Magdalene in her hey day?
Sex sells today, just like it did 2000 years ago!
But of course Mary got smart and figured it out.
One word: Ew. Haven’t you noticed how gnarly most hookers are Hans? Old Mary M. probably looked like 40 miles of rough road. Gimme Anne Coulter any day.
Never understood how hookers make any money looking that nasty.
What’s with this fixation that Mary Magdalene was a hooker? Why is she usually portrayed as a flirtatious, twenty-something hottie who brought a level of sexual tension to the group of disciples? How do we know this? Where do we get this information?
More likely she was a highly respected woman of financial means and like the other women in the group, was quite probably a widowed woman roughly the same age as Jesus mother.
Phantom: Your response (i.e., lack thereof) to my comments illustrates exactly why religious belief (including Christianity) is for mental deficients. Keep denial alive.
Matthew (also found in the tomb) is not one of Jesus’ brothers. So what’s the explanation there?
Furthermore, Christianity has some 26,000 accredited historical volumes written about it – starting 40 years after the suspected death and resurrection of Christ (although the NT was not written chronologically, according to most sources, the oldest is still thought to be the book of Matthew). In fact, there are more period eyewitness accounts and other texts written about Christ, than for all of the Caesars, or the complete history of Greece, or any other ancient historical event or person, for that matter.
Yet, I would imagine the plebaeins at the G&M have no problem taking those historical accounts as ‘gospel.’
Odd.
As well, unlike Mo’s autobiography – the Quran – the NT wasn’t written, rewritten or tampered with to justify and reward horrific and barbaric behaviour and deeds (by the Papacy, the Crusaders, the inquisition, or anybody else for that matter). Although, certainly it could’ve been, given the fact that the great unwashed didn’t have access to it until Gutenberg. (That’s why barbaric actions by Christians are not foundational to Christianity – and makes that comparative form of argument moot).
“Back under your bridge, Anon.”
Nice wack-a-troll, Phantom.
Actually Anon, my beliefs are based much more on observation than faith. Arguments which deny God and free will ignore certain inconvenient aspects of cosmology and mathematics. Atheism is a bigger leap of faith than theism IMHO.
Go read Penrose’s The Emperor’s New Mind, then come back and talk to me.
In the mean time, how about having some respect for your fellow man eh? You are not the only human being in the world with a brain, it may be barely possible other people can disagree with you and not be morons.
Yeah, what about those Danish cartoons? CNN wouldn’t even show them on air. But they’ve devoted literally hours to this Cameron bullcrap. Bit of a double standard, there.
Someone observed recently that if Christians want to get any respect from the MSM they’re going to have to start blowing things up and chopping people’s heads off.
Jose, et al.
Just read “Jesus, Man or Myth?” by Dr. Carsten Peter Thiede, Professor of New Testament History with Papyrology and Archaeology in Basel, Switzerland.
It is not an attempt to “prove” anything, just an honest and deliberate look at the plausibility of the proposition, given the standards available at the time.
You will be forced to conclude that if Gaius Julius Caesar existed, then so did the (controversial in his day) Rabbi Yeshua Nazareta (did I get that right?) and he indeed was crucified, under the governorship of Pontius Pilatus, at the urging of the forces of “political correctness”.
About the only thing you need to wrap your head around is whether or not you believe the Resurrection happened. The “miracles” as they were, stand, else the Rabbinate would have simply dismissed Jesus as a charlatan and a trickster out of hand. They did not. (A miracle is just a phenomenon we can’t yet explain, by the way. They happen every day, in hospitals around the world).
In fact the ONLY thing the Rabbinate attacked the Christians on was the Resurrection. It was the only thing they had. All the rest (miracles, celibacy, EVEN raising Lazarus!!) was pretty much accepted as was, otherwise, believe me, the synagogues would have been all OVER it.
What set Christianity apart from the getgo was the requirement that people be brought in by the demonstration of love, compassion, and the dictates of their faculties of reason. If you search with an open mind, not one that is arrogant, corrupt or selfish, you will find the answers you seek.
Whilst I agree that there is a definate media slant against Christianity in the MSM, and there is a place for religion (if practiced peacefully and non intrusively)in todays society, I myself abstain and treat them all equally. I find the basic tenets of most religions quite interesting, but in the end I view all with equal disdain. From my experience, and I have friends and relatives from all stripes, JW’s to Mormons to Muslims, over 99% are hypocrites and the most pious people I’ve known are not what you would call “heavy-duty” religious.
Some are entertaining though, my sunday morning chortles used to come courtesy of the likes of Falwell, Tammy Faye and Swaggert et all, but the world of islam also has its share of kooks , and the big problem here is, a lot of their kooks are truly dangerous.
Skål!
“where they may rest in the halls of Valhalla, where the brave shall live forever”
This ‘documentary’ is nothing more that a gotcha Hollywierd thing–it is the Zionists way of a duel–they want to zing Christians for the Mel Gibson movie Passion of the Christ.
“In fact, Christianity teaches that we are accountable for our actions ……”
In fact, Christianity teaches a mass murderer will spend eternity in paradise if he repents on his deathbed and accepts Jesus as his savior , while one who lives a saintly, charitable life will spend eternity burning in a lake of fire if he is not a believer. Some accountability.
Why should Christianity be exempt from the scorn reserved for all other forms of superstitious nonsense?
Long Live Martin Luther, one of the noble reformers.
You like Penrose! So do I, but I prefer the Road to Reality. If you’re a big fan, then you won’t mind reading Harris’ “Letter to a Christian Nation”, since Penrose endorsed it.
I’m not sure what aspects of mathematics or cosmology you claim are ignored by arguments that ignore God and/or free will. You’d better elaborate on that a bit more. There is no missing variable in any equation or interpretation thereof that requires God or free will to fill it, and you won’t find one, unless you REQUIRE the two beforehand and go looking for problems after the fact – and that would be begging the question.
BTW, in case you didn’t know, atheism is not the absence of belief, it’s the presence of reason. The presence of reason does not discount the acceptance of expert view – which is the simplest form of faith, to be sure – but you are disingenuously using two definitions of faith ambiguously. Accepting the view of the scientific community that is based on the repetition of physical experiment, the verification of theory and the incessant formulation, deconstruction and re-formulation of physical mechanism and law is quite a bit different from the strong faith involved in simply buying into something that was written thousands of years ago and postulates ridiculous metaphysics that are entirely unverifiable. This is particularly so given the preponderance of superstitious belief that would be reasonably expected to infuse any work written during that time. The very fact that you claim that acceptance of (or as you call it, ‘faith in’) expert or peer-reviewed-community findings based on the scientific method is EXACTLY the same beast as religious faith, makes it clear that you probably shouldn’t speak on either.
You should know that trotting out an eminent mathmetician’s name doesn’t automatically lend credence to your argument – and just because people see deep connections between still poorly understood physical concepts (e.g., information, measurement problem in QM, second law of thermodynamics, QT interpretation, the wave function, evolution, the Big Bang, etc, etc) also doesn’t lend any credence to strong faith or ridiculous sprituality. Penrose’s book is fascinating to be sure (as usual), but quantum consciousness doesn’t need to be mystical; the ‘non-algorithmic’ nature of consciousness may not imply anything deeply spiritual. For some researchers, it may be due entirely to the dynamics of complex systems, emergence or self-organization, which are not well understood. Just because something involves quantum physics on a tiny scale doesn’t mean those effects carry into the macroscopic world. The short of it is this: one book doesn’t make a metaphysical view, particularly one that represents a minority opinion in it’s field, and even if it IS done by a brilliant thinker and researcher.
Sourdust says “In fact, Christianity teaches a mass murderer will spend eternity in paradise’
Sure Sourdust, but that’s after us “accountable “Christians execute him, so why would you care where he spends eternity?
But Sourdust , you guys and your Liberal Judges would have that mass murderer out on parole and I do care about that , which is why I’ll vote for law and order and not more utopian morale relativism from your party.
You see sourdust , we’re all equal in the eyes of our creator, but not in the eyes of a Conservative judge .. you guys can’t grasp the difference.
“In fact, Christianity teaches a mass murderer will spend eternity in paradise if he repents on his deathbed and accepts Jesus as his savior , while one who lives a saintly, charitable life will spend eternity burning in a lake of fire if he is not a believer.”
Christianity teaches that we are ALL given a chance to choose being with the Creator,or not .
Our life on earth is preparation for that ultimate choice, when face to face with God. That sounds like accountability to me.
“In fact, Christianity teaches a mass murderer will spend eternity in paradise if he repents on his deathbed and accepts Jesus as his savior , while one who lives a saintly, charitable life will spend eternity burning in a lake of fire if he is not a believer.”
Christianity teaches that we are ALL given a chance to choose being with the Creator,or not .
Our life on earth is preparation for that ultimate choice, when face to face with God. That sounds like accountability to me.
“In fact, there are more period eyewitness accounts and other texts written about Christ, than for all of the Caesars, or the complete history of Greece, or any other ancient historical event or person, for that matter.”
Personaly I wouldn’t consider something an “eyewitness account” if it was written by someone who wasn’t alive at the time the event occurred.
http://www.cin.org/jp2ency/augustin.html
Reason and faith
First of all, there is the problem that occupied him most in his youth and to which he returned with all the force of genius and the passion of his spirit: the problem of the relationship between reason and faith. This is a perennial problem, no less acute today than yesterday, and the direction taken by human thought depends on its solution. It is a difficult problem, however, because one must pass safely between two extremes, between the fideism that despises reason and the rationalism that excludes faith. Augustine’s intellectual and pastoral endeavor aimed to show, beyond any shadow of doubt, that “since we are impelled by a twin pull of gravity to learn,”[69] both forces, reason and faith, must work together.
He always listened to what faith had to say, but he exalted reason no less, giving each its own primacy in time or importance.[70] He told all, “Believe that you may understand,” but he repeated also, “Understand that you may believe.”[71] He wrote a work, perennially relevant, on the usefulness of faith,[72] and explained that faith is the medicine designed to heal the eye of the spirit,[73] the unconquerable fortress for the defense of all, especially of the weak, against error,[74] the nest in which we receive the wings for the lofty flights of the spirit,[75] the short path that permits one to know quickly, surely and without errors, the truths which lead the human person to wisdom.[76] He also emphasizes that faith is never without reason, because it is reason that shows “in what one should believe.”[77] “For faith has its own eyes, by means of which it sees in a certain manner that which it does not yet see is true.”[78] Therefore “no one believes anything, unless he has first thought that it is to be believed,” because “to believe is itself nothing other than to think with assent … if faith is not thought through, it is no faith.”[79]
So Augustine the Bishop of HIPPO recommends you get a “phat soul” lest you be spirited away by the Vandals.
Yours sincerely,
Hans the “Hun”.
religious belief (including Christianity) is for mental deficients
Very erudite, troll-boy. Now listen up.
Atheists such as you apparently enjoy preening in self-professed intellectual superiority when denigrating religious folks who profess faith in scripture, God, or some other Divine force.
Fair enough, you’re entitled to your beliefs.
However, what’s truly amusing is the fact that few of you secularists identify their own professed faith (and moreover, zealotry) in their 21st century substitute for organized religion: environmentalism.
I reckon you howl with derision, anon, at the thought of Christians believing Moses parted the Red Sea wtih his staff. Right-O. But secularists have no problem in their blind faith in faulty computer models, scientific “consensus” and FUD that proclaims assuming that the oceans and seas will rise 20 feet in the next hundred years if we don’t trash our SUV’s & speed hither & yon in a Vespa scooter, and abandon our industrialized economies and current standard of living.
As for blind faith, anon, you lot still hold the scientific world in unimpeachable esteem, despite their utterly wrong-headed stands on global cooling, nuclear winter, the population “explosion”, pellagra, eugenics, puerperal fever… ad nauseum. The list of scientific errors over the centuries are long and distinguished, and each one was rigidly upheld by scientific “faith”, many of which cost the lives of untold thousands or even millions of humans.
Mock Christianity all you like, anon, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a better roadmap for setting up a society than the 10 Commandments, notwithstanding your scorn for the passages that deal specifically with the icky God-related stuff.
Compare this to some of the more virulent secular societal failures in the last century:
Naziism – 6,000,000 dead, systematically slaughtered in death camps
Stalinism/communism – 30,000,000 dead
China/communism – 80,000,000 dead
Communism (Khmer Rouge) 2-3,000,000 dead
Environmentalism – estimated 30,000,000 unnecessary African malarial deaths in the 20th century due to the unnecessary hysteria & banning of DDT.
Still preening, anon?
mhb23re
[at gmail d0t calm]
There’s plenty of egocentric people that love to share their self loathing and hate. These people won’t really participate in raising children or local charities or adding value to their community. Basically they can’t imagine a world beyond the ends of their noses in the midst of a pathetic self imposed cynical existence. Too bad, they’re missing out on the really good stuff…the daily miracles we all can choose to experience and participate in.
I’m far richer for acts done to the benefit others. Those very things strengthen my faith in god and give life greater purpose. I’m a far better man because of my Christian beliefs.
Those that attack Christian beliefs and values with selfish hateful zeal seek to usurp individual progress itself. They offer up nothing better in return…only the promise of a miserable selfish existence leading to a meaningless death.
Anon, your attitude indicates you read the book but didn’t understand what he was saying.
The whole premise of The Emperor’s New Mind is that consciousness is a non-mechanistic phenomenon. He demonstrates this using examples from mathematics where people have come up with things that cannot, in principle, be derived by an algorithm. I’d quote you the page but I cant find my copy.
Bottom line, a human is something other than a fancy piece of software running on a meatware computer, because we do things software cannot do. Leaving room for both free will and a Being to use it. Maybe the Being arises from quantum mechanics or something we have yet to find, but there is indeed evidence for it.
So much for “ridiculous spirituality”. Now kindly stop being a dick, would you? Its rude.
I was teaching a junior high science class a few years ago when the ‘bones of Jesus’ brother’ were ‘found’. I predicted, on the spot, that it was a hoax (primarily because of my Catholic faith, though it’s more complicated than just saying that) – and it was shown to be so only a few weeks later. It seems like the same thing has happened again, but it only took hours to disprove the new sensationalist claims.
Long Live John Calvin, one of the noble reformers.
Long Live John and Charles Wesley.
Long Live Charles H Spurgeon.
mhb: Nice try with the ‘secular’ regimes, but these had only a tangential relationship to secularism. They substituted faith in God for faith in an individual or the state. If this is your comparison, it is horribly flawed, and many others have pointed it out in far more detail. If you have a look around you’ll see that this argument fell flat about a decade ago, but again, have a look here: http://www.randomhouse.com/kvpa/harris/ If you’re up to it, read the book.
Truth be told I shouldn’t have said that Christianity or any spiritual beliefs should be mocked, but it should be realized that while they may help people cope by providing a safe, structured belief system that requires no additions, they also compel people to abandon reason and reward irrationality.
When you make this statement: “…blind faith in faulty computer models, scientific “consensus” and FUD…”, do you have any idea what you’re talking about? Did you miss the explanation I gave about how Phantom et.al. clearly use two unequivocable meanings of the word “faith”? I thought that was pretty clear. There is a difference between religious faith (the strong version) and the ‘faith’ that scientists put in peer-reviewed research done by a community under a strict method of repeatable experimental verification. If you can’t see the difference, I don’t think this can go any further.
“…that proclaims assuming that the oceans and seas will rise 20 feet in the next hundred years if we don’t trash our SUV’s & speed hither & yon in a Vespa scooter, and abandon our industrialized economies and current standard of living.” I think you’ve lost me here. It sounds like we’re no longer talking about reason, faith or religion. It sounds like you are creating a strawman and then attacking it, but it’s totally off-topic. However, if you’d like to talk about proclamations, I will indulge you. Perhaps we can talk about how old the Earth is (hint: not 6000 years)? Maybe you don’t believe that particular extreme version of Creation, but do you believe that a man who lived and died 2000 years ago is going to come back to Earth and judge corpses and people alike and send the unbelievers to a fiery pit in the ‘worstest place in the whole wide world’ for ever and ever and ever? Do you believe that the Red Sea was parted, or that Jesus walked on water? Of course you do, and yet you are intellectually dishonest enough to tell me that these things are MORE PLAUSIBLE than (to use one of your examples) the rise of GHGs? Are you serious? AT THE VERY LEAST, there exists the POSSIBILITY of measuring at least one component of GHGs, forget about the models and everything else. How exactly do you verify, model or justify any of your claims? Ancient hearsay is not justification.
You know, almost everything you bring up was already addressed by Harris. For example, the 10 commandments: the first few (five or six) have to do with ceremony, rules and not dissing God. The very few that do relate to moral or ethical matters could and were very easily discovered long before the Bible was written. Don’t kill people? How long did it take to figure that out? Don’t take other people’s stuff? I’m sure that upset many ancient people – even primates show some concept of property. I’m pretty sure that the benefits of being truthful were pretty apparent. The last one advises (among other things) not to desire your neighbours slave, which reminds us all that the brilliant moral shining light that is the Bible has advocated for all manner of cruel and dispicable things.
As for the Golden Rule, you are seriously misled if you think that that one started in the Bible, or that the majority of the Bible’s adherents even abide by it.
Yes I’m quite sure that all atheists live shallow, meaningless lives without purpose, as you believe. In fact, you can get a first hand understanding of how atheists view religion: just think of how ridiculous, misguided and incorrect you view the beliefs of Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jains or Taoists. And next time you think Christians are so! persecuted!, just remember what would happen if a politician admits he’s an atheist.
From LtaCN:
“We read the Golden Rule and find it to be a brilliant distillation of many of our ethical impluses. And then we come across another of God’s teachings on morality: if a man discovers on his wedding night that his bride is not a virgin, he must stone her to death on her father’s doorstep.” Yup, a real shining moral beacon to guide a society.
“The President of the United States has claimed, on more than one occasion, to be in dialogue with God. If he said that he was talking to God through his hairdryer, this would precipitate a national emergency. I fail to see how the addition of a hairdryer makes the claim more ridiculous or offensive”
Anyways, this is tiresome, so as usual I cede the last word.
Christians seem to respond to criticism by having a tantrum. They don’t seem to understand that they are being criticized as being superstitious because they insist on their beliefs despite having no proof that there is a god, no evidence that their Jesus was the son of that god, and no argument that supercedes the findings of science.
Anon, you are entirely missing the point of this posting. This post is NOT trying to say that Christianity shouldn’t be mocked, it is saying that if the media feels free to mock one religion, they should feel free to mock all religions. Trouble is, they don’t.
They mock the religion that is peaceful and then huff and puff about tolerance and love when asked why they don’t mock a religion that is NOT peaceful. Hypocracy!
Got it? If you want to believe that Christians or Muslims or Buddists or any other adherant to a religion is a moron, go for it! It’s your right to choose to believe whatever you want! Just don’t try to pretend you’re anything but a coward for openly attacking the religion of the meek but hiding from the “Religion of Peace”…which is what the media does.
Just have to say, not all of us on the right side of the political spectrum are religious. I’m a libertarian agnostic, for instance.
My problem with Christianity is that so many of its adherents are more or less ignorant of its history. (A university educated co-worker, for instance, argued with me that Jesus was Catholic, not Jewish…). One only has to look at some of the comments here as well.
Best quote I’ve come across to describe my understanding is from Stephen F. Roberts: “When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”
As for “insulting” any religion, I would think that not believing in it at all is the worst insult, no?
The problem with “Jesus” stories like this one is the fact that Christians are just as guilty. Any bit of historical evidence, no matter how thin or shaky of provenance is held up as proof of the mystical Jesus. You can’t have it both ways. (Although I am of the opinion that this particular story is as false as the “James, brother of Jesus” ossuary from a few years ago).
Try reading some Hugh Schonfield and get back to m.