Serotonin: Fwiw, I enjoyed reading your last post to me more than some of your previous posts, as I found it more respectful. I have no problem with you stating your beliefs and opinions, all I think is that a little more respect is in order when people discuss and debate their beliefs with each other (both sides) Ex-JWs did a lot to help me when I was a doubting JW, they were patient and polite when pointing out where my thinking was in error. Had they just called me an idiot, I don't think I would have listened to them. We're all on a journey, all trying to make sense of the world in our own way and work out what we believe ourselves after years of being told what to believe by the Watchtower Society. As long as they don't become a danger to others, people should not be criticised for where their journey takes them, imo.
On to your post.
On Stalin, I know that he did not kill anyone in the name of Atheism, my point was though, that he did not need God to do bad things, because he found other ways to control people, to hold power, and other reasons to kill people. The point is that one doesn't need God to commit evil acts, evil people like Stalin, can find other ways to do it. God isn't the cause of evil acts, (I know you believe this, if you don't believe in God) evil people are the cause of evil acts.
'Don't all Christians think those who don't put their faith in Jesus deserve God's judgement- death, eternal torture or what have you?'
I don't. I know Lilly doesn't. There's 2 for you then. ;) Most Christians do at least leave this judgement to God, whereas KKK members and Nazi members tend to take matters into their own hands. As I said before, their would be mass ethnic cleansing if there were 2 billion KKK members or Nazi members, though Christians have their wars, they don't have worldwide ethnic cleansing. A lot of Christian religions are pacifist, and do a lot of work to promote peace. The Quakers are a good one. They're universalist as well, so they're not so worried about conversion, and also don't think all non-Christians will be damned by God.
"Name a moral action taken or moral statement made by a person of faith that could not have been performed or made by an atheist."
There is absolutely none, and I would never claim this! I know lots of very moral atheists, this board alone has several atheists who are wonderful people, and do a lot of charity work! My point with that one, was just to say that whilst a lot of evil has been done in the name of God, a lot of really great things have been done in the name of God as well, and those shouldn't be ignored when we discuss the effects of religion/belief on mankind. (And charity's not always used as a conversion tool, either)
I think your quote can be turned around to ask 'Name [an evil] action taken or [evil] statement made by a person of faith that could not have been performed or made by an atheist'
Regards,
Zico
Christianity in a nutshell
by serotonin_wraith 105 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Zico
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lovelylil
I am back from work now!
Zico,
Thanks for chiming in and anwering the Q about destruction and hellfire. Zico is correct I do not believe this is true. I've stated several times my views on this, which btw is NOT popular amongst most Christians. I've been chatised a lot by fellow christians for saying that the Ransom Christ paid was FOR ALL of mankind. NOT just believers in him in this time period (the gospel age).
The way I see it, God does not lie and the bible is supposedly God's word and is trustworthy. Well, God inspired John to write "God is Love". Then if God IS LOVE, he will do whatever possible in his power to save all of mankind and NEVER will he burn and torture people forever. The Witnesses are correct that hellfire is not a place of torment. Though I believe it is a place. Hellfire is representative of a final, total cutting off from God. Not a place of eternal suffering.
Now, getting back to the Ransom for all. This is a biblical teaching. First the church (believers in Christ) are saved, THEN ALL the rest of mankind. Even Jesus said he came to "restore all things".
Think about this: If the Bible account is correct, as we Christians believe it is, then we are imperfect humans who cannot direct our own steps, on top of that Satan who is more powerful than we are has blinded peoples minds, on top of even that, we live in a very turmultuous world with sickness, death, wars, etc. and people are working hard just to exist. Especially in other countries where people are starving to death day by day or living in civil war violence. Do you mean to tell me that knowing all this; The God who "is love" expects everyong to believe he exists under all these conditions and join a certain church or he will kill them or burn them forever? Are you kidding me??? If I was starving to death and my children, do you really think Bible study and learning about God will be top priority on my list.
As a human parent, I know I would do anything possible to save the life of my child. Are you telling me God who is our heavenly father will do less than I will? If it would offend my sense of justice, It certainly will offend his.
Now those who are eventually cut off from God are the ones that no matter WHAT God does, are stubborn (Goats) who will not subject to God's way. And they refuse to accept Christ as their King in the 2nd coming. But my friends, we are far away from that point. Also lets remember the Bible also says, "you must be called" by God in order to "see him". So will God not eventually call everyone and open thier minds and hearts to see him? YES he will. Right now he is calling the Church, who will reign with Christ and then he will call ALL of mankind to himself and allow them to "see" him too.
This is the ONE thing that I believe Charles Russell got right. Although he limits the church to 144,000. So again, fire is used for eternal destruction or cutting off, but only the FINALLY un-repentent get this judgement. That is after God has exhausted all other options. And truth be told he is still working with the Church of Christ (believers) and has not even turned his atttention to the rest of mankind. We are simply in what the Bible calls the "Gentile Times" wheras the Gentil Nations are being given a chance to repent and serve God. Once their number is filled, (NOT the number of the 144,000), the church is complete and God turns his attention to the rest of the world to save them.
Forgive me for sounding preachy and I know I will now get several pms from Christians telling me that hellfire is real. I am sorry but the fiery hell is a tool invented by men in his man made organizations to be used to keep the church's roll call numbers up. It is a scare tactic and nothing more! Groups like the JW's use eternal destruction instead of hellfire but the tactic is the same.
And the nonesense that we must obey thousands of rules to be accepted by God is just that NONSENSE! God really requires very little from us; he needs NOTHING from us anyway. And God sent his son to save sinners, not righteous people. So why is it that the majority of the churches today will not accept you unless they declare you as "righteous" according to their own standards?
Just in case we Christians may feel superior to non-believers, we should keep this point in mind and that is according to the Bible we are ALL sinners, not one of us is righteous! Jesus made the same point with the Pharisees who felt they were already righteous enough. They were not concerned with helping anyone else learn about God because in their eyes, no one else was righteous enough (like them) to turn around and serve God. This same attitude is rampant with Christians today. We think we can judge who will or will not eventually accept God.
Remember the lesson with Jonah? He did not want to go preach to Nineveh because in HIS mind, they would not repent and obey God. But when God forced him to go, the Whole nation repented and were saved. This Bible account is there to show what the future state of the earth will be. The majority of the world when God opens thier hearts and minds will obey! Nineveh was representative of the world. And Jonah was the example of what attitude we who are believers are NOT to have when dealing with those who do not believe.
Sadly, many church leaders today are more concerned with imposing their own self-righteous rules on people than on seriously reading and meditating on God's word itself. If they did, they would have to make serious changes. First of all their numbers will go down once they drop the hellfire or eternal destruction view.
Anyway, there are thousands of Christians world-wide who are waking up to the truth about man made religions and their false teachings. I am optimistic that although zico and I are right now in the minority in our views, soon this will change. And it will be a great step forward for Christianity in my view.
Until then, I would urge others to please NOT lump us all in together. Not all claiming to be Chrisitans are really Christians and not all Christians today stick with sound teachings in the Bible. More often then not, they stick to what their appointed leaders teach, rather than letting Christ (the head of the church) teach them by being open to the spirit of God. I opologize for the length of this.
Here are some scripture texts for reference if anyone would like to look them up;
Micah 6:8
He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God1 John 4:8
Whoever does not love does not know God, because Godislove1 Timothy 2:5-7
5 For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, 6 who gave himself as a ransom for all men—the testimony given in its proper time
Acts 3:21
He (Christ) must remain in heavenuntil the time comes for God to restore everything, as he promised long ago through his holy prophets* unlike what the WT teaches, Christ is coming back to RESTORE all things on earth, not to DESTROY all non-believers and everything else. Notice the verse above. Where exactly does it say Jesus 2nd coming is to destroy? Nowhere in the Bible.
Timothy 1:15
Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worstand I have the same hope in God as these men, that there will be a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked
*righteous means "God fearing" wicked are simply those who do not believe in God, and yet, they are resurrected too. The gospel of Jesus, gospel meaning "good news" is about Christ dying for us so that we can live again. This is contrary to the JW version of "good news" which is really very bad news if you think about it. Their gospel supposedly will result in 99.99% of the world being lost and destroyed. If this is so, then God's plan to send his Son to save us is a complete failure. Thankfully the WT is wrong.
John 12:47
"As for the person who hears my words but does not keep them, I do notjudge him. For I did not come to judge the world, but to save itOne last point; every single one of God's prophets in the old testament prophesied about God thru Christ restoring everything on the earth. And Armegeddon is a Holy War between the forces of Good (GOD) and the Devil, not God's destruction of 99.99% of humans. For those who insist it is; get a concordance and bible commentary and research the texts more carefully. The Bible uses a lot of descriptive writing that is not to be taken as literal. And God's major problem according to his word is Satan not human beings.
Revelation 21:3,4
3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4 He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away
Peace, Lilly
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BurnTheShips
What the New Atheists Don’t See
Theodore DalrympleTo regret religion is to regret Western civilization.
T he British parliament’s first avowedly atheist member, Charles Bradlaugh, would stride into public meetings in the 1880s, take out his pocket watch, and challenge God to strike him dead in 60 seconds. God bided his time, but got Bradlaugh in the end. A slightly later atheist, Bertrand Russell, was once asked what he would do if it proved that he was mistaken and if he met his maker in the hereafter. He would demand to know, Russell replied with all the high-pitched fervor of his pedantry, why God had not made the evidence of his existence plainer and more irrefutable. And Jean-Paul Sartre* came up with a memorable line: “God doesn’t exist—the bastard!”
Sartre’s wonderful outburst of disappointed rage suggests that it is not as easy as one might suppose to rid oneself of the notion of God. (Perhaps this is the time to declare that I am not myself a believer.) At the very least, Sartre’s line implies that God’s existence would solve some kind of problem—actually, a profound one: the transcendent purpose of human existence. Few of us, especially as we grow older, are entirely comfortable with the idea that life is full of sound and fury but signifies nothing. However much philosophers tell us that it is illogical to fear death, and that at worst it is only the process of dying that we should fear, people still fear death as much as ever. In like fashion, however many times philosophers say that it is up to us ourselves, and to no one else, to find the meaning of life, we continue to long for a transcendent purpose immanent in existence itself, independent of our own wills. To tell us that we should not feel this longing is a bit like telling someone in the first flush of love that the object of his affections is not worthy of them. The heart hath its reasons that reason knows not of.
Of course, men—that is to say, some men—have denied this truth ever since the Enlightenment, and have sought to find a way of life based entirely on reason. Far as I am from decrying reason, the attempt leads at best to Gradgrind and at worst to Stalin. Reason can never be the absolute dictator of man’s mental or moral economy.
T he search for the pure guiding light of reason, uncontaminated by human passion or metaphysical principles that go beyond all possible evidence, continues, however; and recently, an epidemic rash of books has declared success, at least if success consists of having slain the inveterate enemy of reason, namely religion. The philosophers Daniel Dennett, A. C. Grayling, Michel Onfray, and Sam Harris, biologist Richard Dawkins, and journalist and critic Christopher Hitchens have all written books roundly condemning religion and its works. Evidently, there is a tide in the affairs, if not of men, at least of authors.
The curious thing about these books is that the authors often appear to think that they are saying something new and brave. They imagine themselves to be like the intrepid explorer Sir Richard Burton, who in 1853 disguised himself as a Muslim merchant, went to Mecca, and then wrote a book about his unprecedented feat. The public appears to agree, for the neo-atheist books have sold by the hundred thousand. Yet with the possible exception of Dennett’s, they advance no argument that I, the village atheist, could not have made by the age of 14 (Saint Anselm’s ontological argument for God’s existence gave me the greatest difficulty, but I had taken Hume to heart on the weakness of the argument from design).
I first doubted God’s existence at about the age of nine. It was at the school assembly that I lost my faith. We had been given to understand that if we opened our eyes during prayers God would depart the assembly hall. I wanted to test this hypothesis. Surely, if I opened my eyes suddenly, I would glimpse the fleeing God? What I saw instead, it turned out, was the headmaster, Mr. Clinton, intoning the prayer with one eye closed and the other open, with which he beadily surveyed the children below for transgressions. I quickly concluded that Mr. Clinton did not believe what he said about the need to keep our eyes shut. And if he did not believe that, why should I believe in his God? In such illogical leaps do our beliefs often originate, to be disciplined later in life (if we receive enough education) by elaborate rationalization.
D ennett’s Breaking the Spell is the least bad-tempered of the new atheist books, but it is deeply condescending to all religious people. Dennett argues that religion is explicable in evolutionary terms—for example, by our inborn human propensity, at one time valuable for our survival on the African savannahs, to attribute animate agency to threatening events.
For Dennett, to prove the biological origin of belief in God is to show its irrationality, to break its spell. But of course it is a necessary part of the argument that all possible human beliefs, including belief in evolution, must be explicable in precisely the same way; or else why single out religion for this treatment? Either we test ideas according to arguments in their favor, independent of their origins, thus making the argument from evolution irrelevant, or all possible beliefs come under the same suspicion of being only evolutionary adaptations—and thus biologically contingent rather than true or false. We find ourselves facing a version of the paradox of the Cretan liar: all beliefs, including this one, are the products of evolution, and all beliefs that are products of evolution cannot be known to be true.
One striking aspect of Dennett’s book is his failure to avoid the language of purpose, intention, and ontological moral evaluation, despite his fierce opposition to teleological views of existence: the coyote’s “methods of locomotion have been ruthlessly optimized for efficiency.” Or: “The stinginess of Nature can be seen everywhere we look.” Or again: “This is a good example of Mother Nature’s stinginess in the final accounting combined with absurd profligacy in the methods.” I could go on, but I hope the point is clear. (And Dennett is not alone in this difficulty: Michel Onfray’s Atheist Manifesto, so rich in errors and inexactitudes that it would take a book as long as his to correct them, says on its second page that religion prevents mankind from facing up to “reality in all its naked cruelty.” But how can reality have any moral quality without having an immanent or transcendent purpose?)
No doubt Dennett would reply that he is writing in metaphors for the layman and that he could translate all his statements into a language without either moral evaluation or purpose included in it. Perhaps he would argue that his language is evidence that the spell still has a hold over even him, the breaker of the spell for the rest of humanity. But I am not sure that this response would be psychologically accurate. I think Dennett’s use of the language of evaluation and purpose is evidence of a deep-seated metaphysical belief (however caused) that Providence exists in the universe, a belief that few people, confronted by the mystery of beauty and of existence itself, escape entirely. At any rate, it ill behooves Dennett to condescend to those poor primitives who still have a religious or providential view of the world: a view that, at base, is no more refutable than Dennett’s metaphysical faith in evolution.
D ennett is not the only new atheist to employ religious language. In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins quotes with approval a new set of Ten Commandments for atheists, which he obtained from an atheist website, without considering odd the idea that atheists require commandments at all, let alone precisely ten of them; nor does their metaphysical status seem to worry him. The last of the atheist’s Ten Commandments ends with the following: “Question everything.” Everything? Including the need to question everything, and so on ad infinitum?
Not to belabor the point, but if I questioned whether George Washington died in 1799, I could spend a lifetime trying to prove it and find myself still, at the end of my efforts, having to make a leap, or perhaps several leaps, of faith in order to believe the rather banal fact that I had set out to prove. Metaphysics is like nature: though you throw it out with a pitchfork, yet it always returns. What is confounded here is surely the abstract right to question everything with the actual exercise of that right on all possible occasions. Anyone who did exercise his right on all possible occasions would wind up a short-lived fool.
This sloppiness and lack of intellectual scruple, with the assumption of certainty where there is none, combined with adolescent shrillness and intolerance, reach an apogee in Sam Harris’s book The End of Faith. It is not easy to do justice to the book’s nastiness; it makes Dawkins’s claim that religious education constitutes child abuse look sane and moderate.
Harris tells us, for example, that “we must find our way to a time when faith, without evidence, disgraces anyone who would claim it. Given the present state of the world, there appears to be no other future worth wanting.” I am glad that I am old enough that I shall not see the future of reason as laid down by Harris; but I am puzzled by the status of the compulsion in the first sentence that I have quoted. Is Harris writing of a historical inevitability? Of a categorical imperative? Or is he merely making a legislative proposal? This is who-will-rid-me-of-this-troublesome-priest language, ambiguous no doubt, but not open to a generous interpretation.
It becomes even more sinister when considered in conjunction with the following sentences, quite possibly the most disgraceful that I have read in a book by a man posing as a rationalist: “The link between belief and behavior raises the stakes considerably. Some propositions are so dangerous that it may be ethical to kill people for believing them. This may seem an extraordinary claim, but it merely enunciates an ordinary fact about the world in which we live.”
Let us leave aside the metaphysical problems that these three sentences raise. For Harris, the most important question about genocide would seem to be: “Who is genociding whom?” To adapt Dostoyevsky slightly, starting from universal reason, I arrive at universal madness.
L ying not far beneath the surface of all the neo-atheist books is the kind of historiography that many of us adopted in our hormone-disturbed adolescence, furious at the discovery that our parents sometimes told lies and violated their own precepts and rules. It can be summed up in Christopher Hitchens’s drumbeat in God Is Not Great: “Religion spoils everything.”
What? The Saint Matthew Passion? The Cathedral of Chartres? The emblematic religious person in these books seems to be a Glasgow Airport bomber—a type unrepresentative of Muslims, let alone communicants of the poor old Church of England. It is surely not news, except to someone so ignorant that he probably wouldn’t be interested in these books in the first place, that religious conflict has often been murderous and that religious people have committed hideous atrocities. But so have secularists and atheists, and though they have had less time to prove their mettle in this area, they have proved it amply. If religious belief is not synonymous with good behavior, neither is absence of belief, to put it mildly.
In fact, one can write the history of anything as a chronicle of crime and folly. Science and technology spoil everything: without trains and IG Farben, no Auschwitz; without transistor radios and mass-produced machetes, no Rwandan genocide. First you decide what you hate, and then you gather evidence for its hatefulness. Since man is a fallen creature (I use the term metaphorically rather than in its religious sense), there is always much to find.
The thinness of the new atheism is evident in its approach to our civilization, which until recently was religious to its core. To regret religion is, in fact, to regret our civilization and its monuments, its achievements, and its legacy. And in my own view, the absence of religious faith, provided that such faith is not murderously intolerant, can have a deleterious effect upon human character and personality. If you empty the world of purpose, make it one of brute fact alone, you empty it (for many people, at any rate) of reasons for gratitude, and a sense of gratitude is necessary for both happiness and decency. For what can soon, and all too easily, replace gratitude is a sense of entitlement. Without gratitude, it is hard to appreciate, or be satisfied with, what you have: and life will become an existential shopping spree that no product satisfies.
A few years back, the National Gallery held an exhibition of Spanish still-life paintings. One of these paintings had a physical effect on the people who sauntered in, stopping them in their tracks; some even gasped. I have never seen an image have such an impact on people. The painting, by Juan Sánchez Cotán, now hangs in the San Diego Museum of Art. It showed four fruits and vegetables, two suspended by string, forming a parabola in a gray stone window.
Even if you did not know that Sánchez Cotán was a seventeenth-century Spanish priest, you could know that the painter was religious: for this picture is a visual testimony of gratitude for the beauty of those things that sustain us. Once you have seen it, and concentrated your attention on it, you will never take the existence of the humble cabbage—or of anything else—quite so much for granted, but will see its beauty and be thankful for it. The painting is a permanent call to contemplation of the meaning of human life, and as such it arrested people who ordinarily were not, I suspect, much given to quiet contemplation.
The same holds true with the work of the great Dutch still-life painters. On the neo-atheist view, the religious connection between Catholic Spain and Protestant Holland is one of conflict, war, and massacre only: and certainly one cannot deny this history. And yet something more exists. As with Sánchez Cotán, only a deep reverence, an ability not to take existence for granted, could turn a representation of a herring on a pewter plate into an object of transcendent beauty, worthy of serious reflection.
I recently had occasion to compare the writings of the neo-atheists with those of Anglican divines of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. I was visiting some friends at their country house in England, which had a library of old volumes; since the family of the previous owners had a churchman in every generation, many of the books were religious. In my own neo-atheist days, I would have scorned these works as pertaining to a nonexistent entity and containing nothing of value. I would have considered the authors deluded men, who probably sought to delude others for reasons that Marx might have enumerated.
But looking, say, into the works of Joseph Hall, D.D., I found myself moved: much more moved, it goes without saying, than by any of the books of the new atheists. Hall was bishop of Exeter and then of Norwich; though a moderate Puritan, he took the Royalist side in the English civil war and lost his see, dying in 1656 while Cromwell was still Lord Protector.
Except by specialists, Hall remains almost entirely forgotten today. I opened one of the volumes at random, his Contemplations Upon the Principal Passages of the Holy Story. Here was the contemplation on the sickness of Hezekiah:
Hezekiah was freed from the siege of the Assyrians, but he is surprised with a disease. He, that delivered him from the hand of his enemies, smites him with sickness. God doth not let us loose from all afflictions, when he redeems us from one.
To think that Hezekiah was either not thankful enough for his deliverance, or too much lifted up with the glory of so miraculous a favour, were an injurious misconstruction of the hand of God, and an uncharitable censure of a holy prince; for, though no flesh and blood can avoid the just desert of bodily punishment, yet God doth not always strike with an intuition of sin: sometimes he regards the benefit of our trial; sometimes, the glory of his mercy in our cure.
Hall surely means us to infer that whatever happens to us, however unpleasant, has a meaning and purpose; and this enables us to bear our sorrows with greater dignity and less suffering. And it is part of the existential reality of human life that we shall always need consolation, no matter what progress we make. Hall continues:
When, as yet, he had not so much as the comfort of a child to succeed him, thy prophet is sent to him, with the heavy message of his death: “Set thine house in order; for thou shalt die, and not live.” It is no small mercy of God, that he gives us warning of our end. . . . No soul can want important affairs, to be ordered for a final dissolution.
This is the language not of rights and entitlements, but of something much deeper—a universal respect for the condition of being human.
F or Hall, life is instinct with meaning: a meaning capable of controlling man’s pride at his good fortune and consoling him for his ill fortune. Here is an extract from Hall’s Characters of Virtues and Vices:
He is an happy man, that hath learned to read himself, more than all books; and hath so taken out this lesson, that he can never forget it: that knows the world, and cares not for it; that, after many traverses of thoughts, is grown to know what he may trust to; and stands now equally armed for all events: that hath got the mastery at home; so as he can cross his will without a mutiny, and so please it that he makes it not a wanton: that, in earthly things, wishes no more than nature; in spiritual, is ever graciously ambitious: that, for his condition, stands on his own feet, not needing to lean upon the great; and can so frame his thoughts to his estate, that when he hath least, he cannot want, because he is as free from desire, as superfluity: that hath seasonably broken the headstrong restiness of prosperity; and can now manage it, at pleasure: upon whom, all smaller crosses light as hailstones upon a roof; and, for the greater calamities, he can take them as tributes of life and tokens of love; and, if his ship be tossed, yet he is sure his anchor is fast. If all the world were his, he could be no other than he is; no whit gladder of himself, no whit higher in his carriage; because he knows, that contentment lies not in the things he hath, but in the mind that values them.
Though eloquent, this appeal to moderation as the key to happiness is not original; but such moderation comes more naturally to the man who believes in something not merely higher than himself, but higher than mankind. After all, the greatest enjoyment of the usages of this world, even to excess, might seem rational when the usages of this world are all that there is.
In his Occasional Meditations, Hall takes perfectly ordinary scenes—ordinary, of course, for his times—and derives meaning from them. Here is his meditation “Upon the Flies Gathering to a Galled Horse”:
How these flies swarm to the galled part of this poor beast; and there sit, feeding upon that worst piece of his flesh, not meddling with the other sound parts of his skin! Even thus do malicious tongues of detractors: if a man have any infirmity in his person or actions, that they will be sure to gather unto, and dwell upon; whereas, his commendable parts and well-deservings are passed by, without mention, without regard. It is an envious self-love and base cruelty, that causeth this ill disposition in men: in the mean time, this only they have gained; it must needs be a filthy creature, that feeds upon nothing but corruption.
Surely Hall is not suggesting (unlike Dennett in his unguarded moments) that the biological purpose of flies is to feed off injured horses, but rather that a sight in nature can be the occasion for us to reflect imaginatively on our morality. He is not raising a biological theory about flies, in contradistinction to the theory of evolution, but thinking morally about human existence. It is true that he would say that everything is part of God’s providence, but, again, this is no more (and no less) a metaphysical belief than the belief in natural selection as an all-explanatory principle.
L et us compare Hall’s meditation “Upon the Sight of a Harlot Carted” with Harris’s statement that some people ought perhaps to be killed for their beliefs:
With what noise, and tumult, and zeal of solemn justice, is this sin punished! The streets are not more full of beholders, than clamours. Every one strives to express his detestation of the fact, by some token of revenge: one casts mire, another water, another rotten eggs, upon the miserable offender. Neither, indeed, is she worthy of less: but, in the mean time, no man looks home to himself. It is no uncharity to say, that too many insult in this just punishment, who have deserved more. . . . Public sins have more shame; private may have more guilt. If the world cannot charge me of those, it is enough, that I can charge my soul of worse. Let others rejoice, in these public executions: let me pity the sins of others, and be humbled under the sense of my own.
Who sounds more charitable, more generous, more just, more profound, more honest, more humane: Sam Harris or Joseph Hall, D.D., late lord bishop of Exeter and of Norwich?
No doubt it helps that Hall lived at a time of sonorous prose, prose that merely because of its sonority resonates in our souls; prose of the kind that none of us, because of the time in which we live, could ever equal. But the style applies to the thought as well as the prose; and I prefer Hall’s charity to Harris’s intolerance.
Theodore Dalrymple, a physician, is a contributing editor of City Journal and the Dietrich Weismann Fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
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nvrgnbk
I truly appreciate that article, BTS.
I did read it, but not very carefully.
I will read it later with more time.
One thing that jumped out at me is the suggestion that only non-atheists can exhibit a "gratitude" or "appreciation" of the value and beauty of things.
There are many that profess no belief in God that also observe the natural world with a sense of wonder and humility.
Thanks once again for the article.
Peace
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lovelylil
BTS,
That is a wonderful article, long but well worth the read. Thanks for sharing that. Lilly
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Forscher
I think Lovelylil makes a point which should be given a little closer examination.
I think the problem is not Christianity, nor atheism, it consists of institutions centered around world views. Institutions require conformity of some sort or another. when they become dominant political systems they force that conformity on society at large by whatever means it takes. Such is the historical fact behind every atrocity laid at the feet of Christianity.
As others pointed out, Jesus Christ never advocated forcing others to Christian belief, nor killing others in his name. It is a historical fact that those groups which most closely followed his teachings ended up being the persecuted, rather than the persecutors. It was only when Christianity became an institutional religion with dominant political power that the atrocities and wars in the name of Christ came about. Search as one may, one cannot find any justification for wars, torture, and other atrocities in the teachings of Jesus.
As for another point which caught my eye:
The point is that no war is done in the name of atheism. But people do kill because they are Christian. Kashmir (Muslims v. Christians), Sudan (Muslims v. Christians and animists), Nigeria (Muslims v. Christians), Ethiopia and Eritrea (Musilms v. Christians), Indonesia (Muslims v. Timorese Christians) are some modern ones.
You're kidding, right? The examples cited are hardly good examples of Christian belligerence. In Kashmir it is Muslims pitted against Hindis, not Christians. And bye the way, Christians are being victimized by both of those groups, they are hardly in a position to be aggressors. The rest of the examples you provide, serotonin_wraith, are situations where Christians are being attacked and persecuted by radical Muslim majorities. Only in the southern part of Nigeria are they strong enough in numbers to in any way fit the stereotype you are trying to draw. and even there the primary aggressors are Muslims, not Christian. In none of those places are Christians fighting a war to impose Christianity on their neighbors. Those "wars" are being fought in the name of Mohammad, not Jesus Christ.
Forscher
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lovelylil
Forscher,
Nice post. That is so true. Sadly many Christians (and I am included) have done more to alienate others of differing beliefs than to unite them to us. It is definately because we are too concerned with obeying our religious leaders who like you said have institutionalized Christianity. They have perverted God's word so much that they make him into any angry, blood thirsty God who is never happy with us no matter how much we do "for" him.
Many of these institutions have become too legalistic and are more concerned with imparting their own spritual qualifications to others than with teaching the pure, simple and wonderful gospel originally taught by the Apostles which is that Christ died to save all people.
And unfortunately when they condem all others and relegate them to hell, or preach their iniment destruction, it is God and Christ who bear the blame for it in people's eyes. And that is really sad because as you know and have stated, Jesus' teachings are about uniting people, peace and love of nieghbor. Quite the opposite of the "Christian" message preached by many today. Peace, Lilly
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startingover
There's one thing I can't grasp in this whole situation. I think it's acceptable to pick and choose what you want to believe. It's obvious the christians on this board do that all the time within their own belief system. They quote the bible and use it as a basis for their beliefs but yet look at how many different interpretations there are.
Why would an all powerful being rely on a document like the bible to express his desires? There is surely a better way for a being as all powerful as claimed.
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Brother Apostate
Why would an all powerful being rely on a document like the bible to express his desires
Because while much Scripture can be interpreted multiple ways, those things are not necessary for salvation.
What is necessary for salvation?
Start with the Law of Love (two greatest commandments), and add to that those other things (all summed up in that law, but fully expounded on elsewhere) as follows:
Put faith in God, his Son, Jesus Christ, his Son's ransom sacrifice's power to redeem us, and his inspired word the Holy Bible - Hebrews 10:12, 26; 11:6; 11:1-40; John 3:16-21; Romans chapters 4, 5 & 6; Romans 10: 9-17; Acts 4:12; 10:43; Matthew 26:28; Mark 3:28-30; James 4:17; 5:15; 1 John 4:9-14;Luke 13:23,24; 1 Timothy 4:10.
Repent, and be baptized: "And all the country of Judea was going out to him, and all the people of Jerusalem; and they were being baptized by him in the Jordan River, confessing their sins." -Mark 1:5
Pray daily, asking in faith for His Holy Spirit - Matthew 5:44; 6:9, 26:41; 1 Thessalonians 5:17; James 5:16; Romans 12:21; Philippians 4:6; Colossians 4:2; 1 Peter 4:7.
Practice the fruitages of the Holy Spirit, doing our utmost to avoid sin -Galatians 5:19-25; 1 Corinthians 6: 9,10; Matthew 12:31.
Real faith, in turn, compels us to works, service to God and neighbor - James 2:26; Acts 26:20; Hebrews 10: 23-25.
Live a life of Love, Faith, Forgiveness, Charity and Mercy.
BA
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Gopher
Live a life of Love, Faith, Forgiveness, Charity and Mercy.
As an atheist, I believe in and practice what's quoted above, except for the "Faith" part.
Because of my non-belief in a god, when I show goodness toward my fellow man it is not out a desire to follow a book or please a deity, but purely to contribute to the welfare of my neighbor and to help make the world a better place.
Christians and other believers associate these kind of works with "godliness". Non-believers associate it with goodness as being its own reward.