"The Truth" -A Sterile Set Of Ideas (D'Souza)

by metatron 13 Replies latest jw friends

  • metatron
    metatron

    I just finished a marvelous book - "Life After Death" by Dinesh D'Souza. He is an articulate and clever Christian apologist who comes up with creative argumentation against atheism and nihilist thought. While I do not agree with all his conclusions (and I wonder if his reasonings on life after death are a better defense of Buddhist ideas rather than Christian), I do highly recommend his work. He is easily the "C.S. Lewis" of our age and you guys still committed to Biblical/Theistic defense need to read his stuff.

    His book also reminded me as to what a barren set of ideas the Watchtower has to offer and how pathetic their opportunities for Christian apologetics are.

    Examples? The Watchtower must tightly stick to the same sad beliefs as atheists and materialist unbelievers in regard to humans and any survival after death. Humans are defined as a pile of atoms with nothing individual to survive demise. God resurrects a copy of a purely physical creature like a Celestial Xerox machine. That's that....... It's truly amazing that in regard to what should be the most critical issue of their faith, Jehovah's Witnesses are utterly 'unspiritual' by definition. Human life is reduced to a purely materialistic concept with absolutely no allowance for the survival of anything meaningful. Atheists should have no trouble at all with such notions.

    Another example? It's difficult for the Watchtower to acknowledge many of Christianity's greatest historical achievements because it would praise or justify churches in Christendom and also create a Christianity that evolves and improves the world. Black churches successfully triggered the greatest moral crusade/reform of the past century when they fought for civil rights. I look back on Martin Luther King's accomplishments and wonder how he ever did it, even now! Monks in the Middle Ages preserved and expanded practical knowledge. The Catholic Church successfully fought slavery because they believed slaves had immortal souls and were fully human thereby!

    D'Souza deftly navigates the defects and blindspots amidst this progress (yes, he knows that the Bible justifies slavery - but you really need to read the book on this and related problems).

    Forget the pathetic Awake and use it to line a bird cage or papertrain a puppy. If you want good apologetic arguments, read D'Souza.

    metatron

  • Terry
    Terry

    I disagree with most of your praise and conclusions.

    D'Souza is clever. Just.

    Artfully developed, carefully framed contexts which pristinely ignore counter-factual falsifications work just find if you don't put your

    mind in gear while reading him.

    I might come back to this topic tomorrow. (Don't have time tonight.) I'll explain why I say this.

    Giving the black churches and christianity moral credit for the civil rights era gains ignores so much I hardly know where to begin!

    You might want to consider Judaism equally in that regard and rethink your conclusions. Give Hinduism and Ghandi equal credit while your at it.

    Or, reframe the argument so that it relies less on religion and more on practical considerations like politics and Lyndon Johnson's expertise in the Senate after the Kennedy assassaination.

    How you place facts within a context goes a long way toward how the conclusions turn out.

  • TheClarinetist
    TheClarinetist

    Sounds interesting... I'll probably read it after I finish The God Delusion. LoL

    The JWs are on the trail end of almost everything... I'm amazed when I think about how thoroughly a lot of their arguments have been debunked.

  • Terry
    Terry

    Examples? The Watchtower must tightly stick to the same sad beliefs as atheists and materialist unbelievers in regard to humans and any survival after death. Humans are defined as a pile of atoms with nothing individual to survive demise. God resurrects a copy of a purely physical creature like a Celestial Xerox machine. That's that....... It's truly amazing that in regard to what should be the most critical issue of their faith, Jehovah's Witnesses are utterly 'unspiritual' by definition.

    On the contrary. Both D'Souza and Jehovah Witnesses rely on supernatural explanation, mystical intangibles and untestable premises.

    The path each takes toward their conclusions diverge--yet, not significantly enough to reclassify either as outside the same box.

    You use the word SPIRITUAL. It means nothing.

    The Hebrews and the Greeks really had no better terms to express their imaginary ideas other than wind and breath.

    Every time you read SPIRIT in the scriptures you are really reading either wind or breath.

    Christianity took pagan concepts of soul and tried to adapt them to explain the superiority of Christianity to Judaism.

    SPIRITUALITY is Ad Hoc. It isn't science. It is metaphor.

    Science deals with nature and D'Souza and the Watchtower deal with SUPER nature.

    Nature is what is. Supernature is "beyond" what IS. In other words: nonsense!

    Both are talking nonsense.

    Man, humanity, life are part of nature. There is no "beyond" outside of the demonstrable, measurable, testable and practical.

    Consequently, D'Souza and JW's invent their own video game and populate it with arbitrary imaginary rules, characters and consequences and

    pretend it isn't fiction but TRUE fact!

    Epistemology is the study of what we know and how we know it.

    Mystics have secret access to inside information from another source: their ass!

    If you think D'Souza's ass is more informative than the Watchtower Society's you'll be very disappointed.

  • Terry
    Terry

    The Great Debate: Dinesh D'Souza v. Michael Shermer (part 1)
    Is Religion a Force for Good or Evil?
    and Can you be Good without God?

    In this debate on what are arguably two of the most important questions in the culture wars today — Is Religion a Force for Good or Evil? and Can you be Good without God? — the conservative Christian author and cultural scholar Dinesh D’Souza and the libertarian skeptic writer and social scientist Michael Shermer, square off to resolve these and related issues, such as the relationship between science and religion and the nature and existence of God. This event was one of the liveliest ever hosted by the Skeptics Society at Caltech, mixing science, religion, politics, and culture.

    Dinesh D’Souza is the Robert and Karen Rishwain Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Investor’s Business Daily called him one of the “ top young public-policy makers in the country,” and the New York Times magazine named him one of America’s most influential conservative thinkers. Before joining the Hoover Institution, Mr. D’Souza was the John M. Olin Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. In 1987–88 he served as senior policy analyst at the Reagan White House. From 1985–1987 he was managing editor of Policy Review. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Dartmouth College in 1983. His books include the New York Times bestseller What’s So Great About America. His 1991 book Illiberal Education was the first study to publicize the phenomenon of political correctness. He is also the author of The Virtue of Prosperity: Finding Values in an Age of Techno Affluence. D’Souza’s articles have appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic Monthly, Vanity Fair, New Republic, and National Review. His latest book is titled What’s So Great About Christianity?

    Michael Shermer is the Publisher of Skeptic magazine, a monthly columnist for Scientific American, and an Adjunct Professor in the School of Politics and Economics at Claremont Graduate University. Dr. Shermer’ s latest book is The Mind of the Market, on evolutionary economics. His last book was Why Darwin Matters: Evolution and the Case Against Intelligent Design, and he is the author of Science Friction: Where the Known Meets the Unknown, about how the mind works and how thinking goes wrong. His book The Science of Good and Evil: Why People Cheat, Gossip, Share Care, and Follow the Golden Rule, is on the evolutionary origins of morality and how to be good without God. He wrote a biography, In Darwin’ s Shadow, about the life and science of the co-discoverer of natural selection, Alfred Russel Wallace. He also wrote The Borderlands of Science, about the fuzzy land between science and pseudoscience, and Denying History, on Holocaust denial and other forms of pseudohistory. His book How We Believe: Science, Skepticism, and the Search for God, presents his theory on the origins of religion and why people believe in God. He is also the author of Why People Believe Weird Things on pseudoscience, superstitions, and other confusions of our time. Shermer has an M.A. in experimental psychology from California State University, Fullerton and a Ph.D. in the history of science from Claremont Graduate University.

  • Terry
    Terry

  • Videos for skeptic+D'souza+debate
    The Great Debate: Dinesh D'Souza v. Michael ...
    7 min - Sep 5, 2008
    Uploaded by atheistonly
    www.youtube.com
    The Great Debate: Dinesh D'Souza v. Michael ...
    10 min - Sep 5, 2008
    Uploaded by atheistonly
    www.youtube.com
  • Skeptics Event: The Great Debate

    • The God Debate at Notre Dame – Hitchens vs. D'Souza - Michiana ...
    Apr 7, 2010 ... The God Debate at Notre Dame pits two of the most well-respected intellectuals in their given fields against each other in Notre Dame's own .
  • metatron
    metatron

    I lived thru the Civil Rights movement period and I am well aware of King's admiration of Ghandi - who, in turn, favorably viewed the example of Jesus. Making a mush of equal parts of politics and the religion of the day ignores the point D'Souza makes about Christianity as a force of motivation in culture, in the first place. Yes, there were brave Jewish people involved but the Black churches did the 'heavy lifting'. And LBJ had nothing to run on - unless the white majority cared - a mass moral motivation that did not emerge without a religious background.

    I was fascinated to know that Nietzsche (sp) exposed the problem of what's left after a nation abandons all traces of Christian traditional thought. Democracy and human rights were generated in a cultural context and may not survive as 'habits' otherwise. We may end up with hellish results or perhaps just entire nations that simply disappear, as bred out.

    I think materialism tends to generate in people a behavior similar to their view of a world simply of atoms - just wandering and moving about randomly. There doesn't have to be mass murder as in atheistic Communism, there doesn't have to be anything at all.

    metatron

  • smsalvit
    smsalvit

    Terry, thank you for the vids. I've watched Hitch and Dinesh go at it before, but haven't seen the one you've posted.

  • Terry
    Terry

    Yes, there were brave Jewish people involved but the Black churches did the 'heavy lifting'. And LBJ had nothing to run on - unless the white majority cared - a mass moral motivation that did not emerge without a religious background.

    I'm 63 years old. I remember the Black Churches' reaction to the passing the Civil Rights legislation: rioting in 38 cities with pastors, preachers and agitation from communist infiltrators embarassing Johnson and demanding faster progress.

    The Democrats lost the following elections over and and over again due to the backlash and disparity of Black Community leadership.

    Living through history is one thing; paying attention and understanding it is another thing entirely!

    The Christian religion had little to do with Civil Rights progress. Philosophy, Ethics and Morality are not the sole domain of theology.

    Liberation Theology with its communist overtones in the hands of radical Catholic activists set back black progress for decades. Leadership suffered (and still does) from this original error in judgement.

  • metatron
    metatron

    It sounds as if you have formed your opinions without reading the book. If so, so be it.

    I never seem to encounter any materialist who comprehends that the reductionism they love so much is philosphically suspect and may be self contradictory. Once you reduce all effects to simpler causes, you reach the bottom rung of reality and then things exist arbitrarily i.e. "they just are, period". After that, you can only argue about what things 'just are' ..... is it only atoms? the quantum world "just is"? Perhaps the laws of physics, constant day by day, "just are".

    perhaps consciousness itself, also 'just is' - as an arbitrary cause in the universe.

    metatron

    • Share this

    Google+
    Pinterest
    Reddit