National Public Radio (NPR) has finally posted the audio of a debate between Matthew Chapman, Darwin’s great-grandson, philosopher Anthony Grayling, Dinesh D’Souza, president of the King’s College of New York, and Rabbi David Wolpe on the question, “Would the world be better off without religion?” You can hear the 50-minute debate here, or get to the debate by clicking the link on the page given in the first sentence.
I didn’t find the debate particularly edifying, nor did I see a clear winner; indeed, the atheist side failed to bring up obvious points like the total lack of evidence for God (or the tenets of Wolpe’s Judaism or d”Souza’s Christianity)—though evidence was alluded to. Nor were the specious roots of supposed “atheist atrocities,” like those of Pol Pot and Stalin, really probed. Perhaps the debate was more useful to people who are largely unfamiliar with the arguments. What was painfully lacking here was Christopher Hitchens.
As for the results, the atheist side appeared to have gained a tiny victory, though both sides gained votes at the expense of those undecided at the beginning. NPR reports:
Before the Oxford-style debate, moderated by ABC News’ John Donvan, the audience at New York University’s Skirball Center for the Performing Arts voted 52 percent in favor of the motion and 26 percent against, with 22 percent undecided. Afterward, 59 percent of the audience agreed the world would be better off without religion, while 31 percent disagreed — making the side arguing for the motion the winners of the debate. Ten percent of the audience remained undecided.
I did, however, enjoy listening to Chapman. I was thoroughly impressed with his public speaking skills (considering this was not his usual domain). He is a welcome asset in the arsenal of cultural critique.
Perhaps the missed points that you mentioned on the atheist side stemmed from “rebuttal fatigue”. If the same fallacious arguments have appeared and been destroyed in n prior discussions, the n+1th occasion could lead to “a profound sense of fatigue, a feeling of emptiness.”
There’s a handy name for these familiar pro-religion arguments:”Previously Rebutted A Thousand Times”, or a PRATT argument. I think I first heard that on the worthy The Atheist Experience TV show.
My own canned rebuttal to “Stalin and Pol Pot were atheists!!!11!”:
I don’t find it a good tactic to try to say that Stalin or Pol Pot were not atheists.
Hitchens sort of makes this argument and I tent to find it the weakest weapon in his arsenal.
They were atheists.
They were also other things (namely totalitarian communist dictators).
This seems to be a case of deciding whether atheism is correlated or causating the killing.
The way we do this in science is to check to see if there are other variables that explain things better. For instance in this case you could point out that there are multiple examples of atheist leaders around the world (Scandinavia, New Zealand etc) and yet the only cases of murderous killings happen in those situations where communist dicatatorships are in place – indicating that it is not atheism per se that is the problem – it is communism.
You can also do the same thing with a certain Catholic leader who came from Austria – if you really want to annoy the theists!
I don’t think Peter’s argument is that Stalin and Pol Pot weren’t atheists.
Rather, I think his argument is that they were gods.
Cheers,
b&
Which leads to the question “Is god an atheist?” I mean, he must be right? He doesn’t believe in anything higher than himself I presume, so he’s an atheist. Well if it’s good enough for god it’s good enough for me.
I paused at “a certain Catholic leader who came from Austria”, since I was sure he came from Germany….
And just for the heck of it, from the archives here’s a ditty in response to his regrets concerning his apparent comment that Islam has a strong connection with violence:
BENNY HAS REGRETS
(To the tune of “Bennie and the Jets”)
Benny, Benny, Benny has regrets —
Not for the Third Crusade,
Or what he said,
But that he maybe was misunderstoo-oo-oo-ood.
B-B-B-Benny has regrets.
Before going to much further in this statement please read. Hitlers Table Talks. Or for a shorter read, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler's_religious_views
Also, I agree, that the third Crusade was most certianly an attrocious act, but I would invite you to read “God’s Batalion” by Rodney Stark.
I think we’d be surprised and disappointed how much unreason and intolerance there would be, even without religion. I’ve met a good few homophobic atheists, for example, who have some gut-feeling about “naturalness” where abomination used to be. Or Andrew Sullivan-style “science-based” racism. (IQ tests, The Bell Curve etc.)
Thanks for the summary. I think I’ll pass on this one.
b&
I think the more important question is: would the world be better off if we all got together and developed a common set of myths, lies, and misunderstandings of the origins of the physical, spiritual, and ethical worlds. Just put D-Pak in charge of the whole enterprise: he’s good at making shit up, and he’ll even throw in some science-y terms to make it all seem 21st century. I mean, reality is all so over-done! Why would humans want to live lives based on truth and rationality? Much less an understanding of the actual mechanics of the physical universe? Really, how awful would that be? It’d be a world with economic injustice, corruption, state-sponsored terror and genocide, corporate greed and excess would thwart democratic structures … oh. Wait …
Except that the statistics says democracy thwarts economic injustice, corruption, terror, and genocide, since these factors have been eroding as democracy expanded.
Btw, Rosling throws in social medicine and market economy (greed) in his presentations as drivers of health et cetera.
You can certainly say that correlation isn’t causation (but I believe the parameter of time shows there could be causation rather than correlation), that you shouldn’t fish for those in a huge data set, et cetera. But I don’t think you can claim that democracy is thwarted or that these factors are threatening the social dynamics of todays world.
Wait, this is important. Democracy is a secular moral and social advance, which religion lacks and is incompatible with. (Puts social and economic power structures on poor societies.)
So we should never try to warp the actual facts, nor sell democracy, medicine, or markets short. “What has religion done for you lately?”
There would be no world without G-d.
If you can believe that George Washington once existed then you have to agree that things can exist without seeing for yourself.
Which god? There are so many to choose from — on average, several per believer.
Got any particular god you think is responsible for the world? And any evidence that said god is less a figment of your imagination than your neighbor’s gods are figments of hers?
Cheers,
b&
Fortunately, we have the capability of exhuming his corpse.
We also have contemporaneous paintings by a huge number of people — and they do tend to resemble each other. We have thousands of personal artifacts and written records by uninterested 3rd party observers.
— no such luck with the non-existent “G-d” (I always find it amusing that some people, for silly religious reasons, refuse to spell out the word god, as if the letters themselves have magic power. Actually, more sad than amusing.).
Feel free to provide any evidence that your “G-d” exists. Just a reminder:
Allegations are not evidence.
Hearsay is not evidence.
Unsubstantiated claims are not evidence.
Personal revelation is not evidence.
Anecdotes are not evidence.
Rumors are not evidence.
Wild speculation is not evidence.
Wishful thinking is not evidence.
Illogical conclusions are not evidence.
Disproved statements are not evidence.
Logical fallacies are not evidence.
Poorly designed/executed experiments are not evidence.
Experiments with inconclusive results are not evidence.
Experiments that are not and cannot be duplicated by others are not evidence.
Dreams are not evidence.
Hallucinations/delusions are not evidence.
Experiments whose methodology is not open for scrutiny are not evidence.
Data that requires a certain belief is not evidence.
Information that is only knowable by a privileged few is not evidence.
Information that cannot be falsified is not evidence.
Information that cannot be verified is not evidence.
Information that is ambiguous is not evidence.
And really, what about the world in particular requires the intervention of a God? There are good explanations for the origin of life, the planet, and the solar system that don’t require anyone getting their hands dirty. The origin of the universe isn’t fully understood, sure, but are you really going to pretend that the sort of God that requires you to redact his name to keep it holy is the same one that would create the universe and let it all run according to plan? If you believe the Bible, the whole story is one long string of events not going according to God’s plan.
“If you believe the Bible, the whole story is one long string of events not going according to God’s plan.”
And a whole bunch more that never happened at all.
I don’t know anyone who thinks that nothing exists unless that person has seen it. I do know many people who refuse to believe that something exists when there is no evidence for that something, or when that something is so ill-defined as to be meaningless. Now, what exactly do you think is proved about which unseen thing by George Washington’s existence?
“no world without G-d” is an irrelevant fact for the question if the world would be better without religion. Religion sucks.
Moreover, as opposed to the existence of Washington there are no evidences for religious beliefs and plenty against.
Specifically that “There would be no world without G-d” is contradicted by science. We have many potential pathways that leads into known standard cosmology today.
Worse for religion, since 2003 it seems nature is constructed such that there can be no creator gods.*
You can loophole this physics with some unnatural suggestion as always. Say by the philosophical suggestion of a more complex explanation of a supernatural creative agent that makes up a Last Thursday universe, either then or now.
That is however not compatible with science that has to choose the simpler theory without unobserved unnecessary extra, not the non-theory unpredictive solipsist type idea. The latter is trying to insert unreasonable doubt.
Today we can say, beyond reasonable doubt what I can see, that there would be no world without physics.
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* Curiously reminding of the old quantum mechanics results that there can be no hidden variables, or in other worlds no supernatural magic. (For the religious, no “G-d”.)
I like how nature tries to shout out loud “give up your silly superstitious anthropomorphic ideas already!” As they say, “who ordered that?” Yet it is a recurrent fact. Nature is indeed awesome.
D’oh!
– An irrelevant _claimed_ fact, 1st §.
– We know since 2003, 4th §.
– In other _words_, 2nd § from end.
Actually, the confirmation of Bell’s inequality rules out local hidden variables. And omni-gods, if they are anything, are clearly global.
Thanks for the heads up. I look forward to listening to this one. Given that a tendency toward magical thinking is hardwired into our perceptual apparatus I propose a more precise question might be “Would the world be better without organized religion?” or “Would the world be better off if everyone understood the biological origins of the religion impulse?”
“lack of evidence for God”
The debate wasn’t about the existence of God, as Grayling pointed out at the very beginning, so I think it was appropriate that this wasn’t even brought up.
I think that these debates get overly hung up over whether or not religion has been net harmful or beneficial in the past. Not really relevant. What’s more important is whether it will be net harmful or beneficial in the future. This lends itself less to revisionist history.
Coyne’s argument is that the perceived core idea of religion* is without merit, which bears on the appropriateness of the subject in the first place. Certainly _if_ you have the discussion anyway you can put such aside for the sake of discussion. But I think you should mention this.
Curiously, this specific claim does bear on the question for other reasons. While the existence of gods or not doesn’t affect the question of value of churches et cetera, it does go towards the question of value of religion. Because if it isn’t a fact, or it is undecided, the perceived value of religion lessens.
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In this context I feel it safe to say that the core idea of churches is social and economical power.
Existential angst comes rather low on their list of priorities, and that is likely why we see relatively many private religious around secular nations. They don’t like the flavor of gods proffered, including the tax exempt greedy ones.
Why would the actual existence of a God have any bearing on the value of religion? It’s not like anybody has actually been helped by a God even once in history. The value of religion is just based on believing imaginary causes. The debate would not have been significantly different if the question was reworded “Would the world be better off without delusions”?
I must disagree.
I think the debate would have been significantly different if the question was reworded “Would the world be better off without invisible pink unicorns?”
Yea, but one reason to say the world is better off without belief in God is that there is no reason to think there is a God (note I’m deliberately omitting details). Moreover, the common argument of PZ Myers and others is that religion has no reality check and that’s a problem. Saying that theism is without evidence, i.e. a reality check, is different from saying theism is false. The whole issue is what do you mean by “better off” and what is the relationship between being better off and believe true things and having reality checks on beliefs.
Now I think Grayling is making a tactical choice. Grayling is more interested in the sociological aspect of the question than the effect on intellectual discourse and thought. And if you argue against God, then you may turn off some believers to your arguments, whereas focusing on the sociology is perhaps less threatening. (To the believer, obviously there is good reason to think there is a God. Arguing against the obvious is not persuasive. Whether this is a good social phenomenon sounds more intellectual and less obvious.) Depends what Grayling is trying to accomplish. This approach does cost you certain good arguments, but you may also gain some insight and persuasive power instead.
http://www.thegoodatheist.net/2011/10/27/spains-stolen-babies/
“A few months ago, TGA reported on a story so shocking, it was hard to believe it had actually happened: for over 4 decades, the fascist government of Francisco Franco (along with the Catholic Church) had faked the deaths of ten of thousands of babies in order to traffic them. After the collapse of Franco’s government, the Church continued the practice well into the 1980′s (presumably it was too profitable to shut down). Now the BBC has finished filming a documentary about this tragedy, as the families try to track down their loved ones, all without the help of the government, who refuses to launch an investigation.”
(One of many sites on the subject. At what point will people wake up and smell the hypocrisy?)
Grayling’s argument is that the world would be better without theism.
Wolpe’s argument is the world would be better with theism. He referenced World Vision, a Christian based charity, as an example.
Chapman’s view is that the world would be better without theism and uses a fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible as his reference, claiming “religion makes everyone an infidel to someone.”
D’Souza compares religion vs. atheism.
The validity of this debate is sound only for those who equate religion with theism dismissing the non-theist religions as invalid. Yet, they are where the growth is.
There are many–Buddhists, some Humanists and others, even a growing non-theist Christianity–who wonder why non-theistic religions are being ignored in this public forum.
A better question might be, “Is the world better off without God?”
That interpretation is hardly limited to fundamentalist denominations. It’s mainstream in Christianity.
Fundamentalism is mainstream within fundamentalism which is not mainstream Christianity, it’s fundamentalism which is a self-proclaimed mainstream, but if you are familiar with the more liberal or progressive branches of Christianity, you will find that is not the case. In those, the Bible is considered metaphor.
You seem to be close to defining fundamentalism as ‘not mainstream’. What are your criteria for designating something fundamentalist and for determining what is mainstream?
Regardless, the bible is not considered metaphor by the vast majority of Christians, liberal or otherwise. Nor do fundamentalists take the bible to be wholly without metaphor. Different subsets disagree on which parts are more or less literal and on what the correct interpretation of the metaphorical excursions is.
First, mainstream Christianity is as vague a label as mainstream atheist. As for fundamentalism, is is the white dwarf mode of Christian exclusivists. In my forty some years as a Methodist, one of the mainstream Protestant denominations, I heard reference to the Bible as being the literal word of God only by the frustrated few who wanted to be in a safe haven. The Bible is mainly metaphor. To read it otherwise is to deny reason.
As to the ‘correct’ interpretation of metaphor, it’s personal. Jesus taught with parables. What did he mean when he (reportedly) said, “Love one another as I have loved you.” which is interpreted by some scholars to be better translated as, “Help one another as I have helped you.”
It’s a question of whether you choose to think for yourself or allow others to think for you. After all, Methodism’s founding is attributed to John Wesley who implored others to, “Think and let think.”
In those, is God also considered to be a metaphor?
I think you’ll find that liberal and progressive branches are fundamentalist in that respect, at least. 😉
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God is a word referencing the transcendent, what is beyond knowing. My favorite characterizations are:
“God is transcendence.” Karl Jaspers
“God is a metaphor for a mystery that absolutely transcends all categories of human thought, even the categories of being and non-being. Those are categories of thought. It’s as simple as that.” Joseph Campbell
It’s a matter of how you characterize the word. 😉 back at you.
And Jesus is transcendence’s only begotten son, is he?
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The world is already without God. That would be like asking “Is the world better off without a Flying Spaghetti Monster”.
“Is the world better off without religion” is the correct wording. Religions exist, and the question of the usefulness or value of religion is valid.
So there can be no religion without God? Tell that to the billions of religious who worship no God.
Except there are no “billions of religious who worship no God.”
Too many are confused about what ‘worship’ means, what ‘religion’ means — they both specifically mention deity/supernatural in their definitions.
Not all Buddhists refrain from supernaturalism.
http://buddhismbeliefs.org/
And not all Christians believe in God and those that say they do have differing concepts of God. Then there are the God-optional religions; e.g., UUism and the religious humanists.
I wonder what percentage of Buddhists are non-theists? Those who attend or church are.
How can Christians who don’t believe in God still be considered Christians in any meaningful way? Whose son was the Christ supposed to have been?
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Besides which, if Mercury, the heavenly messenger, was a god, then so too must Jesus, the Word incarnate, be a god.
I suppose there might be some very confused “Christians” who think Jesus was just some random schmuck (contrary to every last story told about him) with an innovative philosophy (that just happened to be indistinguishable from a number of other popular Mediterranean philosophies) and consider themselves Christian in the same sense that those enamored of Comte’s works consider themselves positivismists…but I’ve yet to actually encounter any such Christians. I’ve met many proselytizing fundamentalist evangelical Christians who open their gospel sermons by claiming they are, but it’s rarely more than a minute or so before they’re telling you how Jesus gave blowjobs to a thousand fishes while doing handstands on the water and simultaneously flying up into a cloud with a perforated peritoneum. (Jesus being the one with the holy hemorrhaging hemorrhoids, not the cloud, of course.)
Cheers,
b&
Christ is a word. We non-theistic Christians would be more accurate calling ourselves Jesusians, but that requires too much explanation. There’s no requirement to believe Jesus was the son of God to be a Christian except in the minds of those who want unchanging labels which certainly doesn’t fit with the ever-changing world of science.
If you don’t think someone who says they are a Christian is one, fine. Self-adhesive labels work for me.
BTW. Who says Jesus was the son of God. The phrase is considered by many scholars to have been inserted by those who wanted to enhance his image as it seems was the case of the virgin birth.
I Jesus was born of a virgin, why is there no mention of that in Mark or Paul’s writings which predate the other Gospels? For a Christian Scholar’s view of Gospel revisionism read God and Empire by John Dominic Crossan.
Who says? Only the majority of Christians, per the Nicene Creed.
If you reject that but still call yourself a Christian, the term has become so broad and elastic as to become meaningless. It’s all very well criticising unchanging labels, but if the label embraces those who think Jesus was the Christ and the Son of God as well as those that don’t it ceases to be a useful label at all.
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oldfuzz, you do know that the Jesus story is pure fiction, right? That the whole thing is as made up as the stories of Horus, Mithras, Quetzalcoatl, and all the rest of the ancient (and modern) gods?
Don’t take my word for it. Read what Justin Martyr (yes, “the” Martyr) and other first-generation Christian apologists had to write about the “sons of Jupiter,” and Lucian of Samosata’s explanation of how “Peregrinus” made it so. Then compare the totality of ancient Christian writings (canon and heresy both) against works of fiction like Paul Bunyan and actual historical works like Caesar’s autobiographical account of his conquest of Gaul, and decide for yourself which shelf to file the Bible on.
And if you’re still under the misconception that Jesus is somehow an admirable figure, re-read Luke 19 where he commands Christians to kill all infidels, or the countless passages where he repeatedly rants about how he’s bringing a sword this and ripping families asunder that and love him more than yourself the other, or the neverending hellfire and damnation such as even in the Sermon on the Mount where all men who fail to chop off their hands and gouge out their eyes after admiring a pretty woman are condemned to infinite torture.
“Christianity,” in any form, is not fit for civilization.
Cheers,
b&
Ben Goren: Or you could read Crossan’s The Historical Jesus or any of the many books on the subject. The question is not whether Jesus lived, but how he lived and what he said and did. Contemporary Christian scholars have wide ranging views. We read’em and take our pick.
As for Christianity in any form not being fit for civilization, tell that to disaster victims who are helped through their disasters by Christian relief organizations, World Vision being the largest of all, religious or non, according to Rabbi Wolpe.
If you really think there was an historical Jesus, then you should have absolutely no trouble whatsoever doing two things:
a) Telling us who, exactly, Jesus was. How do we tell the Jesus you worship from the dozens of other men named, “Jesus,” who are mentioned in historical accounts of Classical Judea? It was a rather popular name, you know.
II) Giving us positive evidence, preferably contemporary evidence, to support your theory.
I predict you’ll be quite hand-wavingly vague about the first, and lie about Josephus for the second — all while ignoring the fact that, not only do none of the “sources” support whatever you’re likely to think of as the “real” Jesus…they all contradict it.
And I’ll see all your Christian missionaries handing out food to the starving in exchange for loyalty oaths and raise you Doctors without Borders, the Red Cross, UNICEF, Amnesty International, Oxfam, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Mercy Corps, the ACLU, the Southern Poverty Law Center, Project Peanut Butter….
Cheers,
b&
All these arguments except Chapman’s works fine with substituting deist or pantheist religion for theist.
The reason why they are “ignored” is because they are included minorities.
Also, the idea of non-theist buddhism seems non-factual. It has a heaven with many immortal and immaterial deities and souls, like pretas, asuras and devas, jesus non-historical ‘evidence’ persona and texts, all the other general paraphernalia of “monotheist” religion.
It is, I believe, a minor westernization of buddhism that claims it isn’t theist. While I don’t think they have explicitly rejected the core Buddhist deism. (I could easily be mistaken, but I have never seen this rejection.)
Duh! “Buddhist deism” = buddhist deities.
I guess the Dalai Lama moved to Cleveland. His view is that theism is a minor element within Buddhism.
Buddhism wasn’t originally theist (it was agnostic not just about the gods but about much else that Buddha is said to have claimed was irrelevant to enlightenment).
It was really a philosophical system that rejected Brahminical teachings, particularly the doctrine of an unchanging spiritual self that transmigrates. The key Buddhist doctrine was the “no-self” doctrine, anatta (a doctrine that I think is actually true when properly understood). Western Buddhists who are atheists can claim with at least some justification that they are getting back to the original Buddhism before it was corrupted by a whole lot of supernaturalist trappings.
That doesn’t mean that the entire worldview of Buddhism, as expressed in the early texts can be defended, any more than the entirety of ancient Western philosophies like Epicureanism and Stoicism can be defended. In particular, the doctrine of “rebirth without transmigration” doesn’t make a lot of sense in the light of modern science. But there was plenty of merit in Epicureanism and there was some merit in Buddhism. The idea of anatta was certainly an advance, and in fact Western philosophers like David Hume didn’t start to explore similar ideas until many hundred of years later.
Thanks. I’m new to Buddhist thought. Have recently attended a workshop based on What the Buddha Taught by Walpola Rahula. Very interesting. Our facilitator likened Buddha to Jesus and recommended Going Home: Buddha and Jesus as Brothers by Thich Nhat Hanh. (It is on my reading table and doesn’t seem to be entering my mind by osmosis. I guess I’ll have to read it.)
Removing religion from the world won’t magically make it a better place. Society needs to embrace enlightened values like tolerance, reason, and critical thinking, and religion is the largest, most entrenched opponent of these values. So no, just removing religion isn’t enough to make people suddenly sane and moral, but it does remove the #1 purveyor of immoral insanity.
Christopher Hitchens is like chocolate, everything would be better with him.
I dunno. Even if the entire world were atheists, there’d be different kinds of atheism and all this “my atheism is more right than your atheism” bullshit would spring up and cause wars and stuff. I think it’s in human nature to segregate people no matter what it’s over.
I disagree. There will still be disputes, but they won’t be about kinds of atheism. Gnu v. yak* arguments, for instance, are meaningful only while there are religions to criticise, stridently, or not.
Politics, economics, ethics and so on will (continue to) be divisive.
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* A yak atheist is an accommodationist, ’cos they just yak yak yak about the troublesome gnus of the world. 😉
you can watch the full/unabridged debate (01:47) here: http://fora.tv/2011/11/15/Debate_The_World_Would_Be_Better_Off_Without_Religion
Old Fuzz, I have to call you on something. Which scholars translate John 13:34 as meaning “Help oneanother as I have helped you”. Please cite this. The word used in this (according to Nestle Aland Greet NT) is Agapao, which is to love (as pertaining to a group) (Stongs Exhaustive Concordance).
Also, which scholars believe that the words Jesus is the Son of God was a later addition?
I just did a quick scan, and found in Matthew alone there are at least fifteen references to Jesus being the Son of God. That is just a scan based on the word “Son”. (Again this is from Strongs Exhaustive Concordance). I am just glancing forward and I find that it continues in the other Gospels as well.
So please, to quell my doubt about your statement please cite exactly which schollars say this!
Perhaps, the reason I say this is I am worried a non-theist Christian, who considers themselves to be religion, may be making up thier own religion, as they make up thier own statements about the Bible (that is not meant to sound snarky Oldfuz, I appologise). Christianity is based on the evidence of the Bible. It may be taken as flimsy evidence, but it is what we go on. You cannot call your selves a follower of Jesus Christ while only accepting some of what he said. If he was right about the moral stuff why do you doubt the devine stuff?
Thanks. As a non-scholar I may have trusted a questionable source. Will pursue it.
Now that I have had time to think this through:
1. You are correct. My mind fault was in referencing Armstrong’s equating love in the Tanakh with help, then applying it to the NT.
Point taken.
2. “Son of God was a later addition” is a common view within the Jesus Seminar, John Dominic Crossan in particular.
3. “making up thier own religion” is a common trend. All one need do is study the differences across Christian denomination to discover that phenomena. In my forty some years of church participation the only people I have found who follow in unthinking lockstep are the unthinking and you can’t be a good Methodist like that for John Wesley admonished participants to, “Think and let think.”
If we pay attention, think things through the best we can and decide what seems right, can any of us really have identical views of our beliefs?
Why does Dinesh DSouza trail out murders committed by Atheists, even though those atrocities were not commited in the name of atheism?
It’s not a competition Dinesh, to see who can be the most evil. Religion tells us that it is a better way to be less evil, so why does it have any murders to its credit at all?
I think all Atheist debaters should emphasise this point, along with the fact that it is all leaders who send people to war, holy or otherwise, simply following the adage that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
In the future, perhaps we will all have the character to heold all leaders in check, religious or political!
Thank you Shuggy!
A strong challenge should have been mounted to correct the inference that the “RELIGION IS FOR THE BETTER” side made that the opposition felt that it was there duty to attack religion in order to save the simpleminded from faith. Religion is not in danger from non-belief but from belief itself. The opposition were present that day engaged in the debate because they understood that believers are quite intelligent people. People who are intelligent enough to one day know that they don’t need religion.
Does any debater ever utilise the entertainment value of religion for this?
And I’ll see all your Christian missionaries handing out food to the starving in exchange for loyalty oaths and raise you Doctors without Borders, the Red Cross, UNICEF, Amnesty International, Oxfam, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Mercy Corps, the ACLU, the Southern Poverty Law Center, Project Peanut Butter….
Oh, Ben. Oxfam was founded by the Quakers, Mercy Corps was founded by Dan O’Neil who began his work in Faith Based service. Amnesty International also was Quaker via Eric Baker. Wiki these.
Also look at christiangoodinsociety.blogspot.com/
Also where are you getting your sorce for the fact that word vision make you sign a loyalty pledge? Not saying this is not true, but I want to read it myself. (I hope you did not make this up).
Why is the account of Josephus a lie?
Also look at Tacitus “Annals” book 15. You will find further proof.
Which Jesus. I believe Tacitus, Josephus, and other historians are pretty clear about which Jesus. If there is another Jesus spoken of in historical texts matching the disciption they have given let us know. Tacitus even says that it was the Jesus who was crucified by Pontius Pilate. Can’t get more specific than that.
The idea that Jesus, the man existed is pretty well accepted. It’w when you go beyond the fact that he was just a man, as I do, that it gets difficult.
Theists love using supposedly atheist dictators to smear atheism as a whole. What they seem to forget is that it was the foot soldiers that did most of the killing. Nazi Germany was a large mix of Christianity and Catholicism. Hitler could only make orders. It was the Christian soldiers who carried out the orders of genocide.