Posted on 10/18/2006 5:25:05 PM PDT by wagglebee
CHICAGO (Reuters) - A fresh wave of atheistic books has hit the market this autumn, some climbing onto best-seller lists in what proponents see as a backlash against the way religion is entwined in politics.
"Religion is fragmenting the human community," said Sam Harris, author of "Letter to a Christian Nation," No. 11 on the New York Times nonfiction list on October 15.
There is a "huge visibility and political empowerment of religion. President George W. Bush uses his first veto to deny funding for stem cell research and scientists everywhere are horrified," he said in an interview.
Religious polarization is part of many world conflicts, he said, including those involving Israel and Iran, "but it's never discussed. I consider it the story of our time, what religion is doing to us. But there are very few people calling a spade a spade."
His "Letter," a blunt 96-page pocket-sized book condensing arguments against belief in quick-fire volleys, appeared on the Times list just ahead of "The God Delusion," by Richard Dawkins, a scientist at Oxford University and long-time atheist.
In addition, Harris' "The End of Faith," a 2004 work which prompted his "Letter" as a response to critics, is holding the No. 13 Times spot among nonfiction paperbacks.
Publishers Weekly said the business has seen "a striking number of impassioned critiques of religion -- any religion, but Christianity in particular," a probably inevitable development given "the super-soaking of American politics and culture with religion in recent years."
Paul Kurtz, founder of the Council for Secular Humanism and publisher of Free Inquiry magazine, said, "The American public is really disturbed about the role of religion in U.S. government policy, particularly with the Bush administration and the breakdown of church-state separation, and secondly with the conflict in the Mideast."
They are turning to free thought and secular humanism and publishers have recognized a taste for that, he added.
"I've published 45 books, many critical of religion," Kurtz said. "I think in America we have this notion of tolerance ... it was considered bad taste to criticize religion. But I think now there are profound questions about age-old hatreds."
The Rev. James Halstead, chairman of the Department of Religious Studies at Chicago's DePaul University, says the phenomenon is really "a ripple caused by the book publishing industry."
"These books cause no new thought or moral commitment. The arguments are centuries old," he told Reuters. Some believers, he added, "are no better. Their conception of God, the Divine-Human-World relationship are much too simplistic and materialistic."
Too often, he said, the concept "God" is misused "to legitimate the self and to beat up other people ... to rehash that same old theistic and atheistic arguments is a waste of time, energy and paper."
Dr. Timothy Larsen, professor of theology at Wheaton College in Illinois, says any growth in interest in atheism is a reflection of the strength of religion -- the former being a parasite that feeds off the latter.
That happened late in the 19th century America when an era of intense religious conviction gave rise to voices like famed agnostic Robert Ingersoll, he said.
For Christianity, he said, "It's very important for people of faith to realize how unsettling and threatening their posture and rhetoric and practice can feel to others. So it's an opportunity for the church to look at itself and say 'we have done things ... that make other people uncomfortable.' It is an opportunity for dialogue."
Larsen, author of the soon-to-be-published "Crisis of Doubt," added that in some sense atheism is "a disappointment with God and with the church. Some of these are people we wounded that we should be handling pastorally rather than with aggressive knockdown debate."
These are also probably some of the same people Harris says he's hearing from after his two books.
"Many, many readers feel utterly isolated in their communities," he said. "They are surrounded by cult members, from their point of view, and are unable to disclose their feelings."
"I get a lot of e-mail just expressing incredible relief that they are not alone ... relieved that I'm writing something that couldn't be said," Harris added.
LOL!
So where do I sign up with Mammon?
Check your local bank.
As Willie Sutton said, "That's where the money is."
Or Wall Street. As Gordon Gekko said, "Greed is good. Greed works." (Tell that to former DNC head Terry McAuliffe who made $10 million off of stock in Global Crossing. Or NJ's Torricelli...)
As Mad Magazine Dave Berg once wrote in a cartoon, the reason modern churches and modern banks look so much alike is that they're both houses of worship.
Cheers!
The very idea that human beings have individual rights not subject to the whims of an earthly monarch, but subject to the laws of Yahweh, is directly from Moses.
Mosaic Law (of which the Ten Commandments is just a part) is the foundation of Western Civilization. Genesis is the primary focus of the Declaration of Independence, from where our Constitutional rights are derived. The Ten Commandments are the foundation of our judicial system.
Moses wrote Genesis. This is why some people will jump up and down screaming when the Ten Commandments are displayed or the Creationist idea of monogamy from the book of Genesis is introduced.
The traditions of Greek tragedy as in Oedipus Rex are based upon the religious traditions of the Greeks - - the idea of destiny or a pre-ordained fate subject to the whims of the gods.
Socrates saw that fallacy in Plato’s Euthyphro, when he asked Euthyphro what was pleasing to the gods, and how could someone be pious to the gods when they all wanted something different from the others. It made no sense to observe the divinity of one god and ignore the demands of another god. How could a person know what it was to be in accordance with the will of the gods in this respect?
The origins of drama come from the esoteric ideals directly related to religion. Religious ritual is psychodrama designed to conjure up images in the mind of the viewers and/or participants. This is illustrated no better than by the Greek traditions of using masks in their plays.
The actor can hide himself behind the illusion of a character’s mask, the audience can focus not on the actor, but on the image of the character represented - - one form of idolatry, among others in pagan Greek polytheism.
The Greeks were idolaters and were pagans. The images in their drama were a representation of something. What did Oedipus represent?
To the pagan Egyptians, the pharaohs were gods. Gods had their own special privileges of divinity. The pagan Egyptians had their own pantheon of gods like the pagan Greeks, several of which the Greeks adopted. (Set and Typhon are convenient examples.)
The pagan Egyptians were also idolaters like the Greeks; their temples, architecture and art are replete with sacred idols. They both practiced human sacrifice. (These practices extended to the pagan Romans as well.) Is Oedipus representative of the pharaoh Akhnaton?
One of Sigmund Freud’s earlier followers, Karl Abraham, contributed an essay to the first volume of Imago, published by Freud in 1912, entitled Amenhotep IV (Akhnaton). This was of interest in that the essay talks about how Akhnaton did not entomb his mother Tiy next to her husband after her death and that Akhnaton’s rivalry with his father for possession of his mother extended beyond death.
Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky has many critics, but his assertions in Oedipus and Akhnaton are most profound. There appears to be a particular level of viciousness directed toward Velikovsky from many Egyptologists. Like Akhnaton, Velikovsky is reviled for tearing down some idolatries of previously accepted thinking. Examinations of reaction concerning his other books Peoples of the Sea and Ages in Chaos) are ample evidence of this in such historical and literary circles of research. I attribute much of this to the ancient conflict between the pagan and the Judaic that still rages (even from within Judaism itself, see the Steven Plaut article: The Rise Of Tikkun Olam Paganism) although the pagan civilizations of Greece and Egypt are long since dead.
This conflict was represented by Othello, Death of a Salesman, and many other places in art, literature and science. Here with Oedipus, it is also represented in the modern arguments over historical chronology, pagan idolatry of the Greeks and Egyptians, along with modern idolatries commonly found in both domestic and international politics. The Sun and Bacchus are Apollo and Dionysus, two gods, or two aspects of religious experience from the ancient Greeks, and their juxtaposition is of some importance - - a statement of belief in the duality of human nature, symbolized by Apollo as the light of reason, and Dionysus as the underground power of emotion (see Camille Paglia's Sexual Personae).
Egyptians worshipped Harpocrates, the god of silence; for which reason he is always pictured holding a finger on his mouth. Athenians had a statue of brass, which they bowed to; a figure made without a tongue, to declare secrecy thereby. The Romans had a goddess of silence called Angerona, which was pictured like Harpocrates, holding her finger on her mouth, in token of secrecy.
There is an occult nature to certain politics and this progression of culture (ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome and the modern iconographic idolatry of Marxist paganism) can easily be illustrated, but is most often ignored or rejected for reasons of political expediency, like the aforementioned pagan idolatries of secrecy and silence.
The use of such religion is essential for many aspects of political power over the ignorant, unwashed masses. It is no surprise that Akhnaton's monotheistic approach was completely and abruptly destroyed by the successive generation, restoring the pantheistic idolatries of previous pharaohs. This phenomenon is not historically isolated and is played out in a myriad of instances today.
Morality and all of its associated ideals are rooted entirely in the presupposition some higher power defines what is correct for human behavior.
I look down upon no man for his beliefs(even RATs).
Are all cultures equal? Hell no...
Only a cultural Marxist would think so.
"MAMMON, n. The god of the world's leading religion. The chief temple is in the holy city of New York."
Ambrose Bierce, Devil's Dictionary
I think he's on level 2. That's "insecure faith," right after level 1, "conversion under duress."
Frayed knot sir.
I WAS on level 1 until July 21, 1985 at 12.35 PM.
That was the moment I asked Jesus to come into
my life and was born again.
Since then I have been on level Seven
Which means I am on my way to Heaven.
Hope to see all of you there.
Have a nice day.
Interesting perspective, thanks.
Luke 3:14 quotes John the Baptist, not Christ. You can still try to make that same point, but you're going to have to use a different verse.
Never said they were equal. I just don't have to agree with them. You missed that part.
The world is choosing up sides.
You can't stop Gideon's Bible, open at page one.
The world has been choosing sides since the Fall of Man. I think that we are now approaching a point where Satan and his minions have achieved what they see as their minimum saturation point.
NIV Philippians 4:3
Yes, and I ask you, loyal yokefellow, help these women who have contended at my side in the cause of the gospel, along with Clement and the rest of my fellow workers, whose names are in the book of life.
NIV Revelation 3:5
He who overcomes will, like them, be dressed in white. I will never blot out his name from the book of life, but will acknowledge his name before my Father and his angels.
NIV Revelation 13:8-9
8. All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast--all whose names have not been written in the book of life belonging to the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world.
9. He who has an ear, let him hear.
NIV Revelation 17:8
The beast, which you saw, once was, now is not, and will come up out of the Abyss and go to his destruction. The inhabitants of the earth whose names have not been written in the book of life from the creation of the world will be astonished when they see the beast, because he once was, now is not, and yet will come.
Revelation 201. And I saw an angel coming down out of heaven, having the key to the Abyss and holding in his hand a great chain.
2. He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil, or Satan, and bound him for a thousand years.
3. He threw him into the Abyss, and locked and sealed it over him, to keep him from deceiving the nations anymore until the thousand years were ended. After that, he must be set free for a short time.
4. I saw thrones on which were seated those who had been given authority to judge. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony for Jesus and because of the word of God. They had not worshiped the beast or his image and had not received his mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ a thousand years.
5. (The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended.) This is the first resurrection.
6. Blessed and holy are those who have part in the first resurrection. The second death has no power over them, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with him for a thousand years.
7. When the thousand years are over, Satan will be released from his prison
8. and will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth--Gog and Magog--to gather them for battle. In number they are like the sand on the seashore.
9. They marched across the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of God's people, the city he loves. But fire came down from heaven and devoured them.
10. And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.
11. Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. Earth and sky fled from his presence, and there was no place for them.
12. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books.
13. The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what he had done.
14. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death.
15. If anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
NIV Revelation 21:27
Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb's book of life.
Better sick, than lost!
Matthew 9:12
On hearing this, Jesus said, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.
What!?
No middle ground??
OTOH, I always had the impression that John the Baptist and Jesus played for the same team ;-)
Cheers!
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