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.
'Religion is fragmenting the human community' said Sam Harris....
So is politics. Lets get rid of all of that too.
The human community is fragmented over socialism and communism - let's get rid of all you socialists and communists and your oppressive governments.
Hey, abortion is divisive and fragmenting the human community (and killing a part of it as well). Let's get rid of that altogether - something I'd love to see happen, BTW.
Pig headed, ignorant, condesceding, one-worlder, Gap-shopping Lexus driving elitists.
Recommended reading on the topic:
The Twilight of Atheism: The Rise and Fall of Disbelief in the Modern World
by Alister Mcgrath
http://www.amazon.com/Twilight-Atheism-Disbelief-Modern-World/dp/0385500610/sr=8-1/qid=1161227434/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-1135010-7095115?ie=UTF8&s=books
Is God Dead?
Well just ask Maddy O'Hare. Oh wait, she's dead.... hmmm.... Next question.
Your question makes no sense, unless Jesus is not God.
Sorry. What question are you talking about?
And how does anything I posted imply Jesus is not God?
With 300,000,000 Americans now in this country, how difficult can it be to have a book reach the best-seller list? You don't need to sell all that many to get on that list.
Res ipsa loquitur
I can understand why you would not want to be understood.
Religion is an ideology, a concept, a vehicle, a way of understanding our place in the world God created. Religion does not do anything to anyone. It is people who commit acts against people (sometimes in the name of religion), not Religion. Now, that is calling a spade a spade.
In July 1941, a man from Kolbe's bunker had vanished, prompting Karl Fritzsch, the Lagerführer, to pick 10 men from the same bunker to be starved to death in the notorious torture block, Block 11, in order to deter further escape attempts. (The man who had disappeared was later found drowned in the camp latrine.) One of the selected men, Franciszek Gajowniczek, cried out, lamenting his family, and Kolbe volunteered to take his place.
After two weeks of starvation, only four of the ten men were still alive, including Kolbe. The cells were needed, and Kolbe and the other three were executed with an injection of carbolic acid in the left arm."
Yup. This guy really was gunning to be in charge of things.
Maximilian Kolbe
Go back to trolling prayer threads with some of your buddies.
Thanks for the reply. I hadn't thought of the other meaning of sacrifice for this, although I've read that usage througout the Bible. I'll read up on that angle some more. OTOH, my initial thought is that would be God sacrificing to himself, still not much to be a cornerstone of the most important world religion.
See Below.
See Below.
I've heard that one before and haven't bought it. The fact remains that he is still, for that entire time, an all-powerful divine being, even if he is in human form. The amount of suffering that God could easily endure surely must be much less than, say, a person voluntarily subjecting himself to getting a tattoo.
Compare. You must be like a god to a large water bug. You decide to undergo what would be a cruel death for one of them, say a quick spray from a can of Raid. It isn't much to you, is it?
and offering himself to die in the electric chair so you could go free?
So he could get back up a couple of days later and go home? It sounds like a rather empty gesture.
But if He's omnipotent, He can choose to endure that amount of suffering if He chooses. Being omnipotent means He's capable of doing anything, right? It's completely voluntary on His part. And who said He "easily" endured it? He is all-powerful and divine. But at that very time, He Himself admitted that if He chose, He could just say the word and the angels from heaven would come down and slaughter His captors. But He chose not to. He could have chosen to end His suffering at any time. But He did not.
I didn't say commend, I said condone. The Bible regulated slavery, which means it allowed slavery to exist and orders that slaves to be obedient. It never condemned slavery as modern society does.
Pain is not the same thing as suffering.
Suffering is pain plus fear and not being in control.
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