Posted on 09/01/2009 9:14:22 AM PDT by GL of Sector 2814
"And not just atheists," said Bill Donohue during an August 31st Fox News interview. "I’m talking about people who are disaffected Catholics and Protestants who are mutineers within their own religion, trying to change things." It wasn't just "militant, dogmatic" atheists and "disaffected" Christians that the Catholic League president complained about either. Donohue also had a few choice words for magicians Penn & Teller whose Showtime series, Penn & Teller: Bullsh*t!, just ran an episode on the history of the Catholic Church. "This was the most Nazi-like assault,” Donohue said. “The most unrelenting half an hour of bashing I’ve ever seen.”
Bill Donohue made his comments on the Fox Network show Fox & Friends. He appeared there in order to promote his new book, Secular Sabotage: How Liberals Are Destroying Religion and Culture in America.
(Excerpt) Read more at examiner.com ...
Don't kid yourself...
Secular Humanists don't believe in the supernatural by definition. Quoting the the Council for Secular Humanism:
Secular humanism is philosophically naturalistic. It holds that nature (the world of everyday physical experience) is all there is, and that reliable knowledge is best obtained when we query nature using the scientific method. Naturalism asserts that supernatural entities like God do not exist, and warns us that knowledge gained without appeal to the natural world and without impartial review by multiple observers is unreliable.
This would certainly rule out belief in Satan, wouldn't you agree?
Good day to you.
Satan’s greatest trick is making people believe that he does not exist.
If he does actually exist, that would be correct.
If he doesn't...not so much.
I repeat my question: Can't people simply create philosophies such as Secular Humanism without a supernatural being whispering in their ear?
I am not interested in discussing false religious beliefs and pseudo-intellectual ideologies with you if you are not interested in showing some sort of mutual respect.
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Shouldn’t that respect go both ways? You want respect for your views while you refer to mine as ‘satanic practices’, ‘pseudo-intellectual’, and ‘false religious beliefs’.
That's right. Your life is meaningless and totally without purpose, right?
Right.
That is why it's a worthless belief to anyone capable of rational thought.
The concept of having to answer to a higher source is what angers most Secular Humanists. Gee, just imagine what the Afterlife will be like when someone conducts an audit of all your past experiences no matter how trivial.
I also note that Secular Humanists are among the most arrogant people I have ever encountered.
Why are you asserting that they do believe in Satan?
Sorry, it was another poster who made the “don’t kid yourself” comment. Please accept my apologies for the mixup.
I said "excuse me" earlier to clarify my opinion.
Secular Humanism is a half-truth perpetrated by Satan to distract people from pursuing God.
I have nothing against scientific examinations, but I take issue when a group of people insist that my life is meaningless while simultaneously failing to explain to me WHY things originated the way that they did.
To believe that the entire universe came into existence without some form of Divine inspiration is totally laughable.
Secular humanism does not, in any way, suggest that life is totally meaningless. The no divine purpose, absolutely.
I have never met a secular humanist angry at the notion of answering to a higher power. Typically because the whole concept of a higher power is anathema to them. Why would they be angry at something they don’t believe in?
I, an admitted agnostic, would not cringe at the idea of such an audit as you suggest. I am not perfect, but I don’t shrink from my actions, as I have tried, and continue to try, to live by that very simple, golden, rule. I am no more or less a sinner than you are (as Christians believe we are all sinners, right?), should I be proven wrong and stand before the pearly gates.
Arrogance comes in all shapes and sizes. You exhibit plenty, given your second paragraph (anyone capable of rational thought - as though you have a monopoly on rational thought).
I figure that it’s a great big world out there, and I’m OK with the idea that we can believe different things. I have no need to proselytize you to my way of thinking, and frankly, I would not be terribly open to your proselytizing, either.
It's one of the many thousands of philosophies invented by the mind of man. You can say that the devil made them do it, but absent a valid reason to believe in such a being I simply can't agree.
I have nothing against scientific examinations, but I take issue when a group of people insist that my life is meaningless while simultaneously failing to explain to me WHY things originated the way that they did.
They don't insist that your life is meaningless. Again, from their webpage:
Secular humanism denies that meaning, values, and ethics are imposed from above. In that it echoes simple atheism. But secular humanism goes further, challenging humans to develop their own values. Secular humanism maintains that through a process of value inquiry, reflective men and women can reach rough agreement concerning values, and craft ethical systems that deliver desirable results under most circumstances.
To sum it up, they assert that your life does have meaning...whatever meaning you and others create.
To believe that the entire universe came into existence without some form of Divine inspiration is totally laughable.
Please see my tagline.
I believe the standard reply to that from the viewpoint of mainstream Protestant theology would be that while you're both sinners, the Christian has been forgiven of his sins and will go to heaven.
As opposed to you, who will burn in Hell.
I recall reading "The Great Divorce" by C. S. Lewis in which someone who has died and gone to Hell gets to visit the outskirts of heaven (some sort of work-release program, presumably). He meets someone he knew on Earth who committed murder and was executed. He's rather upset by this, saying something to the effect of, "He gets into heaven and I don't?" It turns out that the murderer was genuinely repentant before his execution and accepted Christ as his savior...thus he gets to go to Paradise, as opposed the the main character who (while a nice guy) wasn't a Christian.
According to scripture there is only one path to salvation. That is the gift of God; the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross as an atonement for our sin. One needs to receive this gift to be saved. To be sure, many do not believe this at all. No small number think the whole idea is absurd. That is their, and your, God given right. We could talk about such people as Simon Greenleaf, a famous lawyer and a non-believer who set out to prove Christ a fraud. He became a Christian when he studied the evidence. I encourage you to look this up for yourself, but it is not the point of this post.
The scriptural position is clear and so must be the opposite. The goal in keeping anyone from securing salvation is to prevent them from believing on the Lord Jesus Christ as payment for the disobedience that separates all of us from God. It makes absolutely no difference that the person is an atheist, or a Muslim or a secular humanist, or a Satan worshiper. Every one of these “religious” variants gets the job done. Some incredibly popular religions, such as JWs and LDSs have wonderful moral upstanding members. Some even run for president and win super bowls. That doesn’t alter the essential issue; these groups do not hold to the Deity, sufficiency and exclusivity of Jesus being the Christ.
Many have considered that the multitude of religions in the world could not form a better roadblock to Christ. Many Christians have poor scriptural knowledge. Virtually everyone else in the west has only a framework of “children’s stories”; Noah’s ark, Jonah and the whale, etc. This ignorance leaves people in a whirlwind of choices that seem equivalent clouded by lots of unanswered questions. Low-and-behold, there is some form of belief system or form of worship to suit everyone. One thing they have in common, they are all devoid of Jesus Christ. Many people do not bother to choose at all, but that works just fine. Satan’s purpose is accomplished. And while he would prefer to be worshipped, he is satisfied to keep as many people as possible from a relationship with God through Christ.
Obviously this entire structure is built on the specifics of scripture. If one does not believe scripture, or the existence of Christ and Satan then this doesn’t make much sense. I understand that completely. So should you understand the prospective outlined here. It prevents odd claims such as reminders that secular humanists don’t believe in or worship Satan. Of course they don’t; they don’t need to. But from this prospective that doesn’t make secular humanism any less a tool of Satan than Buddhism or Islam.
I say again, disbelieving God is everyone’s God given right. I want to point out that if we Christians are wrong then we go through life (hopefully) behaving morally, sharing our time and resources in order to help others, and encouraging others to do the same. When we die we are gone. BUT if you are wrong you go through life doing what ever. You may be moral or not. You may help others or only help yourself. You may make your neighborhood Christian look like Charlie Manson by comparison. But when you die you will spend an eternity outside of time separated from God. Christ taught the torment of fire. But it seems to me that knowing there is a Being who loves me more than I can comprehend and wants me to be with Him in an amazing place that He created for me, and I refused – that would be hell.
I see that some of the confusion was addressed as I was writing...
Your last paragraph is, essentially, a re-wording of Pascal's Wager. This has been refuted in multiple ways, among them:
1) Since there have been many religions throughout history, and therefore many potential gods, some assert that all of them need to be factored into the wager, in an argument known as the argument from inconsistent revelations. This would lead to a high probability of believing in the wrong god, which destroys the mathematical advantage Pascal claimed with his Wager. Denis Diderot, a contemporary of Voltaire, concisely expressed this opinion when asked about the wager, saying "an Imam could reason the same way". J. L. Mackie notes that "the church within which alone salvation is to be found is not necessarily the Church of Rome, but perhaps that of the Anabaptists or the Mormons or the Muslim Sunnis or the worshipers of Kali or of Odin."
2) Pascal's Wager suffers from the logical fallacy of the false dilemma, relying on the assumption that the only possibilities are:
1. a benevolent god exists and punishes or rewards according to one's belief, or
2. a benevolent god does not exist.
God could either be malevolent or not reward belief. In this view, a benevolent god, by definition, would give priority to the belief of the individual in determining rewards or punishments, rather than basing rewards on the basis of the individual's actions, such as rewarding kindness, generosity, humility or sincerity. Perhaps instead god rewards honest attempted reasoning and indeed might punish blind or feigned faith.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_wager#Criticisms
Fair enough, and thanks for the response, but I covered that. Did you read it or just blow by in order to copy in text?
I did read it. I replied because your version of Pascal’s Wager didn’t include the many ways that it has been refuted.
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