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.
HMmmm... so familiar...
NIV Mark 10:17-21
17. As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. "Good teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?"
18. "Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered. "No one is good--except God alone.
19. You know the commandments: `Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, do not defraud, honor your father and mother.' "
20. "Teacher," he declared, "all these I have kept since I was a boy."
21. Jesus looked at him and loved him. "One thing you lack," he said.
lol
But WHY follow a 'golden rule'?
Read Genesis 15:16...food for thought.
BTW, as I mentioned elsewhere, this line of thought can be condensed to two questions.
1. Does God have the intrinsic right to kill humans?
2. Was it *really* God who gave orders to kill that person or sack that town?
Please note, warfare has involved rape, torture, and wholesale slaughter of the vanquished--all kinds of times, all kinds of places: from Carthago delinda est to Sherman's "I can make...Georgia Howl" to the rape of Nanking to the atrocities on the Eastern Front in World War II to the Killing Fields in SE Asia following the Dems cut-and-run.
For some reason, people are not always so quick to question total war (e.g. wiping out Nazis) when merely "human" impetus and authority is behind it--!
Cheers!
(As a subset of EVERYONE who does NOT rely on the sacrifice of Christ. [HIS words; not mine!])
NIV Mark 16:14-16
14. Later Jesus appeared to the Eleven as they were eating; he rebuked them for their lack of faith and their stubborn refusal to believe those who had seen him after he had risen.
15. He said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation.
16. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.
NIV John 3:16-18
16. "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
17. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
18. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son.
NIV John 5:24
"I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life.
One more time:
WHO says that it's RIGHT?
Try reading Luke 3:14 -- why did Jesus not tell the soldiers to desert?
...and as they used to say on the Bartles & James commercials, "...and we thank you for your support!"
Cheers!
Next homework assignment, Matthew 5: 38-48.
In this context, recall what He was busy saying on the cross...
Or for that matter, rent a copy of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ.
Cheers!
You are a sick, sick man.
"Actually two are, your secular atheism is one and Muhammad's death cult is the other, and you seem to be allied with one another against our Judeo-Christian culture."
I believe you're mistaken. Too many Christians today emphasize the Judeo-Christian component of our culture at the expense of the Greco-Roman tradition. Read the Federalist Papers. You will find a lot of examples dating back to the Roman Republic, the Achaean League, the Venetian Republic, classical Athens and so forth and very few references too Jesus. There is a reason why most of our government buildings are constructed in a neo-classical style.
I'm not arguing that the founders were howling atheists like the leftist fringe does. I am arguing that the religious right has too narrow of a conception of what constitutes Western Civilization, taking it to the point of demonizing atheists like me dedicated to ensuring its survival.
Have you ever tried to *Forgive* your enemies? Not brushing off a minor offense with a platitude. Someone who seriously hurt you and wrecked your life?
That's not as easy as "being nice so other people are nice back."
And he did it while being tortured to death, at the behest of his political enemies, after being betrayed by a hand picked friend.
And while those same political enemies (class act) publically mocked him as he was being hung on a gibbet.
Not an easy example to follow. But He lived up to what He enjoined upon us.
Cheers!
"Have you ever tried to *Forgive* your enemies?"
Enemies?
I don't think so. People like Osama bin Laden require death, not compassion. Someone who loses their cool in a heated argument and says something they regret can be forgiven; someone who kills 3,000 of your countrymen cannot. Morality isn't as simple as Jesus at his more hippie moments thought things to be.
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