[lit-ideas] Re: Aren't you glad you no longer have a Hitler problem?
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2006 10:27:05 -0700
"Arrant nonsense and you know it"????? Hast though given up on Taylor?
Taylor makes this arrant-nonsense-point. I'm using Taylor's argument,
conducted over several of the chapters you apparently haven't gotten to yet
to illustrate the ponderous movement of general opinion. No Wikipedia
Taylor, to be sure, but he makes some nice points.
Lawrence
-----Original Message-----
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Mike Geary
Sent: Saturday, June 24, 2006 10:15 AM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Aren't you glad you no longer have a Hitler
problem?
LH:
>>So today it is easier to be an atheist than a Christian in Europe, and it
>>is getting that way in the U.S. as well.<<
A picayunish point, but that's arrant nonsense and you know it. According
to an article in Wikipedia:
" A 2004 survey by the BBC in 10 countries showed the proportion of the
population "who don't believe in God" varying between 0% and 44%, with an
average close to 17% in the countries surveyed. About 8% of the respondents
stated specifically that they consider themselves to be atheists.[18] A 2004
survey by the CIA in the World Factbook estimates about 12.5% of the world's
population are non-religious, and about 2.4% are atheists.[19] A 2004 survey
by the Pew Research Center showed that in the United States, 12% of people
under 30 and 6% of people over 30 could be characterized as
non-religious.[20] A 2005 poll by AP/Ipsos surveyed ten countries. Of the
developed nations, people in the United States had most certainty about the
existence of god or a higher power (2% atheist, 4% agnostic), while France
had the most skeptics (19% atheist, 16% agnostic). On the religion question,
South Korea had the greatest percentage without a religion (41%) while Italy
had the smallest (5%).[21]
"Some studies have suggested that atheism is particularly prevalent among
scientists, a tendency already quite marked at the beginning of the 20th
century, developing into a dominant one during the course of the century. In
1914, James H. Leuba found that 58% of 1,000 randomly selected U.S. natural
scientists expressed "disbelief or doubt in the existence of God". The same
study, repeated in 1996, gave a similar percentage of 60.7%; this number is
93% among the members of the National Academy of Sciences. Expressions of
positive disbelief rose from 52% to 72%.[22] However, studies following
Leuba's methods and questions only demonstrate disbelief in a specific type
of God - a personal God which interacts directly with human beings.
Restriction to this version of "God" makes the study unlikely to give a true
sense of the percentage of atheists, and instead gives only a percentage of
those rejecting this particular type of deity. Based on the questions in the
study, many deists would have been classified as atheists."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism
Apparently Christianity isn't under attack except perhaps by intelligence.
It is getting a little bit easier to own up to being a non-believer, I'll
grant you -- in certain areas at least.
LH:
>>Bush's numbers are down, but what will the Democrats have to offer as an
>>alternative.<<
Nothing. Except for a very precious few they're all empty suits.
LH:
>>Insofar as the War Against Terror is concerned, can any Democrat say
>>anything else and expect to be elected? And if he says nothing else, why
>>should the American voters think a Democrat would be a better warrior
>>against Terror than a Republican?<<
Yes, the Democrats can tell the American people that the "War of Terrorism"
is an necessary police action against Al Qaeda, an organization that brought
death and injure upon us and from all apparent evidence intends to visit
more of the same. They can tell the American people how the Republicans, in
their ideological zeal to establish hegemonic colonies in the Middle East,
fucked up the "war" against Al Qaeda so royally that they have in fact
vastly increased their number and support for their goals, that the
Republicans have turned America into a reviled country across the world by
our Guantanamo gulag, by our embracing of torture and the disappearing of
people into secret prisons around the world. They can tell the American
voters how many tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis have been killed in our
attempt to establish Iraq as our home base in the Middle East. They can
tell them about the crime this country has committed by destroying that
society, that culture, that country all in name of cheap oil. They can tell
the American voters that the Bush Administration abandoned the war on terror
in March 2003 when it invaded Iraq to establish it as our colony only to
spur North Korea and Iran into nuclear ambitions. They can remind the
American voters that all this was done through lies, lies, lies told to them
by the top leadership of the Bush Administration. They can tell the
American people that they (the Democrats) who voted to authorize Bush to use
military force deserve one last chance to make right their terrible wrong.
They can beg forgiveness of the voters for their political and moral
cowardice and plead for this one last chance to make it right, agreeing that
if they don't make it right, they should all be shipped to the Hague and
hung for crimes against humanity. They can tell the American voter that
this is not a war against Islamism. It's a police action against terrorist
gangs. They can tell the American voters that this country's ever
increasing descent into theocratic fascism and totalitarianism and secret
police statism will be stopped dead in its tracks. They can tell the
American voters that if they want to be safe, they'll have to pay the
cost -- not of war, but of justice. We must begin withdrawing our troops
and set in place a Marshall Plan to rebuild that country -- the cradle of
civilization, the HOME of us all, the home we destroyed in the name of
cheap oil. Globalism must cut both ways, it must make everyone's life
richer, not just ours. The Democrats must tell the American voters that we
have no lock on the truth, that in fact we're a spiritually deprived
culture, that we have as much to learn spiritually from Islam as they have
materially from us. Honesty -- wow! Wouldn't that be a novel approach to
politics.
Mike Geary
Pastor
Church of the Damned
Memphis, Tennessee
Just another hole in the Bible Belt.
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