[lit-ideas] Re: Is The End For Theophobia Near?
- From: "Andy Amago" <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 27 Sep 2005 23:40:18 -0400
The U.S. was always religious, since its inception. Nothing has particularly
changed. So were Islamic countries. South America is as religious and leftist
as ever (Venezuela's president is threatening to unleash his leftists). So are
the Jews, still fighting to the death for their religion. The Europeans, I
think, aren't particularly religious, although certainly not atheist. Asia is
too busy conquering the world with commerce to worry about religion, and their
gods aren't god-like in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic sense anyway. The Dalai
Lama turned out to be head and shoulders above all the superstitious rest of
mankind. Here's an excerpt from his new book:
"My confidence in venturing into science lies in my basic belief that as in
science so in Buddhism, understanding the nature of reality is pursued by means
of critical investigation: if scientific analysis were conclusively to
demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the
findings of science and abandon those claims."
----- Original Message -----
From: M.A. Camp
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: 9/27/2005 11:38:38 AM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Is The End For Theophobia Near?
Faith No More
Against The Rising Tide of Rejuvenated Religion, A Number of Writers Make The
Case For Disbelief
Book Forum ^ | October/November 2005 | Ronald Aronson
Excerpt:
And so the stage was set for atheism's high tide in the twentieth century,
hailed by Nietzsche's declaration that God was dead. By the 1960s American
liberal Christianity seemed bent on committing suicide. "Ideas such as eternal
life, Resurrection, a 'God out there,' and any sense of the mysterious,"
McGrath writes, "were unceremoniously junked as decrepit embarrassments." The
combined surrender of sophisticated theologians like Harvey Cox or former
Episcopal bishop John Spong, the campaigns against religion by the Soviets and
Chinese, and the tendency to pit science against faith proved that "by 1970
many had come to the view that religion was on its way out."
But today it is atheism that seems in irreparable decline. What happened?
---------------------
The Twilight of Atheism
Why this once exciting and 'liberating' philosophy failed to capture the
world's imagination.
Christianity Today ^ | March 2005 | Alister McGrath
Excerpt:
Atheism was once new, exciting, and liberating, and for those reasons held to
be devoid of the vices of the faiths it displaced. With time, it turned out to
have just as many frauds, psychopaths, and careerists as religion does. Many
have now concluded that these personality types are endemic to all human
groups, rather than being the peculiar preserve of religious folks. With Stalin
and Madalyn Murray O'Hair, atheism seems to have ended up mimicking the vices
of the Spanish Inquisition and the worst televangelists, respectively.
--
Cheers,
M.A. Camp, Esq.
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