God's little gotcha...

"Doesn't [the Bible]... imply that 'The Fall' was planned from the beginning? That means that god WANTED adam and eve to eat the apple. Actually, that's pretty [easy]... to guess anyway. Put the tree in the middle of the garden and tell two people who don't know right from wrong not to eat from it. Either god is a complete moron, or he actually wanted them to eat it." - Conspiracy of Doves, Talk.Origins, 24 Jan 2006

Judeao-Christianity certainly has some weird ideas about God... The idea of the Lord getting angry at Adam & Eve for disobediance makes Him out to be a psychopathic bully. Truly He is the God Of Love... Not! ;>

Thoughts on "The Twilight of Atheism"

On my recent travels I came across a book called The Twilight of Atheism: The Rise and Fall of Disbelief in the Modern World by Alister McGrath, professor of historical theology at Oxford University. I should really pick up a copy. Christianity Today has an excerpted and condensed summary. He argues that atheism has "failed", and posits:

Far from being secularized, the West is experiencing a new interest in religion. Patterns of immigration mean that Islam and Hinduism are now major living presences in the cities of Western Europe and North America. Pentecostalism is a rapidly growing force, strengthened by the arrival of many Asian and African Christians in the West. The future looks nothing like the godless and religionless world so confidently predicted 40 years ago. The atheist agenda, once seen as a positive force for progress, is now seen as disrespectful toward cultural diversity.

What's interesting to me is that this argument depends on the failures of very deterministic and "modernist" offshoots of "atheistic" thought, such as Freudian thought Communism... But of course the beliefs of those who do not believe in God as in reality every bit as diverse as the beliefs of those who do believe in Gods. Even amongst Christianity, we find that most Christians subscribe to non-Christian beliefs - for example that salvation is open to non-Christians, and an acceptance of such things as astrology, etc. I'll come back to this issue of divergent beliefs in more detail in later posts...

For now, I'm most interested in this part of McGrath's conclusion:

Paradoxically, the future of atheism will be determined by its religious rivals. Those atheists looking for a surefire way to increase their appeal need only to hope for harsh, vindictive, and unthinking forms of religion to arise in the West.

Here, the rise of the religious right, particularly in the USA, seems like an ominous contradiction of McGrath's optimism. Andrew Sullivan quotes a recent study which reported that:

Fully 44% of Americans believe that God gave the land that is now Israel to the Jewish people while a substantial minority (36%) thinks that "the state of Israel is a fulfillment of the biblical prophecy about the second coming of Jesus"

As you may have read, the leading Evangelist Pat Robertson recently embarrassed the hell out of himself by implying that Ariel Sharon's stroke was divine retribution for his withdrawal from Gaza. Sullivan notes:

When a poll of all adults finds over a third holding the view that the state of Israel is fulfilling the prophecy of the imminent Second Coming, you can see that pre-millenarianism is not some fringe idea, touted by Robertson. It's fundamentalist orthodoxy. Robertson is cruel and tactless, and many evangelicals would agree. Their compassion forbids them from making personal attacks as Robertson does. But he didn't make up his theology. And it's mainstream.

Many on the web are arguing that Pat Robertson is not representative of mainstream evangelical thought. While the poll figures seem to suggest otherwise, I think this is the case. Most evangelical Christians, even in the US, aren't as cold and heartless (or as stupid) as Robertson.

So what does that mean for religion & spirituality in the 21st century? is McGrath right? Is atheism dying? More on this to come ;>

Happy 2006

A couple of quickies...

Rolf gives a Happy New Year to all fundies where he discusses the writings of early fathers of the Christian church, and in particular Origen:

Origen explains that to those "not altogether blind the gospels are full of passages of this kind," which are "recorded as actual events, but which did no happen literally." He quotes as an example the story of Jesus being tempted by the evil. Jesus is taken up a high mountain where he is shown all the kingdoms of the world, which the Devil offers him if he will only fall down and worship him. Origen pours scorn on the idea that anyone could actually see all the kingdoms of the world from the top of a mountain and affirms that this is meant to be understood allegorically. He tells us:

"The careful reader will detect thousands of other passages like this in the gospels."

Also check out Andrew's excellent Handling Challenges to Evolution, the TalkOrigins post of the month for November 2005, where he discusses a superb talk on evolution by a high school biology teacher:

"What a scientific theory is is the explanation which fits all observable facts. If you perform an experiment which contradicts your theory, the theory is changed to explain this new data. The theory of evolution has been changed and added to countless times since Darwin first proposed it; it will be changed and added to countless times in the future, the day may come when many of Darwin's ideas will be seen as absurd by the scientific community; but at this moment, the theory of evolution is the only scientific theory that explains all the observable data we have in our hands right now."

"Is evolution a theory? Absolutely. Does this mean that we're not sure that it's true? Absolutely not."

On a side note, it appears that Darrick Dean's woeful IDiotic blog ScienceWatch seems to have vanished. Maybe he's seen the light? ;>