A quick post.
(I think next week I will be moving back into more regular blogging. I just finshed another stage of a large project which has occupied me mentally and spiritually for quite some time – as in over a year. So I’m ready for some shorter-term brain exercise.)
As you can tell from that last post, I attended a “debate” that was held here on Wednesday night between David Berlinski and Christopher Hitchens. I put the word in quotation marks because you know how these things are – they are hardly real debates, but rather occasions for the participants to present their set-pieces. So while the question was “Does Atheism Poison Everything?” (a play on the title of one of Hitchens’ books), the debate didn’t explore that question as much as it gave Berlinski and Hitchens a stage to make the points for which they are known.
I’m going to just put some impressions in bullet form.
- There were a lot of people there – a couple thousand, maybe? At least 1500. The crowd was very pro-Hitchens, very uninteretsed in Berlinski. During the booksigning afterwards, the line for Hitchens ran around the room, but Berlinski only had a few come to his table. Awkward.
- In Birmingham, Alabama!
- Berlinski had the opening statement. He – a professed agnostic secular Jew who has written books dismantling Darwin and critiquing contemporary atheism – made the case for the question that atheism does poison everything. He began with the French Revolution, ran through 20th century totalitarianism and then ended with his view that atheism is ruining science. I never really grasped his reasoning on the last one.
- Hitchens – whom I have never seen in debate and whose anti-religion books I have never read – was energetic. He had to pause at times, cough, and it seemed to me from a distance, sort of physically re-calibrate at times, but really, since I’ve never seen him in action before, I don’t have means of comparison. Perhaps he always coughs a bit. Who knows. He didn’t mention his illness. He had not flown down, but had been driven down by Larry Staunton, head of the Fixed Point Foundation, the (Christian) organization that sponsored the debate. You can see a brief video that Staunton made during a lunch break on their trip here. Hitchens alluded to him and Staunton reading the Gospel of John as they drove down.
- As I said, I’ve never read any of Hitchens anti-theist books – only a few articles - but judging from what he said in the debate, his argument is fairly inchoherent. It basically seems to be that Religion Is Bad because People Do Bad Things In the Name of Religion. He also makes the point, in many different ways, that theism is absurd – he doesn’t argue philosophically against theism or theistic claims, but just presents it all in a way that makes it seem absurd: Oh, your eternal salvation rests on the death of a fellow in 1st century Palestine and so on.
- Another important part of his argument is that the weight of the argument is not on atheism, but on theism, not only because theism is proposing the existence of something, but also because atheism, by its nature, doesn’t demand anything of adherents, doesn’t claim that anyone is obligated to accept its claims for the sake of future happiness.
- The most bizarre thing Hitchens said was related to a new extension of the Smithsonian in Washington – a new gallery or exhibit on human origins? He said that it was fantastic, he has visited several times, and he finds it very absorbing. Got it. But then he brings up pre-Homo Sapiens hominids and presents them to the audience as some sort of betrayed black sheep of theists. He even said, “They’re not mentioned in Genesis” – and then went on to say something to the effect that they are forgotten, no one includes them in their discussion of salvation, and let’s take a moment to remember our ancestors, neglected by the Christians. It was *very* strange.
- My basic impression of Hitchens in regard to religion is that for whatever reason, even though he debates and debates and scribbles, in the end, he refuses to seriously engage theism. He has his points, mostly historical and social, to which he returns again and again, but he doesn’t address the origins or persistence of the spiritual impulse in humanity, he doesn’t address the question of meaning or transcendence. From what I have read and now heard, what Hitchens has to say about religion is not that much different from one of my 16-year old smart aleck high school students, but with a lot more historical references thrown in.
- As you can see from what I quoted below from his remarks, he hates Christianity. I had read his slam of the notion of redemption through vicarious suffering before, but it still interested me to see Hitchens articulate it, for he did so with great passion, veering from what your average non-believer script would say, which would be to give Jesus his props while vilifying the purported subsequent institutional perversions of his nice ideas . It was actually rather refreshing in a let your yes be yes let your no be no kind of way.
- The most irritating element, though, also involves engagement with theists – he and so many other atheist evangelists stubbornly operate from the assumption that theists don’t think. That theists don’t explore other explanations for existence or what we attribute to God, don’t evaluate the sources of our beliefs critically, don’t sit around ourselves at night and say…what if? Why? So, yeah, is “blind,” and its opposite – HitchensReason – is ever open-minded and sees reality as it is.
- For someone as educated as Hitchens, this isn’t ignorance, it’s willful. All you have to do is read the first few pages of Augustine’s Confessions - which is largely a collection of searching, probing questions addressed to God about His existence and activity – and then seriously look at, you know, the whole history of Judeo Christian philosophy and theology to see the omission. What, the only answer Christians have ever had to doubt is to burn people up and ally themselves with fascist regims? Really? No discussion, no examination, just lock and load? So what are all those, you know..books about?
- But you know what? It sells. Hitchens was a hero to his audience in Birmingham, arming them in their battle against the enemy in this land of Many Very Large Churches.
- Small points: Berlinski was cultured and charming in his manner, but really made no points beyond those in his opening statement. He was asked (in the Q & A) whether he would prefer to live in a secular Europe or an Islamic Europe, and he wouldn’t answer saying it was not a question related to reality. Hitchens said in response to another question that had referenced a quote from Sam Harris (which said something like, yes, there are some ideas so bad that the people holding them could be killed, sure.) by speaking about the situation in Iran, and saying that yes, if these theocrats with their apocalpytic theology get nuclear weapons, yes, they should be stopped and if that means destroying them, sure.
- I watched Hitchens sign books for a while – until I spotted Noah Lett of EWTN in the crowd and went to talk to him. It was pretty entertaining, in an awkward way, to watch the Super Friendly Southern Atheists who were so happy to see Hitchens come around the table to have their pictures taken , fling their arms around him without asking him if it was okay, give him big old hugs, and put their faces right next to his. His expression was so pained – and I don’t think it was the cancer.
- With all due sympathy to Hitchens and his illness, I do think it is churlish and cynical of him to make these presentations excoriating religion and Christianity in particular as being irrational and closed-minded in the context of debates sponsored by a Christian organizations.With a agnostic secular Jewish guy.
- It wasn’t Ratzinger/Habermas, that’s for sure.
- Can I say something? This is an absolutely unformed thought, but it’s a nagging one. All of these atheist debates and arguments against Christian theism (I say that because I want to take Islam out of the picture) seem to me to have more to do with Protestantism than they do with Catholicism. That is, at their most basic level (pas the Crusades/Inquisition/Dreyfus Affair), they seem to be butting up against Protestant assumptions and paradigms (about theology, authority, justification, anthropology, worldview, epistomology) than Catholic ones. I have no idea what that means, but there it is.
So there you go. I will be out most of the rest of the day, so comments probably won’t be approved till later. And I posted this because I am really looking forward to fights you can easily find anywhere else on the Internet replayed in my comboxes. Preferably with as little punctuation as possible and either no caps or ALL CAPS.
Ahem.
(Above – members of the Auburn Atheists and Agnostics)
All of these atheist debates and arguments against Christian theism (I say that because I want to take Islam out of the picture) seem to me to have more to do with Protestantism than they do with Catholicism.
Absolutely correct. This whole nonsensical hype about Stephen Hawking and his new book is a perfect example. Well, duh, yeah, if you reduce God to nothing more than an entity whose sole purpose is to explain why the universe works the way it does, then gee, you’re right, I guess science doesn’t need God.
Thank you, William Paley.
Your contention that the “new atheism” is aimed more at Protestants than Catholics may have to do with their methods as well. Skye Jethani (Huffington Post) says: “It appears some New Atheists are incorporating the very traits they’ve often condemned about evangelicals — intolerance, dogmatism, and now even the church’s penchant for schism. It seems anything can be turned into a religion, even anti-religion.”
By the way, Jethani claims to be an evangelical.
The best news in here was that you’ll be back to more regular blogging. Just last night, I was thinking how much I missed your posts.
Glad that the other project is finished up. (Not just because you’ll blog, but because it is nice to get stuff done. Can you tell I’m a ‘J’?)
As for the whole theism/atheism bit, I agree that it is a lot of ‘for the market’ clap trap more than reasoned discussion. I sometimes keep abreast because others ask me about it. But, bottom line, the way I see atheism argued and bandied about, the more it seems to me that people need *something* to believe in and be passionate about. Which is either a quirk of evolution or Augustine was correct – “You have made us for yourself…..”
Regarding the disparity in the number of Hitchens fans vs. Berlinski:
The first thought that comes to my mind is that, next to Dawkins, Hitchens is probably the closest thing to a “celebrity” atheist. Your post is the first I’ve heard of Berlinski (poor guy probably doesn’t have much of a fan base.)
Hitchens is sort of a hero to those poor, tortured, “unrepresented” atheists who have to live with constant exposure to Glenn Beck, nativity scenes, Christmas carols, etc. And now he’s famously terminally ill also. Not surprised he drew a crowd.
With Hitchens, it always seems to me that he doth protest too much. So zealous is his belief in his unbelief! Interesting.
Glad you’ll be blogging more often Amy. I occasionally drop in here hoping that you’ll do just that.
Regarding your last “absolutely unformed thought” I think it just reflects the fact that protestantism in America is our shared spiritual history. Unless you grew up in a foreign country or a very closed ethnic/religious enclave, the ideas of the puritans, the tent revivalists, the fundamentalists, the evangelicals and so on are our common heritage. And that short circuits decent debate, because philosophically these movements don’t hold a candle to Catholic philosophy and theology. I notice this all the time in my Catholic parish. Folks have absorbed all kinds of protestant theology and mindsets without recognizing it at all. I’m a convert, so I am a little more aware of the differences, but I get caught by surprise sometimes by yet another assumption about xyz that requires some internal rewiring.
I’m with LeeAnn. These debates centre around the Protestantism inherent in American culture (from this Canadian’s perspective). I also think that the political games of defining “left” and “right” is largely carried out in Protestant rather than Catholic terms. Not that the Canadian system is much different, but our politics (and aspects of our common culture, until recent decades) have drawn from the Anglican and Catholic traditions, giving things up here a slightly different flavour. But I digress.
John, I just finished Etienne Gilson’s “God and Philosophy,” four lectures he gave on how philosophers from Plato through Spinoza. He blames Descarte for reducing God to the creator of the eternal laws of Cartisian physics, a line of thought later philosophers (Paley and the rest) brought to its logical conclusion and that Hitchens, et al, have carried to the bank. The whole book is a very lucid read and well worth the effort of reading carefully.
this fashionable militant atheism seems to me just the current cutting edge of Protestantism: iconoclasm taken to extreme
I’ve never heard anyone speak so clearly about the falsehoods and dangers of religion. It amazes me that what he says goes right over the heads of believers. It’s a testament to the claim that faith is the result of brainwashing.
Reading and listening to Christopher Hitchens has made me want to learn more about the world. He has helped me emancipate myself from a geographically inherited virus of the mind, known more widely as Christianity.
His stand for free expression is courageous and exemplary. He put his life at risk to shelter Sir Salman Rushdie against Islamist death threats. And his famously pugilistic debating style co-exists with a personal graciousness that his enemies rarely acknowledge and never reciprocate.
A celebrated advocate of atheism, Hitchens declares that he is touched by offers of prayers for his recovery. People of all faiths and none will join them to wish for him an extensive final lap of the race. By the warmth of his personality as well as the clarity of his thinking, he enriches public life.
Regards Graeme
I agree with those above: Your last point is spot-on, and something most people don’t factor in. The Catholic/Protestant divide is so frustrating in these kinds of debates. You simply can’t compare the philosophical legacy of the Baptist Church, for instance, with Catholicism, no matter how similar the actual knowledge of those legacies by their 21st century adherents might be. (With no offense meant to Baptists, which is another conundrum in these debates.)
And I’m really looking forward to your return to blogging! (And inspired to get back to posting on my own blog.)
I think your point about C. Hitchens arguing with protestantism should be considered in light of Anglicanism. If he’s really arguing with American protestantism as Christianity, I think it’s by happenstance. But his Britishness would be why there’s no real thought placed on Catholic thinkers.
His brother, Peter Hitchens, is a writer who is opposite of Christopher. A theist and a conservative, he is perhaps the only person who really demolishes Christopher. He’s written about the New Atheism in his book The Rage Against God.
This interview with Hugh Hewitt is interesting:
http://www.hughhewitt.com/transcripts.aspx?id=2d232d1e-81d1-4b16-b1b9-ccc4fd94265f
(there’s a podcast, too, but I can’t find it right now.)
This bit speaks about science, and maybe helps explain the viewpoint that atheism is destroying science:
“HH: All right, just something. Let me go back to science for a moment. The faith of a faithless age, you wrote, but what’s so funny about that, Peter Hitchens, is that Bill Bryson, an American who makes his home over there now, wrote in his book, The Brief History Of Nearly Everything, that almost everything in the science books that you grew up with, and me, too, I’m just a few years younger than you, was wrong. They were wrong about everything.
PH: Absolutely, yes. I know. And I mean, not just wrong, but incredibly rigid and dogmatic about its wrongness. If science had been taught to me the way I now understand it, as a search for truth in which everything was only probably five minutes way from disproof, then I would have been much more interested in it than I was. But I will say it was often taught as a series of things simply being assumed to be the case, without there being any necessitude to explain them. And I must say I think that we’re very weakened by this. It was largely, of course, a Victorian and Edwardian thing, the idea that science would one day explain everything. You go into the novels of C. P. Snow, in fact, that are quite interesting, the assumptions among the young scientists of the 1920s that you ran to the laboratory with their enthusiasm for science, because it was such a great thing. They thought that it was only a matter of time before they explained everything. And of course, it’s not clear, that they’re never going to explain everything, that it’s beyond them.
HH: Don’t you think that that certainty, the certainty of Dawkins and others, is about questions they cannot possibly ever answer, is going to…
PH: Oh, it’s very old-fashioned, isn’t it? It’s like somebody who thinks that a paddle steamer is modern.
HH: Yes.
PH: And they have an attitude towards science which is, and most of them don’t know that much about science, in my view, anyway. They have an attitude towards science which is tremendously Victorian, and contains almost no understanding of the revolutions that are taking place, most particularly in physics in recent years. They just don’t seem to have a clue about it. and I’m not a scientist, but I am aware, and I know people who are, and I’m aware of the fact that things are going on which would undermine, or certainly cast a lot of doubt, on a crude materialist explanation of the universe.”
Another bit that fits with your notion of his willful blindness:
“But I did want to, you also push the dagger in on the point that I think the Dawkinsists will hate the most, which is that you can’t have a moral code that works without God. It just doesn’t work.
PH: Well no, I thought I everybody knew this. It’s just astonishing. And my brother, Christopher, keeps asking this question, is there something you can say that a believer could do that an atheist couldn’t do, or is it the other way around, I don’t really care. The point is not whether such a thing could happen. I’m sure there are terrible Christian people who would do ghastly things, and I’m sure there are atheists who would do wonderful things. But who is actually going to decide what is good and what is bad? And what is the point of a compass if there’s no magnetic north? It’s just a piece of tin with a little wiggling needle on it which shows nothing. What is your conscience if it refers to nothing in the same way? You might as well take moral instruction from your bile duct. This is such a basic, simple point. And yet when you put it to atheists, they look at you with blank astonishment and say what do you mean? How could that be?
HH: Yeah.
PH: They just don’t get it. And it’s, in my experience in many years of arguing with people, is when people don’t get something, it’s not because they’re stupid. It’s because they don’t want to get it. Just as when people get angry with you in argument, if there’s a lot of anger among these atheists, when particularly, if you have a website argument, and the atheists comment on it, and the contempt and fury that’s expressed in the contributions they make towards anybody who defends God and Christianity is astonishing. People get angry. Again, I used to get angry, so I know this, but you get angry when people voice your own doubts. That’s what gets people enraged, is when they hear somebody voicing doubts that they themselves are trying to suppress. There’s nothing more certain to get somebody enraged.”
Thank you, Allison! It must have taken some time to type all that.
Hi Allison,
You wrote,
“His brother, Peter Hitchens, is a writer who is opposite of Christopher. A theist and a conservative, he is perhaps the only person who really demolishes Christopher.”
I would say you Allison are not being objective and the above link will prove it, if not to yourself, for anyone who else wishing to see the best debater on this planet.
I have never heard encapsulated so perfectly the tyranny of religion. It concisely sums up all of his points in a short ten minutes. Mr Christopher Hitchens—
Christianity may not be theologically true but Jesus was a wonderful, morally exemplary human being with extremely lovely preachments that deserve attention whether you believe in the Gospel or not. C. S. Lewis quite rightly says that’s absolutely ridiculous. That’s the one thing you cannot say, because if this man was not the son of God then the things that he was saying were absolutely immoral, some of them wicked or mad. They make no sense or they make sense only as injunctions to do evil. As for example: Take no thought for the morrow, care not to clothe or to eat, don’t worry about your family, leave your family, who cares about your children, don’t invest, don’t grow, don’t sew, there’s no point. It’s all coming to an end very soon. The kingdom of God is coming, Jesus stated this would happen in the lifetime of his disciples.Conclusion immoral, wicked and mad.
“With Hitchens, it always seems to me that he doth protest too much.”
Did he protest 3 and 7/31 % too much? Or is it for him to utter one word of protest is to protest too much?
Like Hitch, I am fighting cancer. And like Hitch, I am continuing to do what I want to do; not make money trying to refute the truth claims of Christianity in general and the Catholic Church in particular, but teach middle school students in a Catholic school.
Hitchens may get persons shorts in a bunch, but in the grand schema of history, he is blip, book sales and all. As others above observe, Hitchens isn’t even trying to put forth the elegance of the early 20th century atheists; mockery is cheap.
The best evidence we can give the world and the culture of death is practice of the theological virtues, faith, hope, and charity in action. Debate and even logic won’t save much of anyone.
I generally dislike over analyzing on the basis of biography, but that’s more on the fiction/lit side, I suppose. Anyhow:
It cannot be a trivial consideration that Hitchens has gone through a) his mother leaving his father and taking up with a renegade Anglican priest, and committed joint suicide with said priest in Athens, where Hitchens had to go and identify the body at the age of 24 — Add in that b) his maternal grandfather was Jewish, a fact hidden from him until later in life (and uncovered by his brother, as I recall) because of the anti-Semitism in early and mid-20th century England.
These facts, along with his Trotskyite indoctrination that he still refers to with little regret or retrenchment from, all add up to a pretty powerful set of reasons to recoil from religion for him, especially the state/nationalist forms of it. I agree that I don’t get the sense that he really ever deals with the truth claims of a faith perspective methodically, let alone Christianity in general or Catholic Christian assertions in particular.
Strange, Christopher says that atheism doesn’t expect anything from you and also says that the opposers never question outside of their set beliefs. Well….if they “convert” to his side then, he would have no criticism of them for not questioning because then they’re free not to do so!! It’s just that “freedom” to remain stupid that seems to delight him most!
Jeff Gill
The mother part that you noted explains an awful lot for this one reader. Lord have mercy!
“It cannot be a trivial consideration that Hitchens has gone through a) his mother leaving his father and taking up with a renegade Anglican priest, and committed joint suicide with said priest in Athens, where Hitchens had to go and identify the body at the age of 24 — Add in that b) his maternal grandfather was Jewish, a fact hidden from him until later in life (and uncovered by his brother, as I recall) because of the anti-Semitism in early and mid-20th century England.”
No, I don’t suppose they are trivial, but it happened to his brother, too, and his brother is still Anglican, and writing in defense of religion and God. Why Peter and not Christopher? It may be formative for C. Hitchens, but it isn’t really telling.
We never really know others’ sufferings, and we don’t really know what he is willing to confront, or what his brother confronts and vice versa.
I’d suggest the Pope grasps the best opportunity ever to demonstrate to the whole world the existence and power of god and his confidence int the efficacy of prayer. It’s fabulously simple. The Pope could:
1) Ask everyone currently supporting, feeding and attempting to rescue the trapped Chilean miners to stop what they are doing – completely.
2) Pray fervently to god for, say, 24 hours to bring the miners miraculously unharmend through the 700 metres of rock above them to the surface, and instruct all Catholics in the world (including the predominently Catholic miners themselves) to do likewise.
3) Invite the whole world to watch the miracle and be prepared to bow down and worship god when the miners materialise in full view of the assembled masses, media hacks and TV cameras.
After this happens – as it surely must if the beliefs and assurances of Catholics (and other religious people) are correct – how could anyone possibly ever again doubt the existence of god? It’s the perfect opportunity for god and his followers to silence us unbelievers once and for all.
My bet, though, is that they will pray to god and keep drilling the rescue shaft. Such is faith.
WHAT IF I SAY SOMETHING NICE IN ALL CAPS LIKE: YEAH THIS WAS A GREAT POST AND i AGREE (OOPS HIT SHIFT THERE…) AHEM, I AGREE VERY MUCH WITH YOUR “seem to me to have more to do with Protestantism than they do with Catholicism” POINT AND YOU PUT YOUR FINGER RIGHT ON THE SAME THING THAT HAS BEEN NAGGING ME AS WELL THANKS FOR FILLING IN THAT BLANK gOD BLESS… (ARRG!) GOD BLESS!
Every time the “Hitchens” have debated religion Christopher has made his brother look a fool and a twerp, that is what any realist would expect. The debates are all over youtube. Christopher is undefeated.
I’ve never heard anyone speak so clearly about the falsehoods and dangers of religion. It amazes me that what he says goes right over the heads of believers. It’s a testament to the claim that faith is the result of brainwashing.
Reading and listening to Christopher Hitchens has made me want to learn more about the world. He has helped me emancipate myself from a geographically inherited virus of the mind, known more widely as Christianity.
His stand for free expression is courageous and exemplary.His famously pugilistic debating style co-exists with a personal graciousness that his enemies rarely acknowledge and never reciprocate.
A celebrated advocate of atheism, Hitchens declares that he is touched by offers of prayers for his recovery. People of all faiths and none will join them to wish for him an extensive final lap of the race. By the warmth of his personality as well as the clarity of his thinking, he enriches public life.
Allison
“god is not Great”
How religion poinsons everything. by C Hitchens
He has a whole chapter on his mothers suicide, wonderfully written in his book which is available at fine book stores everywhere.
Also lots on Youtube, where you can listen to the writer reading the book chapter by chapter Free of charge!!!
Do not think you can get same from his brother?
Graeme,
I enjoy Christoper Hitchens. I think he was just about the only Leftist who stood up for the same principles on Yugoslavia and Iraq. He was one of the few who stood up against Clinton. I think he is a fine thinker and writer. I think Hitch-22 is a great read. I take every opportunity I can to read what he writes about politics, and to hear him on Hewitt’s show.
I think Peter is just as fascinating, and just as bright. His winning the Orwell prize suggests that his arguments aren’t quite as weak as you think. So perhaps you should invest in a library card and try his books as well.
But I don’t need to read C. Hitchens on religion. I was where he was. I was steeped in those arguments, because I made them all myself. And then I grew, and changed, in many ways. My transformation from atheist to practicing Catholic can’t be summed up in this blog post, but suffice to say, I am no longer swayed by the atheist I was, or anyone else is.
So, are you willing to see why I changed? Here are some things that swayed me: Wotyla’s books : Love and Responsibility and The Acting Person; Ratzinger’s Dialectics of Secularization, and In the Beginning; Weigel’s Faith, Reason and the War Against Jihadism and the Cube and the Cathedral; Sokoloski’s The God of Faith and Reason, and Frank Morrison’s Who Moved the Stone, and Whittaker Chambers’ Witness. But of course, those are just books. That isn’t practicing the faith.
Whatever tragedies Hitchens may have had in life, this is only a secundary cause of his (bar conversion or inscrutable Mercy) marching toward Hell at great speed and his contributing for countless others to do the same.
In the end, he is the only responsible for his behaviour and the circumstances of his life can never, ever be excuses for blasphemy.
One would think a chap in his situation would have some serious thinking to do rather than spend what could be his last months relentlessly stroking his obviously very inflated ego. One would also think that his illness is the last change a merciful (but just) God gives him to save his soul irrespective of all the evil he has spread. Still, we see Satan at work in him with undiminished force.
May God have mercy on him, if He wants. But let us not forget that God has given us rules, and according to this rules the man is a prime candidate for Hell.
We must say this loud and clear. It may save some souls.
Mundabor
“A celebrated advocate of atheism, Hitchens declares that he is touched by offers of prayers for his recovery.”
1) Niceness is not holiness. Nice people can go to Hell as easily as grumpy ones. Being the most gracious person on the planet will do nothing to save a blasphemer.
2) Actually the man thanked only those who pray for his recovery from his illness. His graciousness did not extend to thanking those who (as I do) pray for the salvation of his soul (which means, so we are on the same page: conversion). This is not particularly touching by any standard, as few people insult those who wish them good health.
3) This graciousness is therefore not a reaching out in moved respect to those with different opinion from his, but self-serving desire to be healthy again.
It is, though, one thousand times better for him to die of cancer after repentance than to heal and go to Hell some time later. The man just does not get (up to now) what a **huge** grace he has received. The Lord could have let him die suddenly, but in His mercy he is making a last, prolongued, continuous effort.
What a blessing he has received, and how blinded he is not to see it!
M
Joshua,
by erecting a small shrine, the trapped Chilean miners showed that they have a much better grasp of Catholicism than you.
And to think that they are the one trapped, and you are the one free.
You should follow their example rather than thinking that Catholicism is a course in miracle working.
M
All of the falsification of the old testament has in fact been at the hands of Israeli archaeologists, who, one needn’t really point out, had every reason in this world (and the next, presumably), to find otherwise.They tried their best but now, to their credit, admit Moses never even existed. Israeli archaeology has conclusively shown that the books of Moses are false propaganda. No Moses= no god.
In terms of Creationism vs Darwinism, I don’t see that there is a great deal to debate. The former would go to this ‘debate’ with no evidence, facile arguments and an unwillingness to concede to superior reasoning. In fact, the most remarkable aspect of all this is that there is a perceived need for debate in 2010. Evolution explains our universe and religion does not.
Yes it is a sick death cult, not just Christianity almost every other religion is obsessed with the death of some sick or fictional character.
Newsflash people — there is no god and prayer doesn’t do anything except make the person praying feel good about themselves. It’s mental masturbation.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xbk46d_shortfilms
“But of course, those are just books. That isn’t practicing the faith.”
Is the Catholic church a force for good or evil.?
Hear the evidence [above link] then tell me that you still believe the former.
Josh
Moses never existed. I’ll go you one better. Let’s say that no one in the Old Testament really existed and that the entire thing is fiction as genre. It is still miraculous after one declaresnit fiction …because it revealed the Trinity through a people, the Jews, who have never affirmed the Trinity.
Case in point, in 2 Kings4 written by Jews, Eliseus is approached by a woman whose only boy has died and Eliseus sends his staff by his servant Gehazi to be laid on the boy and the boy remains dead. So Eliseus comes himself to their house and descends on the boy matching his hands, mouth and eyes to that of the boy. The boy grows warm. Eliseus walks about the house and descends on the boy again but now he does so with no mention of hands,eyes, mouth…..and the boy sits up and coughs 7 times…the number of gifts of the Holy Spirit.
There is the Trinity unveiled by a writer who did not know what he was writing at the deeper level and who was a writer who did not believe in the Trinity. Eliseus stands for God who first sends the law/staff to be laid on dead mankind who remains dead thereby ( the NEw Testament says: ” the law brought nothing to perfection”….and it says ” had there been a law that gives life, salvation would be by the law”).
So the law being non life giving, Eliseus/God comes Himself to the house and descends on mankind dead in sin… first conforming His bodily members to us in His humanity as Christ (eyes,mouth,hands)….and then a second time with no mention of those members …meaning as the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost well after Christ rose.
So….even if the entire OT were fiction, it is nevertheless a miracle like no other book on earth since it has a people who objected to the new testament predicting Christ despite themselves…even if you think they were writing about fictional people. Fiction which predicts a history that is rejected by the predictors is mighty miraculous.
Graeme
Actually a lot of what Hitchens says is true (but true also of his mother England and her imperialism and her forcing opium on the Chinese in several wars) but by preferring oral debates Hitchens never has to document in actual quantity (watch him breeze over that as occasional Catholic charity)…he doesn’t have to quantify the good side of the Church….like many thousands of nuns throughout history working as nurses not for $95 an hour but for a small room with a bed and food as their top salary….no kitchen with granite counter tops and an SUV for spontaneous trips to the mall. Oral debates therefore while sounding complete can be smoke and mirrors. Press conferences with hardball questioners would be far more draining on people like Hitchens if real history majors from the best schools quizzed him. Yale’s Sterling Professor Kenneth Scott Latourette…Protestant…fully knows Catholic institutional sins and yet often better than Catholic writers…he also lists century by century the working of God through great Catholics. Because therefore he is non ad hominem but far more knowledgeable than Hitchens, henwill never be on tv.
I’d like to ask the Pope which Pope from history you most aspire to emulate. Pope Benedict IX, who sold the papacy twice; Pope Urban VI, who complained if he didn’t hear enough screaming when his cardinals were tortured; Pope John XV, who split the Church’s finances amongst his relatives; or Pope Stephen VI, who dug up his predecessor, tried him and then threw him in a river.
The smallest privilege of faith over reason is a betrayal.
And now its Belgium’s children [as young as 2 years old] turn to feel the Love of the catholic priests. Every dieses, the whole dam country
This is a wicked organisation with a leader that is infallible, who can not err.
Have to go, I feel sick.
Its OK. I have been sick.
The question of the Catholic catechism, taught at canepoint to Catholics of my generation, said: “God made me to know him, to love him and to serve him in this world, and to be happy with him for ever in the next.” Is that it? Were we put here just to feed God’s massive ego? Do we pray to Him because he’s all-powerful and unpredictable, like Stalin, and God knows what He might do to us if we don’t?”
I’d suggest the Pope grasps the best opportunity ever to demonstrate to the whole world the existence and power of god and his confidence int the efficacy of prayer. It’s fabulously simple. The Pope could:
1) Ask everyone currently supporting, feeding and attempting to rescue the trapped Chilean miners to stop what they are doing – completely.
2) Pray fervently to god for, say, 24 hours to bring the miners miraculously unharmend through the 700 metres of rock above them to the surface, and instruct all Catholics in the world (including the predominently Catholic miners themselves) to do likewise.
3) Invite the whole world to watch the miracle and be prepared to bow down and worship god when the miners materialise in full view of the assembled masses, media hacks and TV cameras.
After this happens – as it surely must if the beliefs and assurances of Catholics (and other religious people) are correct – how could anyone possibly ever again doubt the existence of god? It’s the perfect opportunity for god and his followers to silence us unbelievers once and for all.
My bet, though, is that they will pray to god and keep drilling the rescue shaft. Such is faith.
Graeme,
Perhaps you’d like to watch the Hitchens/William Lane Craig debate. Your boy Hitch certainly didn’t win that debate, to say the least.
Graeme
Why not follow a non hominem form of disbelief in which you would not need to notice other religions at all….the Asians do it all the time. I dined at Mignon last night with 4 Asian unbelievers and they did not have a bad word for anyone. You are filled with interpersonal drama and virtually no one on earth really has an obligation to humor you…even other atheists. You should be conquering sourness without God….if you can’t, just ask Him and he’ll help you.
Bob,
Hitchens won that debate with logic and reason, as he has with every theist he ever debated.
He is undefeated, as any resonable adult can witness.
Meet the Champ.
. “Religion itself begins in our infancy the fearful cringing excremental infancy, infancy is charming in infants, not very charming in grown ups of our species .
Religion begins at a time when people don’t know there is a germ theory of disease. They don’t know that the earth revolves around the sun, they believe the contrary, they don’t know whether the earth is round or flat. They don’t know when they are told they are given dominion overall species, in genesis. In just not the passage doesn’t mention any marsupials because the rightists don’t know the existence of Australia, doesn’t mention any micro-organisms over which we still don’t have – Dominion.
It comes from this primitive base cringing, fearful period but our minds fortunately are still patterned to look for argument and for explanation and even a conspiracy theory is better than no theory at all and religion is essentially the conspiracy theory of the origin of the cosmos and the species So that the religious have every thing still ahead of them, they have never been able to prove the existence of God. The cleverest theologians have broken their chops on the question. And that’s fine we wouldn’t expect them to. But they want to go a step further, they know his mind!!!.
They are able to interpret for you and tell you what to do on this basis. He knows and they can tell you, what he made? With whom he may have “Congress” What books it might be advisable to read. What other practices might be avoided. This is an impossible solipsism, an impossible arrogance and self centeredness and it comes, this authoritarianism, in an awfully masochistic guise which should put you off it to begin with.
It says bare in mind that you are already just dirt, as the Christian book says, or you are only fashioned from a clot of blood as the Koran states. Bear in mind that you were convicted and found guilty before you were conceived of crimes in which you couldn’t have possibly been involved and you have all the burden of proof at your own defense and you have been found guilty. But to make up for that role of horrible indictment you can be reassured that the entire cosmos is designed with you in mind. False translation, and that he has a plan for you, on condition that you agree to be a serf forever”. Quote.Christopher Hitchens.
Perfect logic.
Bill Bannon: I believe in the typological interpretation of the Old Testament as much as anyone, but it’s hardly the first thing to bring up in a debate with an atheist, who would probably laugh at your examle.
LeeAnn Balbirona: I think it is best to avoid Catholic triumphalism here. There certainly have been great Protestant theologians.
James Kabala wrote: “LeeAnn Balbirona: I think it is best to avoid Catholic triumphalism here. There certainly have been great Protestant theologians.”
Yes, certainly, but those are not the kind of folks you see Hitchens debating and generally those are not the kinds of folks who are in these much publicized atheist vs. Christian debates. Kirk Cameron is not John Calvin. And the major figures of American protestant religious history are not the intellectual equals (generally) of the founders of the Reformation. And further, I would argue, historical protestant greats with roots in Europe are very much not on the radar of the current popular evangelical Christian. I grew up Presbyterian and at no point did we study Westminster Confessions or the lives of Calvin, Knox, etc. The most influential people in Christian America today are megachurch pastors and parachurch evangelists…and this is the philosophy that Hitchens etc is debating, not Knox, Calvin and Luther, let alone Neumann, von Hildebrandt and Aquinas.
James
Thanks for instructing us but read first next time …before instructing me, as to what it was in the poster’s comment that called forth my answer. The poster claimed that Moses did not exist and was thus fictional. My answer showed that, taken to it’s worst,
the claim of fiction in the OT continues to allow the miraculous nature of veiled prophecies. And only God knows whether an atheist will or will not be struck that moment by a veiled prophecy….since the OT says in Sirach…”it is easy for the Lord in an instant to make a poor man rich.”
So I think your correction was not correct on several levels.
bill bannon
“The poster claimed that Moses did not exist and was thus fictional.”
NO NOT I, but my Archaeologist University educated brothers and sisters have Proved it, to their credit, don’t you think.
Are you going to keep on quoting from scripts that have been proven to be false and rather childish, putting nonsense in front science.
“All of the falsification of the old testament has in fact been at the hands of Israeli archaeologists, who, one needn’t really point out, had every reason in this world (and the next, presumably), to find otherwise.They tried their best but now, to their credit, admit Moses never even existed. Israeli archaeology has conclusively shown that the books of Moses are false propaganda. No Moses= no god.”
See molestedcatholics.com
1,014 instances of sexual abuse per day by Catholic priests globally.
42 instances of sexual abuse per hour by Catholic priests globally.
Current estimates indicate that the highest proportions of sexual abuses today are to be found in Asia and Africa.
The Belgian police seized documents relating to child abuse from a Church office. A Daily Mail columnist says, “If Ratzinger was repentant, he would surely have congratulated them. He did the opposite. He called them ‘deplorable’ and his spokesman said: ‘There is no precedent for this, not even under communist regimes.’”
Then the Church released a set of guidelines for dealing with pedophiles that made sure to mention that ordaining women priests was a sin on a par with the child-rape crimes. When you apply this to the family analogy it starts to look even more deeply sick.
I would like to see someone explain what exactly is moral about sending people to hell for eternity simply for not believing. That seems like the most immoral act imaginable.
Opps sorry I have just answered my own question.
“Were we put here just to feed God’s massive ego?”
1) You seem to have forgotten the “be happy for him forever” part, which you yourself mention. “Happy”, and “Forever”. Seems like a very good deal to me.
2) I wonder if you have ever reflected about the nature of love. Or do you think that, say, you were put on Earth just to satisfy the massive ego of your parents?
M
Apologies, “happy with him forever” part.
I would just like to add in deference to the separated brethren that Kierkegaard has a fascinating view that if one lives out real Love to the end rather than temporary love and lives it out forgivingly to the end and even if he or she is deceived by all those he loves to the very end….” what has he really lost” asks Kierkegaard because he has achieved eternity by living out eternal love (which by the way one can live out even if one has to flee the abusive partner as Catholic law allows in varying ways). Kierkegaard further says that he is damned eternally who avoids such love in fear of being deceived and thus lives out temporary love which is not eternal instead. Kierkegaard says that such a person in fleeing eternal love and deception and it’s wound on the eternal lover…the fleeing person has been deceived already….book: ” Works of Love”.
Joshua,
In all that, you did not respond to the veiled prophecy phenomenon. And they are many. Samson pushes the columns to the right and left of him and the many Philistines above him tumble into death. As Samson so pushes, he is in the shape of a cross by the nature of what he is doing….thus predicting Christ on the cross of whom Simeon told Mary…”this child is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel.” Simeon uses “fall” prior to “rise”….so that we ourselves may well be in a sense the Philistines who fall into death with Christ and rise in baptism. Simeon may not have been talking about the permanently Philistine at all….the damned…but about the deep nature of baptism. Remember Christ said…” forgive the Father, they know not what they do.”…of those who killed Him in Israel.
God will understand the unbelief that is caused by the sins of “religious” but He knows too which human beings are using that overlong and as cover for choosing themselves in a non fertile freedom.
The eternity of hell is not due to what one turns toward but it…the eternity… is due to turning away from Him who is Eternal. The secondary punishments or degree are about what one turned toward….per Aquinas.
“forgive them Father, they know not what they do”…correction of above.