TruthBook Religious News Blog

May 04, 2009 04:32 PM ET |
Dan Gilgoff | Permanent Link | Print

By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country

Is there a scientific basis for the existence of God? Many believers think so, even as they often dismiss science because they think it's incompatible with their religious beliefs. A recent Gallup Poll, for instance, found that 45 percent of Americans reject evolution, believing that human beings were created more or less in our present form within the past 10,000 years. Despite objections from scientists, many believers argue that there's scientific evidence
for such "Young Earth" creationism.

Francis Collins, director of the human genome project, is an atheist turned Christian who sees a scientific basis for God that not only embraces modern science
but actually relies on it. Collins has just launched a new website and a foundation called biologos, which "emphasizes the compatibility of Christian faith with what science has discovered about the origins of the universe and life."

Unless Christians—evangelicals, in particular—learn to integrate modern science with their religious faith, Collins believes, they are either stuck clinging to untruths about scientific ideas like evolution or, once they do accept evolution, are in danger of having to abandon their faith out of the mistaken belief that evolution and Christianity are incompatible.

Collins was raised without religion. He began questioning his atheism during medical school, when he witnessed patients who were near death but who were deeply comforted by their religious faith. Collins became a Christian in his 20s. "I believe in the literal rising of the body of Christ," he says today. "It's the cornerstone of my Christian faith."

In this very interesting article, Francis Collins' talking points for God's existence are enumerated...please click on "external link" for the complete article.

Labels: atheism, Dan Gilgoff, Francis Collins, God, human genome project, science

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

The Cost of Unbelief

By: Simon Smart
Posted: Tuesday, 10 February 2009, 9:43 (EST)

This is the first of a three-page article - well worth reading. Just click on "external source" to access the entire article.

Australian atheists were recently prevented from running a series of ads on buses with the message, “There’s probably no God, so sleep in on Sundays.” It was a funny ad and should have been permitted, and if the Bureau of Statistics A Picture of a Nation report is anything to go by, there’s a generation of young people who don’t need convincing. According to the latest figures young Australians are increasingly secular with the proportion of people stating ‘no religion’ on their census form up from 6.7% in 1971 to 19% in 2006; the younger generation leading the charge to the beach on Sunday mornings (or perhaps staying under the doona). 23.5% of 15 – 34 year-olds did not specify a religion compared with 7.9% of Australians 65 and older.

No doubt this finding will be good news to those who believe religion has only paranoia, superstition, violence and hypocrisy to contribute to society, and there are plenty of them. Freud famously articulated the notion that religion is a neurosis. Likewise, Psychologist Albert Ellis saw only the pernicious effects of religion on individuals, claiming that ‘Religiosity … is in many respects equivalent to irrational thinking and emotional disturbance.’ (Ellis, 1980, 67)

But the latest scientific data on the effects of religiosity on health, might give us reason to pause. In 2001 Duke University researchers conducted a large survey of 100 evidence-based studies of the correlation between religion and well-being and found that 79 reported a positive correlation, 13 no correlation, 7 mixed correlation and 1 a negative correlation.1 The masses of research completed since then has largely pointed in the same direction.

This is a growing field. It reflects a more serious attempt to integrate ‘whole-person care’ in medical areas that previously gave little importance to the spiritual side of patient management. Of the 141 medical schools in the U.S. and Canada 70% now offer courses on religion, spirituality and medicine.

This is largely a response to the vast amount of data emerging over the last eight years that reveals positive correlations between commitment to religion and better outcomes for dealing with depression and anxiety, strength of immune systems, cardiovascular health and even longevity.

It is well accepted that stress and depression have serious adverse health impacts and studies that show religious coping improves outcomes in this area need to be taken seriously. It is the scientists who are telling us that religious involvement is associated with lower rates of a host of stress-related medical conditions including cardiovascular disease, stroke, immune and endocrine functioning, cancer—especially gastrointestinal, breast and oral—and better outcomes for cancer in general.

It is worth quoting some research to give a small taste of the sort of data being reported:

Labels: atheism, depression, mental health, religion, science, Simon Smart, spirituality

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Symposium: A Discussion on Faith

By Jamie Glazov
FrontPageMagazine.com | Friday, January 09, 2009

Please click on "external Link" to access this very interesting and illuminating discussion on atheism.

In this special edition of Frontpage Symposium, we have assembled a distinguished panel to discuss the “new atheism” and the role of religion in political life. Our guests are:

Rabbi David J. Wolpe, the rabbi of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles and a teacher of modern Jewish religious thought at UCLA. He has been named the #1 Pulpit Rabbi in America (as reported in Newsweek). Rabbi Wolpe writes for many publications, including The Jewish Week, Jerusalem Post, and Beliefnet.com. He has appeared as a commentator on CNN and CBS This Morning and has been featured on the History Channel's Mysteries of the Bible. He is the author of the national bestseller Making Loss Matter: Creating Meaning in Difficult Times. His new book is Why Faith Matters.

Bruce Chilton, the Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Religion at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson and Rector at the Church of St. John in Barrytown, New York. He is the author of many scholarly articles and books, including the acclaimed Rabbi Jesus and Mary Magdalene. He is the author of the new book, Abraham's Curse: The Roots of Violence in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Raheel Raza, a leading Muslim reformer, award winning writer, professional speaker, diversity consultant, documentary film maker and interfaith advocate. She is the author of Their Jihad . . . Not My Jihad. Visit her site at RaheelRaza.com.

Fr. Maurice Guimond, a Trappist monk at Our Lady of Calvary Abbey, in Rogersville, New Brunswick, Canada. He was superior of his community for ten years.

Michael Novak, an American Catholic philosopher, journalist, novelist, and diplomat. The author of more than twenty-five books on the philosophy and theology of culture, Novak is most widely known for his book, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism (1982). In 1994 he was awarded the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, which included a million-dollar purse awarded at Buckingham Palace.

____________________
FP: Bruce Chilton, Rabbi David J. Wolpe, Raheel Raza, Fr. Maurice Guimond and Michael Novak, welcome to Frontpage Symposium.

Rabbi Wolpe, could you start the discussion for us by touching on the "new atheism"?

Labels: atheism, Bruce Chilton, David J. Wolpe, Jamie Glazov, Maurice Guimond, Michael Novak, Raheel Raza, symposium

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Tuesday, September 02, 2008

Locals respond to ’Net poll on removing ‘In God We Trust’

Published: August 29, 2008
By Cristin Ross

MSNBC.com has launched a “Live Vote” Internet poll on its Web site, asking “should the motto ‘In God We Trust’ be removed from U.S. currency?”

Of the 7,230,365 votes cast as of 11:45 a.m. Monday, 78 percent of those participating in the poll voted to keep the motto, compared to 22 percent voting to remove it from U.S. currency.

“That doesn’t surprise me,” said Kevin King, senior pastor of the First United Methodist Church-Jacksonville. “I think most people, particularly in this region, have a deep faith and believe this country was founded on that.

The Daily Progress’s attempts to interview a local atheist were unsuccessful.

MSNBC’s Web site acknowledges the poll is not a scientific survey. Phone messages left at MSNBC offices were not returned as of presstime today.

The poll stems from an Associated Press article, also published on the Web site, chronicling the efforts of Sacramento, Calif., atheist Michael Newdow to get the motto removed.

According to the AP article, Newdow filed a federal lawsuit last week, claiming the motto is “an unconstitutional endorsement of religion.”

Congress first authorized a reference to God on a two-cent piece in 1864. The action followed a request by the director of the U.S. Mint, who wrote there should be a “distinct and unequivocal national recognition of the divine sovereignty” on the nation’s coins.

In 1954, Congress inserted the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance. A year later, Congress required all currency to carry the motto “In God We Trust.”

“The placement of ‘In God We Trust’ on the coins and currency was clearly done for religious purposes and to have religious effects,” Newdow wrote in the 162-page lawsuit he filed against Congress.

Newdow’s latest lawsuit came five days after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected, without comment, a challenge to an inscription of “In God We Trust” on a North Carolina county government building.

In doing so, the justices upheld the Richmond, Va.-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled that “In God We Trust” appears on the nation’s coins and is a national motto.

“In this situation, the reasonable observer must be deemed aware of the patriotic uses, both historical and present, of the phrase ‘In God We Trust,”’ the appeals panel ruled in upholding the inscription’s display.

Newdow, a doctor and lawyer, used a similar argument when he challenged the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools for containing the words “under God.” In 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled he “lacked standing to bring the case because he did not have custody of the daughter he sued on behalf of.”

An identical lawsuit later brought by Newdow on behalf of parents with children in three Sacramento-area school districts is pending with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, after a Sacramento federal judge sided with Newdow last September. The judge stayed enforcement of the decision pending appeal, which is expected to reach the Supreme Court.

Labels: "In God We Trust", atheism, Cristin Ross, currency, Michael Newdow, money, MSNBC, US Constitution

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Monday, August 04, 2008

Nature or nurture? Religion is the natural state, atheism is learned according to psychologist

Babies are hard-wired to believe in God, and atheism has to be learned, according to an Oxford University psychologist. Dr Olivera Petrovich told a University of Western Sydney conference on the psychology of religion that even pre-school children constructed theological concepts as part of their understanding of the physical world.

Psychologists have debated whether belief in God or atheism was the natural human state. According to Dr Petrovich, an expert in psychology of religion, belief in God is not taught but develops naturally. She told The Age newspaper that belief in God emerged as a result of other psychological development connected with understanding causation.

It was hard-wired into the human psyche, but it was important not to build too much into the concept of God. “It’s the concept of God as creator, primarily,” she said.

Dr Petrovich said her findings were based on several studies, particularly one of Japanese children aged four to six, and another of 400 British children aged five to seven from seven different faiths. “Atheism is definitely an acquired position,” she said.

Dr Petrovich is partly funded by the Templeton Foundation, which is devoted to making a connection between “faith and science” – in other words, in progressing religion at the expense of science.

NSS Chief Executive Keith Porteous Wood commented: "We will be hearing a lot more from Dr Petrovich on such matters if she attains her ambition for “a proper, funded post in academic psychology of religion within a psychology department”. The most enthusiasm I found on the web for her research was in a curious website called Science and Spirit - exploring things that matter

I note Dr Petrovich was described as a "member of the Faculty of Theology at Wolfson College, Oxford University” on a web page describing her credentials in relation to the conference in Australia.

Labels: atheism, Dr Olivera Petrovich, God, John Templeton Foundation, nature, religion

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Tuesday, June 03, 2008

Marvelling at God's handiwork

As religion-versus-science debate rages, 3 physicists come out on side of God

Don Lajoie, Windsor Star
Saturday, May 31, 2008

Page 1 of 2: Please click on external link for complete article

God versus science. That most ancient of debates has been raging in academic circles, popular culture and in the media with increasing ferocity since the fundamentalist religion-inspired attacks of 9-11.

Three scientists from the University of Windsor, professors Gordon Drake, Mordechay Schlesinger and Tim Reddish of the school's physics department, have stepped gingerly on to the slippery rocks of the discussion, coming out -- some might say surprisingly -- on the side of God.

The religiosity of the three scientists may be surprising, since some statistics, including a Scientific American study in 1999, show that, while up to 90 per cent of the general North America population profess some belief in a God, only about 40 per cent of scientists do. And the numbers of scientists believing in God keep dropping, particularly among "eminent" scientists, with as few as 10 per cent believing.

However, poll results on the topic vary. A Rice University survey in 2005 demonstrated that only 38 per cent of natural scientists polled considered themselves to be "non-believers."

"Why should a physicist, studying the laws of nature, countenance a belief in God?" asked Drake, a practising Anglican, recently named principal of Canterbury College. "Because, as physicists, we're more aware of what we don't know. And the book of the unknown keeps getting larger."

Added Schlesinger, a Jew: "You can look at it another way. Our modest success in scientific research allows us to marvel at God's handiwork."

Reddish, a Christian with a Protestant background who does not adhere to any particular denomination, said God gave him a mind to use and "it would be a disservice to not use it to the fullest extent." His rumination, he said, leads him back to God. "My faith enhances my life."

Their declarations of faith out of the way, the three doctors of science sat down recently to state their case.

Drake began by suggesting the latest flareup in the old debate has its roots in the terrorist attacks of 9-11 on New York and Washington.

The fact the suicide pilots claimed to be acting out of Islamic fundamentalist zeal led to a backlash against all religion as an abomination to mankind, leading to intolerance, violence and war, he suggested. The backlash resulted in a spate of books such as God is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens, The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins and Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris.

The atheist point of view has become ever more visible on cable news and talk radio, usually countered by an equally animated "believer's" position.

"The debate has existed since creation," said Drake. "But 9-11 intensified it, gave it focus, the idea that religion could do more harm than good, that God could make you fly into a building.... But should you throw out religion because of 9-11? It's the same as asking should you throw out science because of the atomic bomb."

They said that the debate has been framed on the premise that science and religion are polar opposites used to explain existence and the two ideas cannot be reconciled. But, they say, that premise, put forward in Dawkins' book, is flawed.

Labels: atheism, Don Lajoie, God, Gordon Drake, Mordechay Schlesinger, religion, science, Tim Reddish

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Sunday, June 01, 2008

Don't write off religion just yet - Book Review

JOHN GRAY
May 31, 2008

THE DEVIL'S DELUSION
Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions
By David Berlinski
Crown Forum, 237 pages, $27.95

Despite being at variance with historical experience, the idea that science and religion are opposites is embedded in modern Western culture, and it has been given a new lease on life in the writings of the current wave of "scientific atheism." Writers such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris have popularized the Enlightenment view that a reductive type of materialism is the only picture of the world compatible with the results of scientific inquiry. Promoting Darwinism as an intellectual orthodoxy - a creed rather than a provisional hypothesis - these writers renew the old quarrel between science and religion. Though controversy has been intense, it can hardly be described as having made any large intellectual advance on the debate that raged in Victorian times.

There is actually very little that is new in the so-called new atheism, whose claim to be based on science is as dubious today as it has ever been. A critique of the contemporary assault on religion is therefore much needed, and in The Devil's Delusion, David Berlinski gives us a polemic that is powerful, erudite and often savagely funny. Berlinski - a mathematician and well-known critic of evolutionary theory, though not a proponent of "intelligent design" - has two targets in his sights: the conventional belief that religious thought is intrinsically superstitious and the materialist philosophy that Dawkins and his fellow "brights" - as members of the atheist community fondly describe themselves - mistakenly identify with science.

The first of these targets is dispatched with in a barrage of devastating arguments. Berlinski quotes Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg as declaring "Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." Berlinski comments on this, forcefully and unanswerably: "Just who has imposed on the suffering human race poison gas, barbed wire, high explosives, experiments in eugenics, the formula for Zyklon B, heavy artillery, pseudo-scientific justifications for mass murder, cluster bombs, attack submarines, napalm, intercontinental ballistic missiles, military space platforms, and nuclear weapons? If memory serves, not the Vatican."

Nothing infuriates atheists more than the observation that people who scorned traditional religion in all its varieties were responsible for some of the worst atrocities of the last century. But Berlinski is pointing to an undeniable truth. The former Soviet Union was an atheist regime from the moment of its inception to the day it collapsed. Applying Marx's philosophy, its leaders looked forward to a time when religion would be eradicated from human life. Lenin and Stalin's "liquidation" of remnants of the old society - in plain words, the mass murder of tens of millions of people, artists and intellectuals, peasants and workers, priests and rabbis - was not done only with the aim of maintaining power.

Atheism was - according to the founders of the Soviet state, and in fact - always an integral part of the communist project. Despite the vehement denials of Dawkins and Hitchens, terror in communist Russia - and Mao's China - was also meant to bring about a utopian society in which religion would no longer exist.

Lenin's Bolsheviks were not a bunch of skeptics. They were fanatical believers in a vision of a future world, more fantastic than any religious myth, which they claimed was based on science. The same is true of the Nazis, who in claiming that race was a scientific category, opened the way to history's supreme crime. The atrocities perpetrated by atheist regimes during the 20th century did not come from believing in nothing. They are testimonies to the destructive ferocity of faith when it is detached from traditional religions and invested in pseudo-science.

Berlinski's second target is the materialist theories of evolution and of the origins of the universe advocated by contemporary atheists, and here his polemic is less successful. No doubt correctly, Berlinski argues that Darwin's account of natural selection and current theories of cosmology leave a good deal that is not adequately explained. More contentiously, he suggests that these gaps in understanding may give support to ideas of intelligent design. Here Berlinski follows atheists such as Dawkins in thinking of religion as a type of explanatory theory, different from that which is presented in prevailing science.

The truth of the matter is that religion and science are not competitors, but fundamentally different responses to the human situation. Religion begins where science leaves off. Theories of how humanity or the universe came about are strictly beside the point. Claiming to have a better explanation of the natural world than orthodox science - as creationists do - does nothing to advance the cause of faith.

Religion expresses the human need for meaning, not a demand for explanation. For those who have it, faith entails understanding the limits of the human mind and an acceptance of mystery. Even if all the problems of science are some day solved, humans will still be searching for purpose in their lives, and for that reason alone they will need religion.

John Gray is the author of Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia and is emeritus professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics.

_____________________
From The Devil's Delusion,

Chapter 3.

The idea that we must turn to the sciences in order to assess our religious beliefs owes much to the popular conviction that so long as we are turning, where else are we to turn to? The proper response is a question in turn. Why turn at all? And if we must turn, why turn in the wrong direction? To ask of the physical sciences that they assess the Incarnation, or any other principle of religious belief, is rather like asking of a rather powerful Grand Prix racing car that it prove itself satisfactory in doing service as a New York taxicab.

The claim that the existence of God should be treated as a scientific question stands on a destructive dilemma: If by science one means the great theories of mathematical physics, then the demand is unreasonable. We cannot treat any claim in this way. There is no other intellectual activity in which theory and evidence have reached this stage of development.

If, on the other hand, the demand means merely that one should treat the existence of God as the existence of anything would be treated, then we must accept the fact that in life as it is lived beyond mathematical physics, the evidence is fragmentary, lost, partial, and inconclusive. We do what we can. We grope. We see glimmer.

From The Devil's Delusion,

Chapter 3.

Labels: atheism, David Berlinski, John Gray, religion, science

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Monday, May 12, 2008

Agnostic feels a tug after Sunday in church

by Steve Lopez
May 11, 2008

Page one. Click on "external link" to see the complete article.

I'm coming up on 40 years of slogging through life without any religious affiliation, and for the most part, I have no regrets. Last Sunday, though, I was standing before a couple hundred members of All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena and found myself envious.

I had been asked to talk about my three-year friendship with a musician who slept on the streets of skid row when we first met.

Life with Mr. Nathaniel Ayers is opera, with great soaring arias and sudden crashes, I told the parishioners. I feel good about having found ways to help this man whose promising career ended with a breakdown 35 years ago. But at times, I worry that my good intentions have brought him more attention than he might have wished.

In describing the journey, the soul-searching and the rewards of giving, I used the words "spirituality" and "grace." As I did, I saw people nodding as if I belonged in that room with them.

But wait. I'm an agnostic, and quite content.

So why did I feel such a connection? Could my stubborn resistance to faith be slipping?

No way, I told myself after leaving the church. Religious fervor has done an awful lot of harm in the world, dividing people, sparking wars, producing an endless parade of charlatans and hustlers.

And just look at how religion is playing out in the presidential campaign, with the running battle over which candidate is linked to the worst and most hypocritical human being who claims to speak for God.

Is it Sen. John McCain, who sought the support of televangelist John Hagee? Hagee, you'll recall, referred to the Catholic Church as "the whore of Babylon" and said God whipped up Hurricane Katrina to punish New Orleans for sins that included "a homosexual parade."

Or is it Barack Obama, who recently had to distance himself from his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.? Rev. Wright suggested in a sermon that the phrase "God bless America" should really be "God damn America."

He also offered congregants his theory that the government created the HIV virus to kill off blacks, and recently said that the Rev. Louis Farrakhan, who is seen by many as an anti-Semite, is one of recent history's leading voices.

I spoke about all of this with my wife, whose beliefs and non-beliefs are similar to mine. She mentioned that our daughter, just shy of 5, had asked a couple of questions lately about people who practice different faiths and what it all means.

I've always felt that what we believe in and how we live are the only forms of spiritual guidance we need to give our daughter. But maybe that's the lazy man talking -- the one who used to skip Catholic church on Sunday and watch ballgames on TV instead.

Maybe it wouldn't hurt, my wife and I agreed, if we were to show our daughter that our values are important enough to us to clear time and to celebrate and honor them in a ritualistic way.

I don't know that either of us is ready to make a decision about all of this, but I did go back to All Saints a few days after my appearance at the Rector's Forum to mull things over with the Rev. J. Edwin Bacon Jr.

I felt a bit of a tug, I confessed to Bacon, while speaking to his parishioners. Bacon, who missed my presentation but later watched it on video, said he sensed there was "a moment" in the room in which we all connected. I was speaking about giving, he said, which releases the divine in all of us.

"Martin Luther King is my north star," said Bacon, who grew up in Georgia. As a young man, he met King, whose work he calls a "prophetic vision, a blend of spirituality and justice, spirituality and peace."

In this week's Sunday sermon, he said, he would talk about how the Rev. Wright comes out of that same tradition of identifying injustice and demanding change.

"The role of the church is not to be the servant of the state but to be critical of the state, and that's where Jeremiah gets it right," Bacon said. "The role is to stand with those who have been marginalized and say to the state, 'You can do better.' "

But Wright went off course with some of his comments, and his ego didn't serve him well, Bacon said. It's one thing to question connections between U.S. foreign policy and the rise in terrorism, Bacon said, but another thing entirely to suggest that God should damn America.

Labels: All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, atheism, church, Rev. J. Edwin Bacon Jr., spiritual experience, spirituality, Steve Lopez

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Sunday, January 06, 2008

Theologian who heralded the death of God ponders his own

PORTLAND, Ore. — It was a quiet Sunday afternoon in 1938 when something went terribly wrong near young Bill Hamilton's house. His teenage friends had been building pipe bombs. One, an Episcopalian, was dead. Another, a Catholic, lay on the grass fatally injured. And the third, the son of an atheist, emerged without a scratch.

How, Hamilton wondered, could a just God allow this? Why do the innocent suffer? Does God intervene in human lives?

The questions haunted Hamilton at his friends' funerals, at school, in the Navy, at seminary and in his years as a theology professor in upstate New York. By 1966, he had an answer, and it landed him in Time and Playboy magazines: God was dead.

Now, some 40 years later, a new atheism is surging. Best-sellers bash religion, Christianity in particular. Published excerpts from Mother Teresa's private journal reveal her doubts. The Golden Compass, drawn from a trilogy of novels in which a key character wants to kill God, is a blockbuster movie.

Hamilton grew up a "bland, very liberal" Baptist, in a middle-class Chicago suburb. "As soon as I was able," he says, "I left it." He graduated from Oberlin College and joined the Navy in World War II. "I may have been the only guy on my ship with a copy of The Nature and Destiny of Man in my duffel," he says. Its author, Reinhold Niebuhr, was the leading U.S. theologian of the day.

After the war, Hamilton went to Union Theological Seminary in New York City because Niebuhr invited him. It didn't matter that Hamilton wasn't sure he was a Christian. Niebuhr thought Union, a bastion of liberal Protestantism, would be a good place to figure that out. The two became lifelong friends.

Hamilton graduated in 1949, got married and earned his doctorate in theology from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. The family returned to the U.S., where Hamilton taught theology at Colgate University in upstate New York.

Hamilton spent those years reflecting on his fractured faith. The image of God as an all-knowing, all-powerful solver of problems couldn't be reconciled with human suffering, especially in the wake of the Holocaust.

Hamilton wrote out his two choices: "God is not behind such radical evil, therefore he cannot be what we have traditionally meant by God" or "God is behind everything, including the death camps — and therefore he is a killer."

Hamilton didn't see an active God anymore. But the theologian was not an atheist. And he didn't want to let go of Jesus, as the example of how humans should treat one another.

"The death of God is a metaphor," he says. "We needed to redefine Christianity as a possibility without the presence of God."

He stopped going to church, but because he wanted his children to know the Bible and understand how Jesus lived, he taught them Sunday school at home. "All of us appreciate the teachings of Jesus Christ, what an extraordinary figure he was," says his son, Ross.

Hamilton redefined Christianity without God, other theologians speculated: God died long ago, perhaps at the birth of Jesus; or science and technology killed the deity. Hamilton, Thomas J.J. Altizer at Emory University and Paul Van Buren at Temple published a few articles in theological journals. Newspapers picked up the story in 1965. On April 8, 1966, Time's cover declared that God was dead, and christened the movement "radical theology."

By the time Hamilton's essay appeared in Playboy four months later, alongside topless photos of Jane Fonda, he was frustrated with the public perception of his work. Some didn't understand his argument or care about its subtleties. The response was hostile. "Institutions were upset, trustees perplexed, colleagues bewildered," he says.

Critics dismissed the death of God movement as a blip, a passing fad. But Hamilton helped pave the way for other radical theologians: feminists, who dropped patriarchal descriptions of God; and liberationists, who saw God in poverty and suffering.

Hamilton left Colgate to teach religion at New College in Sarasota, Fla., where an avant-garde and freewheeling atmosphere attracted bright students. But after a few years, he and his wife decided it wasn't where they wanted to raise their five children.

They moved to Oregon in 1970, where Hamilton taught at Portland State University for 14 years. His classes covered topics from literary criticism to death and dying, even a little religion.

Hamilton still rises every day at 6 a.m. to write. He writes by hand, and progress is slow. He hopes, however, to get his novel off to a publisher soon. He still reads avidly — Shakespeare, politics, some theology and the new atheists. It's their attitude that annoys him most.

"These are blanket indictments of religion in general, or Christianity in particular," he says. "There is a self-righteousness, a glibness in their writing. They are too sure of themselves. They've backed themselves into a fundamentalist mode."

He remains a Christian who doesn't go to church. And faced with his own mortality, he doesn't think much about God anymore, except when asked.

"The death of God enabled me to understand the world. Looking back, I wouldn't have gone any other direction. I faced all my worries and questions about death long ago."

Nancy Haught writes for The Oregonian in Portland, Ore

Labels: atheism, Bill Hamilton, Christianity, God, Jesus, Nancy Haught

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Sunday, December 30, 2007

Believers in Community

Atheists Enjoying Social Benefits of Church Even if They Don't Believe in Religious Rituals

By Jonathan Mummolo
Washington Post Staff Writer

Saturday, December 29, 2007

Statistics suggest that many atheists find a role for religion in their lives. According to a survey released in July by the Barna Group, a religious polling firm, 36 percent said they had prayed to God in the previous week even though they identified themselves as atheists. Five percent said they had read the Bible in the previous week.

The number of atheists remains low. According to last year's General Social Survey by the National Opinion Research Center, 2.1 percent of respondents said they do not believe in God.; 4.3 percent said they are agnostic -- that they are not sure whether God exists and don't think there was any way to find out.

Among those who say they do not believe, some have adopted traditional religious roles.

When Lori Lipman Brown, director of the Secular Coalition for America, which lobbies to keep religion out of government, and her husband were asked to be godparents of her nephews they accepted, seeing it as more of a caretaking responsibility than a religious obligation.

"I looked at it as, they trusted us to be the guardians," said Brown, who identifies herself as a nontheist, adding that she told her in-laws that she and her husband were not religious. "I think it's important to be honest with family members. . . . They wanted people they knew would take care of these kids . . . not so much religious leaders."

To help nonbelievers maintain tradition while preserving integrity, Margaret Downey, president of Atheist Alliance International, set up http://secular-celebrations.com a Web site outlining nonreligious ceremonies that mark marriage, death and the arrival of children.

Downey, who presides over the ceremonies for a fee as a certified secular humanist officiant, recently organized an atheists convention in Crystal City that drew more than 500 people. It featured a naming ceremony for young children as an alternative to baptism.

Such ceremonies include remarks on the significance of the child's name as well as vows taken by parents and "guideparents" to teach and nurture the child. In the text of a sample ceremony on Downey's site, parents vow to help their child "learn to love truth, even when it goes against" them.

"Celebrations and holidays and traditions serve dual purposes," Downey said. "Instead of godparent, [we say] guideparents or mentors, and that way we could participate honestly but under the terms of a secular participation. Now, that might not satisfy the religious component, but it certainly would offer a branch of unity when philosophical differences would tear people apart.''

"We are social animals," she said. "We need these occasions to bring family and friends together into our lives."

Labels: atheism, Barna Group, community, Jonathan Mummolo, religiosity

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Thursday, November 29, 2007

Debunking the Galileo Myth

By Dinesh D'Souza
Monday, November 26, 2007

Many people have uncritically accepted the idea that there is a longstanding war between science and religion. We find this war advertised in many of the leading atheist tracts such as those by Richard Dawkins, Victor Stenger, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens. Every few months one of the leading newsweeklies does a story on this subject. Little do the peddlers of this paradigm realize that they are victims of nineteenth-century atheist propaganda.

About a hundred years ago, two anti-religious bigots named John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White wrote books promoting the idea of an irreconcilable conflict between science and God. The books were full of facts that have now been totally discredited by scholars. But the myths produced by Draper and Dickson continue to be recycled. They are believed by many who consider themselves educated, and they even find their way into the textbooks. In this article I expose several of these myths, focusing especially on the Galileo case, since Galileo is routinely portrayed as a victim of religious persecution and a martyr to the cause of science.

The Flat Earth Fallacy: According to the atheist narrative, the medieval Christians all believed that the earth was flat until the brilliant scientists showed up in the modern era to prove that it was round. In reality, educated people in the Middle Ages knew that the earth was round. In fact, the ancient Greeks in the fifth century B.C. knew the earth was a globe.

Huxley’s Mythical Put-Down: We read in various books about the great debate between Darwin’s defender Thomas Henry Huxley and poor Bishop Wilberforce. As the story goes, Wilberforce inquired of Huxley whether he was descended from an ape on his father or mother’s side, and Huxley winningly responded that he would rather be descended from an ape than from an ignorant bishop who was misled people about the findings of science. A dramatic denouement, to be sure, but the only problem is that it never happened.

Darwin Against the Christians: As myth would have it, when Darwin’s published his Origin of Species, the scientists lined up on one side and the Christians lined up on the other side. In reality, there were good scientific arguments made both in favor of Darwin and against him. The British naturalist Richard Owen, the Harvard zoologist Louis Agassiz, and the renowned physicist Lord Kelvin all had serious reservations about Darwin’s theory. Historian Gertrude Himmelfarb points out that while some Christians found evolution inconsistent with the Bible, many Christians rallied to Darwin’s side.

The Experiment Galileo Didn’t Do: We read in textbooks about how Galileo went to the Tower of Pisa and dropped light and heavy bodies to the ground. He discovered that they hit the ground at the same time, thus refuting centuries of idle medieval theorizing. Actually Galileo didn’t do any such experiments; one of his students did. The student discovered what we all can discover by doing similar experiments ourselves: the heavy bodies hit the ground first! As historian of science Thomas Kuhn points out, it is only in the absence of air resistance that all bodies hit the ground at the same time.

Galileo Was the First to Prove Heliocentrism: Actually, Copernicus advanced the heliocentric theory that the sun, not the earth, is at the center, and that the earth goes around the sun. He did this more than half a century before Galileo. But Copernicus had no direct evidence, and he admitted that there were serious obstacles from experience that told against his theory. For instance, if the earth is moving rapidly, why don’t objects thrown up into the air land a considerable distance away from their starting point? Galileo defended heliocentrism, but one of his most prominent arguments was wrong. Galileo argued that the earth’s regular motion sloshes around the water in the oceans and explains the tides.

The Church Dogmatically Opposed the New Science: In reality, the Church was the leading sponsor of the new science and Galileo himself was funded by the church. The leading astronomers of the time were Jesuit priests. They were open to Galileo’s theory but told him the evidence for it was inconclusive. This was the view of the greatest astronomer of the age, Tyco Brahe. The Church’s view of heliocentrism was hardly a dogmatic one. When Cardinal Bellarmine met with Galileo he said, “While experience tells us plainly that the earth is standing still, if there were a real proof that the sun is in the center of the universe…and that the sun goes not go round the earth but the earth round the sun, then we should have to proceed with great circumspection in explaining passages of scripture which appear to teach the contrary, and rather admit that we did not understand them than declare an opinion to be false which is proved to be true. But this is not a thing to be done in haste, and as for myself, I shall not believe that there are such proofs until they are shown to me.” Galileo had no such proofs.

Galileo Was A Victim of Torture and Abuse: This is perhaps the most recurring motif, and yet it is entirely untrue. Galileo was treated by the church as a celebrity. When summoned by the Inquisition, he was housed in the grand Medici Villa in Rome. He attended receptions with the Pope and leading cardinals. Even after he was found guilty, he was first housed in a magnificent Episcopal palace and then placed under “house arrest” although he was permitted to visit his daughters in a nearby convent and to continue publishing scientific papers.

The Church Was Wrong To Convict Galileo of Heresy: But Galileo was neither charged nor convicted of heresy. He was charged with teaching heliocentrism in specific contravention of his own pledge not to do so. This is a charge on which Galileo was guilty. He had assured Cardinal Bellarmine that given the sensitivity of the issue, he would not publicly promote heliocentrism. Yet when a new pope was named, Galileo decided on his own to go back on his word. Asked about this in court, he said his Dialogue on the Two World Systems did not advocate heliocentrism. This is a flat-out untruth as anyone who reads Galileo’s book can plainly see. Even Galileo’s supporters, and there were many, found it difficult to defend him at this point.

What can we conclude from all this? Galileo was right about heliocentrism, but we know that only in retrospect because of evidence that emerged after Galileo’s death. The Church should not have tried him at all, although Galileo’s reckless conduct contributed to his fate. Even so, his fate was not so terrible. Historian Gary Ferngren concludes that “the traditional picture of Galileo as a martyr to intellectual freedom and as a victim of the church’s opposition to science has been demonstrated to be little more than a caricature.” Remember this the next time you hear some half-educated atheist rambling on about “the war between religion and science.”

Labels: atheism, church, Darwin, Dinesh D'Souza, fallacy, Galileo, myth, religion, science

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Monday, November 19, 2007

'Golden Compass' Film Angering Christian Groups -- Even With Its Religious Themes Watered Down

By Jennifer Vineyard

Thought Harry Potter was blasphemous? That was kids' stuff compared to the "His Dark Materials" trilogy, in which God is an imposter, angels are sexually ambiguous and the Church kidnaps, tortures and assassinates to achieve its goals, one of which is stealing children's souls.

But try as the filmmakers might to take religion out of the equation in the first installment — "The Golden Compass," due December 7 — Christian groups are gearing up to protest and fans are urging New Line not to water down the provocative material in remaining films.

The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, which most recently protested a picture of Britney Spears sitting provocatively in a priest's lap — the image appears in her new album, Blackout — takes this issue a little more seriously. The anti-defamation group accuses the film of "selling atheism to kids" and has produced its own booklet in response, "The Golden Compass: Agenda Unmasked," which it's been distributing to churches and other Christian groups.

Also, Snopes.com, which typically debunks urban legends, claims that the assertion that the film has "anti-religious" themes is "true." (Kansas State literature professor Philip Nel posted an open letter in refute, saying it would be more accurate to call it "a matter of debate.")

Ironically, this debate was exactly what New Line was trying to avoid by softening the religious references in "The Golden Compass." (Whether religion would reappear in "The Subtle Knife" or "The Amber Spyglass," producer Bob Shea told MTV News that plans weren't firm yet: "One film at a time!") So in "Compass," the revisionist Church is simply referred to as the "Magisterium," because the focus is the power of the agency, not the agency itself.

"Religion is at its best when it's far from power," author Philip Pullman said during his Times Talks appearance Tuesday. "When a religion gains power, it goes bad."

"The Church is a symbol of oppression in the books," HisDarkMaterials.org webmaster Ryan den Rooijen said, "and they've retained that essence. Even if they don't name it as the Church, it's not a terrible loss. The story is still retained."

"We'll have to deal [with God and the angels] when we get to the next bit," said "Golden Compass" director Chris Weitz. "I don't think anyone here sees it as a particularly [controversial] series of films that we're making."

"This is the least offensive of the three, and they're watering down the most despicable elements, so why the protest? Not because it's going to be so shocking," Catholic League President Bill Donohue said. "The protest is this: It's being done at Christmastime, and when parents don't find the film troubling, they're going to buy the books for their kids as Christmas gifts. They're doing it through the back door, in a stealth fashion, because each book becomes more provocative, more aggressive and more anti-Christian. I've never seen anything quite like this before, to use a movie like this."

Defenders of Pullman's works — who range from liberal Christians to religious scholars to readers of the books — counter that the Gnostic and Nietzschean ponderings in the series shouldn't make conservative Christians fear that their kids will be "seduced" into atheism. Calling the online chatter "fearful to the point of hysterical," Boston University religion professor Donna Freitas argues on BeliefNet.com that the challenges to traditional images of God should be welcomed, not protested, as part of a "lively dialogue about faith."

Though independent Christian groups may be opposed, not everyone in the Church is upset about that dialogue. Archbishop of Canterbury Dr. Rowan Williams has even proposed that "His Dark Materials" be taught as part of religious education in schools.

"I found that to be one of the most provocative elements, the religious overtones, aspects, ramifications of the thing," said actor Sam Elliott, who plays Lee Scoresby in "The Golden Compass." "It's thought-provoking, is all. It's good material, good stuff. But why not deal with it? That's how I feel. It's provocative material, and deal with it as such."

Labels: atheism, children, Christmas, church, God, Jennifer Vineyard, oppresion, religion, The Golden Compass

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Monday, November 12, 2007

Has science affected belief in a personal God?

By GARY STERN
THE JOURNAL NEWS

(Original publication: November 10, 2007)

NEW YORK - At this "atheist moment," when books that ridicule the notion of a personal God are making best-seller lists, believers must acknowledge that the challenges posed to faith by modern science are very real, a panel of experts said this week at Fordham University.

The long-standing belief in the West that the universe has purpose and meaning has been replaced in the corridors of science by a focus on nature's processes that are not only intricately complex, but mindless and pointless.

"This leaves us, it seems, with an impersonal and purposeless universe," said John Haught, the main speaker, a Roman Catholic theologian who writes about the relationship of science and religion.

Close to 300 people overflowed Pope Auditorium at the Jesuit university's Columbus Circle campus on Tuesday for what promised to be a timely and provocative program: "After Darwin and Einstein: Is belief in a personal God still possible?"

The squeezing out of a personal God, for some, by advances in science may represent an update on Time magazine's famous 1966 cover story "Is God Dead?" which proclaimed that "the basic premise of faith - the existence of a personal God, who created the world and sustains it with his love - is now subject to profound attack."

The science-based questioning of today, though, come from only a segment of the country. Polls consistently show that about half of all Americans do not accept the theory of evolution.

Haught surveyed the views of Albert Einstein, Carl Sagan and others who dismissed any notions of a personal God. He also explained that if the 13.7-billion-year history of the cosmos was divided into 30 volumes of 450 pages each - with each page representing 1 million years - human development would not pop up until the very last page.

But Haught also reviewed ways of looking at the cosmos that leave room for a divine creator. The physical chemist Michael Polanyi, he said, suggested that since DNA is a carrier of codes, there is something informational about the universe that transcends matter.

The Jesuit paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin Pierre, he said, wrote that since the universe becomes increasingly organized and coherent, people must think of the promise of the future and not just the billions of years of dust that came before us.

Fordham philosophy professor Brian Davies, a Dominican priest, said in response that "contemporary science seems to suggest that people are woven into the fabric of things, that the universe was in a sense pregnant with us long before we emerged."

But a lot hinges, he said, on what people mean by a personal God. People talk about God as if he's a "top person" or a better "guy on the street," not the ongoing creator of all being, Davies said.

Science writer John Horgan, a lapsed Catholic/agnostic, described belief in a personal God as "narcissistic," particularly when there's no explanation for the existence of evil.

But he did concede that "reality seems awfully designed and too good to be here by pure chance."

No one gave much time to the popular idea of "intelligent design," which holds that God designed the universe as it is.

"Design is a deadly idea," Haught said. "I don't want to think of God as drawing up a blueprint. We live in an imperfect universe riddled with evil and suffering."

What underlies reality, Haught said, turning more personal, is the promise of something better and God's fidelity to his creations.

"We live in a universe that is still coming into being," he said.

Labels: atheism, cosmos, Gary Stern, God, John Haught, science

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Poll: Do People Need God to be Good?

By Nathan Black
Christian Post Reporter
Wed, Oct. 24 2007

Atheists can be good, but people who believe in God are more likely to value being good, a recent study showed.

An analysis by sociologist and pollster Reginald Bibby of the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada, addressed the question "Do people need God to be good?"

Polling 1,600 Canadians, the nationwide survey found that those who believe in God are consistently more likely than atheists to highly value such traits as courtesy, concern for others, forgiveness, generosity and patience. Believers are also more inclined to place high value on friendship, family life, and being loved.

While God and religion are not the only sources of such traits, the survey reported that they are among the most important sources. And without them, "it is not at all clear that comparable equivalents currently exist that could fill the void," according to the report.

Bibby suggests that the primary reason believers place higher value on being good is that they are far more likely than atheists to be part of groups that work hard to instill those values. Although not all believers translate their values into action, they are at least inclined to hold the values, according to the study.

The debate on whether God is necessary to have good morals has increasingly taken public stage between staunch atheists and Christian apologists.

Nearly half of Canadians (49 percent) say they definitely believe God exists and 33 percent say they think He exists; 11 percent have doubts and don't think there is a higher power; and 7 percent say they definitely do not believe God exists.

Labels: atheism, Canada, God, goodness, Nathan Black, Reginald Bibby

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Friday, October 12, 2007

Christians Urged to Meet Atheists in the Public Square

By Lillian Kwon
Christian Post Reporter
Thu, Oct. 11 2007

Christians shouldn't always turn the other cheek and ignore the attacks of secular thought, says one prominent conservative writer. They need to step out and meet the atheist critique.

"We don't want the public square to be dominated by the atheists," said New York Times bestselling author Dinesh D'Souza.

D'Souza believes Christians have left the public square unoccupied, limiting their expression of religiosity to church on Sunday, their families, and the Christian subculture.

As a consequence, atheists have entered the public square – what Christians thought would have been "neutral space," as D'Souza put it. And they want to drive the Christians out, remove Christian symbolism from coins, the pledge and public buildings.

D'Souza is due to release What's So Great About Christianity next week. It's his first book, among many, dealing with Christianity in America. He originally set out to approach the topic in a modest and more secular way, he said, but found himself in the midst of a number of atheist books hitting stores and greatly widening the attack on religion and, more specifically, Christianity.

The atheistic arguments – that Christianity goes against reason and science and is based on blind faith – are resonating with people, D'Souza noticed, and hitting bestseller lists.

Part of the reason society is seeing an emboldened atheism is that a lot of these outspoken atheists were hoping religion would disappear as society became more modern and developed, according to D'Souza.

Living in a culture that is to a considerable degree secular, D'Souza would like to see in churches across the country apologetics come to center stage not to displace what the churches have been doing but to supplement it in a very important way, he said.

"[Christians] are going to meet arguments that cannot be settled simply by 'the Bible says this, the Bible says that' because the other person will promptly reply that they don't accept the authority of the Bible," D'Souza noted.

He suggests Christians become "bilingual" in which they are educated in both the biblical language and a secular language the world can recognize – a language anchored in history and reason and experience.

In his upcoming book release, due out Oct. 16, D'Souza dispels common myths about faith, many of which are argued by atheists.

Myth #1: Atheism is growing and more people are choosing it over church

Pews might be empty in some urban parts of America, but the world is witnessing a huge explosion of Christianity, says D'Souza who notes Christianity as the fastest-growing religion in the world and that the number of unbelievers is actually shrinking. In America, about half of the population goes to church and an overwhelming majority believes in God. But there are also "powerful currents of secularism" in this country that counter that, the author acknowledged.

Myth #2: Religion has caused history's wars, murders, and violence

The number of people killed in religious wars such as the Crusades or the Spanish Inquisition is infinitesimal compared to those killed during modern atheist regimes, the author notes. "We have to keep a sense of proportion," he says.

Myth #3: There is no such thing as a human soul

Atheists use science to argue that there is no soul, as there is no physical evidence of one. "If the atheist universe were true, there would be no free will in it," says D'Souza. The world of science, of atoms and molecules, is one in which there is no free choice because the actions of the atoms and molecules determine the outcome, he argues. Atheists believe the only things that exist are the material things that can be seen under the microscope and smelled and touched to which there is empirical evidence, he adds.

"There are dimensions of reality that cannot be captured in purely material terms. When has science ever located a thought or a feeling or a choice?"

Myth #4: Where is God when bad things happen?

D'Souza turns this question around and asks where is atheism when bad things happen? At the tragic event of the Virginia Tech shooting in April, there were nonstop memorial services and everyone began to speak a very religious language of healing and spirituality, he noted. "Atheism has absolutely nothing to offer us at moments of life that matter the most – birth, marriage, death, suffering."

What's So Great About Christianity is a defense of Christianity, D'Souza explained, "but it's a defense that meets the critics of Christianity by taking them seriously."

Labels: atheism, Christianity, Lillian Kwon, public square

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Friday, September 21, 2007

Group Sues Pentagon Over First Amendment Religion Issue

Yesterday, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation filed a lawsuit against the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and U.S. Army Major Paul Welborne. The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Kansas City, alleges that Army specialist Jeremy Hall, who is currently serving in Iraq, had his First Amendment rights violated last Thanksgiving when he was threatened and otherwise harrassed because he declined to participate in a Thanksgiving prayer ceremony.

According to Hall, who is an atheist, when he refused to join hands with other soldiers and pray, he was told by a staff sergeant (who first had to ask someone what an atheist was) that he could not eat Thanksgiving dinner with his peers. Hall, however, continued to eat his dinner at the table.

According to the complaint, in August, Hall received permission from a military chaplain to organize a group for atheist soldiers, but when the group met, Major Welborne broke it up, and also threatened to charge Hall with violating the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Hall's complaint is not unique. Just last month, the Pentagon's Inspector General responded to a complaint by an MRFF that Defense Department officials violated their own regulations by appearing in a video to promote a fundamentalist Christian organization.

A spokesman for the MRFF has indicated that the Hall lawsuit is just the first of many.

Labels: Army, atheism, Military Religious Freedom Foundation, Pentagon

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Friday, August 24, 2007

Secularists, what happened to the open mind?

Many of the leading voices among atheists and the ‘unreligious’ reveal a disdain for religion that can only damage today’s dialogue. Speaking with people of faith, instead of about them, would enrich both sides of this philosophical divide.

By Tom Krattenmaker

Critical thinking might be to secularism what faith is to devout religious believers. Thinking rationally, questioning assumptions, embracing complexity and eschewing the black-and-white — these habits of mind are, to the champions of non-belief, a keystone of the secular worldview and a crucial part of what separates them from religious people.

So why, when it comes to matters of religion, do secularists so frequently leave their critical thinking at the door?

As the atheist writer and religion scholar Jacques Berlinerblau recently put it, "Can an atheist or agnostic commentator discuss any aspect of religion for more than 30 seconds without referring to religious people as imbeciles, extremists, mental deficients, fascists, enemies of the common good ... conjure men (or) irrationalists?"

The behavior is unbecoming a school of thought that emphasizes rational complex thinking — and that has so much to offer if its practitioners can only live up to their own ideas about the value of an open mind.

The worst tendencies of atheists (who, by definition, believe God does not exist) and secularists (who are best described as "unreligious") were framed for me during a recent e-mail exchange I had with a staff member of a humanist organization.

Discussing the relationship between science and religion, I had expressed my view that religion should leave scientific research to the scientists and devote itself, along with the fields of ethics and philosophy, to the mighty issues of the human condition: good and evil, the meaning of life, the nature of love and so forth. To which my correspondent replied: Why would something as inherently foolish as religion deserve a place at the table for discussions of that magnitude?

As someone who has studied religion and attended progressive churches, I was aghast. I had expected an articulate and intelligent advocate for the non-religious worldview to display a more nuanced understanding of that which she stood against.

But, sadly, this is how the conversation often goes when secularists take up the issue of religion. The tendency has perhaps reached its crescendo — or low point — with the appearance and best-selling success of Christopher Hitchens' book God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.

Like earlier books by atheists Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, Hitchens holds up the worst tendencies and misdeeds of religious people like an ugly piñata, on which he then performs the predictable act. But his demolition of religion dishonors the tradition of critical thinking and intellectual seriousness that supposedly define secularism. Berlinerblau suggests that Hitchens and other in-your-face atheist authors are becoming the "soccer hooligans of reasoned public discourse."

Not that Hitchens and his like-minded fans don't have a point. They are correct in criticizing those who have used religion to create suffering in the world. And those acting in the name of their faiths have indeed furnished far too many case studies. Unfortunately, the forms of religion most often in the spotlight these days lend credence to the idea that religion is a dark-ages anachronism that must be eradicated if the human race is to advance.

Nevertheless, I find myself wanting to leap to religion's defense when I encounter broadsides against all religion. Yes, many religious people behave in foolish and obnoxious ways, and some do cause harm in the name of their belief system. Yet the same could be said of non-believers. When a Stalin, Pol Pot, or Hitler commits monstrous deeds in connection with an ideology opposed to religion, does that somehow prove the inherent delusion and danger of non-belief?

My point is not to demonize secularists or atheists. There is too much of that already. According to a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll conducted in February, fewer people would vote for a well-qualified atheist for president (45%) than an African-American (94%), a Jew (92%), a woman (88%), a Hispanic (87%), a Mormon (72%), a thrice-married person (67%) or a homosexual (55%).

It is unfair and just plain wrong to equate secularism with immorality or insufficient patriotism. Nevertheless, secularists would do well to listen to Berlinerblau, one of the few atheist voices calling for secular engagement with religious believers and more rigorous understanding of their religions.

Berlinerblau, a Georgetown University professor and author of The Secular Bible: Why Non-believers Must Take Religion Seriously, says he has made little headway in persuading his fellow atheists to try understanding religion in its full complexity and to make alliances with moderate religious believers around issues of mutual concern. Apparently, it's more satisfying and commercially advantageous to preach to the converted and launch one-sided diatribes against religion.

Yet both achieving a more constructive national dialogue and making progress on our most pressing problems depend on just the opposite happening. Neither the secular nor the religious camp is going to drive the other out of business. So how's this for an idea: Cooperate.

Yes, it is highly unlikely that non-believers will soon join hands with theologically conservative believers for a round of John Lennon's Imagine (which imagines a world with "no religion"). But couldn't they engage with religious moderates and progressives, who tend to approach their faith in non-literal ways that do not require the suspension of rational thought, and who frequently lean in the same political direction as secularists do on the big issues of the day? Do secularists really want to antagonize these potential allies by sneering at their faith?

I hope not. Secularism's clear thinking has much to offer a world riven by unthinking ideologies and hatreds. And even though it defines itself in opposition to religion, surely secularism is capable of understanding that religion is more — at least capable of more — than irrational indulgence in supernatural fantasies. Learning more about religion would be a good start.

Secularists put their "faith" not in a god, but in the finest capabilities of the human mind. It would be a shame if their defining faculties failed them now.

Tom Krattenmaker, who lives in Portland, Ore., specializes in religion in public life and is a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors. He is working on a book about Christianity in professional sports.

Labels: atheism, cooperation, faith, reason, religion, science, secular, Tom Krattenmaker

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Saturday, August 11, 2007

A non-believer - say it isn't so

A non-believer - say it isn't so
August 11, 2007

You can be gay, black or even a woman, but America will not tolerate a president who has no religion.
Anne Davies

Pete Stark found himself in a unique and slightly uncomfortable position earlier this year. The longtime Democrat congressman for the Oakland district near San Francisco had responded to a survey from the Secular Coalition for America which offered a $1000 prize to the person who could identify the "highest-level atheist, agnostic, humanist or any other kind of 'nontheist' currently holding elected public office in the United States".

To his surprise, that was him. Stark was the only one of 535 federal politicians prepared to admit he had no religion. For a few brief weeks he was the poster-boy for the humanists in a nation where, according to Pew Foundation research, eight out of 10 people say they have "no doubt God exists" and that "prayer is an important part of their daily lives".

In the immediate aftermath, Stark's staff worried about the backlash. Would his office be targeted by fire-and-brimstone Christians, prophesying his imminent damnation? One or two callers promised to pray for Stark's soul, but for the most part, the callers felt Stark was championing a position held by a significant but silent minority.

Fortunately, at 75, Stark is not planning to seek higher office. If he had been, he had just committed political suicide.

Being an atheist is the biggest handicap a person could have to being elected US president - worse than being gay or a woman, according to a Gallup poll in February.

More than 53 per cent of people surveyed said they would not vote for an atheist. They would prefer a homosexual president - 43 per cent said they would not vote for a homosexual - or a woman president (11 per cent said they would not vote for a woman).

And it seems that these days being black or Catholic or Jewish is hardly a barrier at all, with each of these factors being named as a bar by fewer than 7 per cent of voters.

That the US remains so concerned that its leaders be people of faith is surprising.

In most industrial societies, the level of religiosity declines as the society becomes wealthier and more sophisticated, according to John Green, a senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, which regularly surveys attitudes towards religion in the US.

Yet the US remains a highly religious place. Not the most religious place on the planet, but certainly more religious than Europe and Australia.

Labels: Anne Davies, atheism, God, Pew survey, politics, prayer, Unites States

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Thursday, July 12, 2007

'Christian' Nations Dominate World’s Best Religious Freedom Spots

By
Michelle Vu
Christian Post Reporter
Tue, Jul. 10 2007 08:39 AM ET

WASHINGTON – Countries with Christian backgrounds have the best religious freedom record, according to the initial findings of an extensive report on the status of religious freedom in the world on Monday.

A glimpse into the findings of Religious Freedom in the World 2007, the upcoming book to be released next year, showed that countries with a Christian background were ranked highest for level of religious freedom observed in the country. The four countries given the highest religious freedom rating of one are Hungary, Ireland, Estonia, and the United States.

On the other hand, countries run by atheist government such as communist China, Vietnam, and North Korea were ranked in the bottom two tiers (ratings of six and seven).

Officially atheist countries were joined at the bottom of the religious freedom pole by countries with Islam background such as Pakistan, Palestinian areas, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Turkmenistan.

“In general, either extreme religious or extreme secular state together comprise most of the world’s religiously restricted parties,” commented Paul Marshall, general editor of Religious Freedom in the World 2007, during a press conference Monday.

Marshall is the senior fellow at the Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom. He is also the author of over 20 books on religion and politics, especially religious freedom.

“In the Muslim majority world, one faces continuing problems in religious freedom,” Marshall noted. However, he pointed out that “one needs to be careful not to overdo this.”

The survey analyzing over 100 countries and territories found anomalies in the correlation between religious freedom and a country’s religious background.

For example, the African nations of Mali and Senegal – both having an Islamic background – ranked higher in terms of religious freedom than countries with Christian background such as Germany, France, Greece, Kenya, and the Philippines.

Yet Mali and Senegal were the rare exceptions; almost all the countries listed in the top three tiers for religious freedom were Christian nations and the countries with the worst religious freedom were Muslim-dominated countries or Buddhist-dominated ones headed by secular governments.

In addition, the survey also details strong linkage between levels of religious freedom and degree of economic freedom and enterprise.

Survey findings discovered a correlation between a country’s low religious freedom status and low economic freedom. In other words, a country with religious freedom violation tended to also have restricted economic freedom.

Other findings in the survey include: violations of religious freedom worldwide are massive, widespread, and, in many parts of the world, intensifying; radical Islam is the largest growing threat to religious freedom; and events in the past year in Iraq caused the country to rank among those with the worst religious freedom records for the first time since the era of Saddam Hussein.

Nina Shea, the director of the Center for Religious Freedom and a commissioner on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, believes using political leverage to press a country to honor the basic right of religious freedom is more effective than inter-religious dialogue.

Shea explained to The Christian Post that many times religious dialogue occurs with the wrong people who have no control over sectarian violence. Moreover, the government of religious freedom violating states often feign to be interested in negotiating to “buy time” to consolidate its power rather than having genuine interest to change, Shea pointed out.

The Hudson Institute’s The Center for Religious Freedom is the sponsor of the upcoming book Religious Freedom in the World 2007 to be release next year. Seventy-nine religious freedom experts and scholars contributed to the compilation of essays and analyses of 102 countries and territories.

Additional comments during the presentation of the survey’s initial findings were provided by Brian Grim, senior research fellow in Religion and World Affairs at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life; Theodore Malloch, founder and chairman of Spiritual Enterprise Institute; Zainab Al-Suwaij, co-founder and executive director of the American Islamic Congress; and Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.

Labels: atheism, Christian, economic freedom, Michelle Vu, religious freedom

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Monday, June 18, 2007

Books may sell, but Americans still voice religious conviction

by Emile Lester

Despite a slew of new books on atheism, the real trend in America might be that Americans talk about faith instead of living it

Date published: 6/17/2007

HENRICO--Thomas Jefferson did it 200 years ago. Karl Marx did it 150 years ago. John Dewey did it 75 years ago.

They all heralded the triumph of reason and the downfall of faith.

Now the popularity of a recent spate of best-selling books by Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Richard Dawkins--criticizing religion and defending atheism--might seem to augur a similar outcome.

The predictions of Jefferson, Marx, and Dewey were wrong as applied to the United States in the past. Predicting the decline of religion based on the popularity of these new books is wrong as applied to the United States in the future.

More than 95 percent of Americans report believing in God or some form of Supreme Being, according to a recent Pew Forum poll. This percentage has remained virtually unchanged for the last 60 years, or ever since pollsters started measuring religious faith.

Indeed, Americans are embracing religions once spurned, but their skepticism toward atheism remains. Almost all Americans tell pollsters they'll vote for a Jew or Muslim for president, but in a recent Gallup poll only 45 percent say they'd consider voting for an atheist.

Harris, Hitchens, and Dawkins are tapping into temporary disgust over how the Bush administration has applied religion to politics--but it would be foolish to bet this slight turn to secularism will become a widespread or long-term phenomenon.

Proclaiming belief in God has become woven into the fabric of our society. For better or worse, it's as American as apple pie and watching football.

But even if predicting the end of faith in America is far from right, it's not completely wrong, either. Professing religion is one thing, but taking it seriously is another. Religion in America, as religious scholar Robert Booth Fowler observes, runs "a mile wide but an inch deep."

"Moralistic, therapeutic deism" is what sociologists Christian Smith and Melissa Denton found when they recently conducted a nationwide survey of the religious views of American teenagers. That is, most teenagers ask not what they can do for their religion, but what their religion can do for them.

Boston University professor Stephen Prothero attributes this attitude largely to religious ignorance--which, he argues in his recent book, "Religious Illiteracy," is at an all-time high. Not knowing much about their own religion or any other, many Americans equate religion with moral restrictions, particularly about sexual activity that they would favor even if they weren't religious.

In short: The "religion problem" in America today is not that we're too religious, as Harris, Hitchens, and Dawkins claim, but that we're not religious enough.

The First Amendment has always left Americans free to choose their own faith--and Americans have usually responded by exploring their religious options and creating many new ones.

We would be well-advised to take advantage of this new diversity by learning about these religions, reading their sacred books, and listening and talking to their adherents.

This doesn't mean we should all surrender our beliefs and partake in a United Colors of Benetton approach to religion. Exploration need not lead to relativism. But American religion has always been strongest when it engages with new ideas.

This engagement should extend to at least examining the critiques of religion made by Harris, Hitchens, and Dawkins. Religious beliefs which don't challenge themselves, that great champion of free speech John Stuart Mill reminds us, soon become dead dogma.

If we don't heed Mill's advice, we might not become a land of atheists, but we might become something far worse--a land where religion has become uninformed and irrelevant.

Emile Lester, of Henrico County, is an assistant professor of Political Science at the University of Mary Washington. His report, "Learning about World Religions in Public Schools," co-authored by Dr. Patrick Roberts, is available at firstamend mentcenter.org.

Labels: atheism, faith, new ideas, religion, Stephen Prothero, therapeutic deism