"Can't have brotherhood of man without religion" This guy is an idiot already, that didn't take long.
"Those are Christian ideas" So, only Christianity can provide human solidarity? This guy is a nut.
"The brotherhood of man follows from the fatherhood of god" Did this guy get up that morning searching for the most idiotic things to say?
The brotherhood of man follows from our social sensibilities.
We are a social species. We have innate altruistic tendencies that predate and preexist Christianity.
And where is altruism and social community the strongest? Look toward the most secular societies such as Scandinavia.
But, as for the questions.
Why did New Atheism rise so quickly? Christopher Hitchens decided to publish on religion instead of politics, and Richard Dawkins decided to publish on religion instead of evolutionary biology. At that time a number of kooks were trying to put religion into the public school classroom under the disguise of ID.
Religion brought us September 11, 2001. Then religion brought us ISIS. Religious terrorism was on a lot of people's minds.
People were interested to listen to atheists come out of the closet to unabashedly denounce the stupidity and destructiveness of religion, so articulate writers like Hitchens, Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, and Ali found an audience ripe for the message.
Why is New Atheism not such a hot topic anymore?
We won.
ID was defeated in court. Obama killed Bin Laden and defeated ISIS. Atheists are now out of the closet.
Also, Hitchens died and the other authors got tired of the subject and went back to things like the philosophy of consciousness, neuroscience, and evolutionary biology.
SteveK, "Worse that thinking that a demolished refinery is actually causing the wheels of a train to move?" So, if somebody else makes a bad argument that makes the argument of Aquinas good?
Real causation is in the present and is always mutual, thus there is no call for a first mover.
Religion brought us September 11, 2001. Then religion brought us ISIS...denounce the stupidity and destructiveness of religion
Choosing to say "religion" to lump all God-belief with radical Islamic terrorists is why such atheists are a complete laughingstock to anyone with any intellectual integrity. That's about as useful as lumping Obama with Stalin because both are political leftists.
We won.
You categorically did not. The childish New Atheist movement had very little to do with the decline of Christianity, which has been happening for far longer than Internet atheist evangelists, and did nothing whatsoever to usher in the hilarious Age of Reason they believed themselves to be heralding.
The rot of Western culture combined with, and at least partly caused by, increased material security has far more causal impact on the decline of Christianity in the West than a bunch of arrogant edgelords who couldn't reason their way out of a fifth grade debate loss. The apparent melding of Christianity with the Republican Party also hasn't helped, but still nothing to do with Dawkins or Hitchens.
Also, you said you weren't a New Atheist, so don't you mean "they" won?
So, if somebody else makes a bad argument that makes the argument of Aquinas good?
No, but a certain somebody concluded that Aquina's arguments were bad on the basis of their own bad arguments. "Essential causal series don't exist," this person argued. "Aquinas is dumb," they said.
"Essential causal series don't exist," All causation is in the present, mutual, and multilateral.
The Thomistic description of causation is nonsense.
"Aquinas is dumb," Strawman. Smart people 700 years ago made what are now known to be bad arguments. Today, otherwise smart people continue to repeat those same bad arguments.
As for the First and Second ways of Aquinas, if one has the benefit of a university education or equivalent yet one still fails to grasp the absurdity of those arguments then some part of that individual is stuck in some sort of cognitive time warp, or retrograde thinking, or has some sort of reserved space for irrationality.
People are like that, highly complex and multifaceted. A genius in one field of study might be a total klutz in another.
Given the high degree of confusion you have exhibited on these subjects over the years the best suggestion I can make for you is to do a sort of personal mind cleansing, flush out all that ancient nonsense about actualization of a potential, essential series, and being in act.
Then, pick up a university physics textbook, read some Russell and Bell, and learn some things that have been discovered about how the cosmos really progresses.
You will find that all change, and thus all causation, is in the present, and occurs mutually and multilaterally. There is no necessity for a moving object to be moved in order to continue moving. Material is conserved and therefore has no call to be sustained in its existence.
Once you learn modern physics you will see that the goofy ideas of Aquinas evaporate as just so much silly ancient mythology.
"Choosing to say "religion" to lump all God-belief with radical Islamic terrorists is why such atheists are a complete laughingstock to anyone with any intellectual integrity." That's what you like to think, but the truth is that 911 was pretty mainstream, for Islam.
There was widespread support for 911 among Muslims. Whole countries are operated on repressive religious grounds, mostly now in Islam, but also Israel (an apartheid state run by religious kooks bent on stealing all the land their ancient forbearers stole by genocide invasion).
As far as the average Muslim is concerned Hamas struck a justified retaliatory blow, a great victory for Allah. Just look at the widespread support for the attack, particularly among the neighbors of Israel.
"The childish New Atheist movement had very little to do with the decline of Christianity" I didn't say the New Atheists were the sole or even primary winners.
We won, therefore the need for the New Atheists faded.
"don't you mean "they" won?" No, I mean we won. ID was defeated in the courts. Obama pulled the trigger on Bin Laden. The path for the decline of religion has been set and is continuing apace.
OP, "Bad old arguments and tropes" There are no good arguments for god on offer.
All arguments on offer for the existence of god are unsound. The 5 Ways of Aquinas have errors based on false Aristotelian physics, as well as a variety of invalid logic and false premises. The Kalam argument is nonsense, since there is no requirement that the cosmos had a beginning. The fine tuning argument is nonsense since it treats physics relationships as free parameters. The argument from reason is nonsense since reasoning is just an evolved brain process. And on and on. All arguments for the existence of god on offer quickly break down as poorly formed nonsense.
But by all means, do you think you have a good one? I gay-run-tea I can immediately identify errors in any candidate you might wish to offer.
"Naked appeal to emotion" This guy is hilarious, appeal to emotion, coming from a priest, pot meet kettle... Now, somehow appeal to emotion is so terrible, as if priests don't use appeal to emotion every day.
"New nasty style" Again, pot meet kettle. As if being threatened with eternal torture is such a kind thing to do.
One rather conservative youtuber from Texas put it like this: "Islamophobia? Hell, I got a blowed up phobia."
"Reality as what can be seen an measured is hard to justify" Really? Somehow it is extravagant to suggest that what is evident is what is real? Somehow it is hard to justify not simply dreaming up imagined invisible spirits and demons and angels?
What a strange inversion of logic this guy uses, that believing in invisible ghosts is somehow the norm and discounting such fantasies as unevidenced imagination is somehow controversial.
"They made religion seem silly and primitive and prescientific and mythological" No, religion simply is so. Religion did that to itself by being so. All the New Atheists did was declare the obvious, the emperor has no clothes.
I mean, are you kidding me? The Bible, the Quran are just books of mythology, obviously. Young Earth Creationism. The literal transubstantiation. Intercessory prayer to an unchangeable being. The goofy costumes, props, and rituals. Nutty stories about a global flood, holy genocide, an apocalypse to come. On and on and on. Of course religion is silly and primitive, I mean, just look at it.
"We don't want an objective moral norm" Objective morality is logically impossible, and provably logically impossible from god or anything else.
"There were complaints that the leadership of the New Atheists were all old white men" Right, the Catholic church doesn't have that problem!
"Aquinas" All of his arguments are so incredibly bad, it is difficult for me to understand how anybody takes them at all seriously. As Limbaugh used to say ...with half my brain tied behind my back...
"I came from nothing and I am going to nothing" Yep, does that bother you? When I was a child I invented imaginary friends. I stopped doing that when I became an adult. It seems as though grown men will continue to invent imaginary frieds to assist in the discomfort the nothing to nothing prospect seems to induce.
Maybe if the realization of nothing to nothing bothered me I would continue to invent imaginary friends, but it doesn't, so I don't.
"your rant" I mean, did you listen to the intro of the video? Rant is clearly the order of the day.
"The brotherhood of man is inescapably a Christian idea" I don't know if this guy is operating on wishful thinking, ignorance, bias, cult indoctrination, propaganda indoctrination, or perhaps some mix of elements of all of the above.
So, Eastern cultures, all indigenous people globally, everybody on Earth who is not a Christian and had pretty much no Christian influence could never come up with these "inescapably Christian ideas".
This guy is clearly a brainwashed kook. I mean, who claims such nonsense?
Somehow, to him, this guy's culture is the only culture capable of deriving certain fundamental human sensibilities.
Rant? Just listen to the intro of the OP, you can get lots of kooky rant.
"You can't imagine no god and the brotherhood of man, you can't do that (clapping hands emphatically)" Rant? This guy is a nut. Somehow not only is religion necessary to fraternity and solidarity, it has to be Christianity! Nobody else, in all the world, in all times and places, nobody at all, has ever come up with the notions of fraternity and solidarity. Those ideas are simply impossible without Christianity. Talk about a goofy rant.
Oh, but I am being such a nasty mean old new atheist. Be nice to the guy, I mean, sure, he is denigrating the whole of humanity outside his little circle of friends, but, respect him as he disrespects the rest of humanity.
"The brotherhood of man follows from the fatherhood of god" Only for the morally bankrupt, bereft of their own innate sensibilities for fraternity and solidarity. This guy is so lacking in his own social sensibilities that not only does he need some fantasy of an imaginary super being telling him to be good, he can't imagine anybody having those innate sensibilities absent a celestial dictator.
It seems like this guy might be another David Wood.
"The brotherhood of man is inescapably a Christian idea" I don't know if this guy is operating on wishful thinking, ignorance, bias, cult indoctrination, propaganda indoctrination, or perhaps some mix of elements of all of the above.
The apparent melding of Christianity with the Republican Party also hasn't helped, but still nothing to do with Dawkins or Hitchens.
I'm curious why you think political parties have influence on Christian beliefs. I would assume it would be the other way around. Why and how would influxes of Christians to one party or the other lead to a decrease in Christian belief among a population as a whole?
Re 'the brotherhood of man'. I am with the good bishop Barron (aka 'this guy') on this. We in Europe (and the US is a recent offshoot of Europe) have been swimming in the sea of Christianity for two millennia. Though all moral systems have to rest on at least some evolved characteristics, it's too easy to think that our present western moral worldview is completely natural. Tom Holland, author of Dominion, is good on this. He's a classical historian and knows something about ancient Greek and Roman society. Try this video. What worries me is that this era seems to be coming to an end.
StardustyOnce you learn modern physics you will see that the goofy ideas of Aquinas evaporate as just so much silly ancient mythology.
You tried to make this point a long time ago with Cal Mezger - and you failed miserably. Metaphysics is not physics. I've taken several years of physics and not once did we delve into that subject. Not once did we discuss 'per accidents' and 'per se' causal series or 'actualization' or 'substance' or 'form'. If I wanted someone to teach me about Aquinas' ideas I'd have to walk to the other side of the university campus. You've learned nothing.
"I've taken several years of physics and not once did we delve into that subject." Then you should know that Aristotelian physics is only presented in modern physics education as an example of mistakes ancient people made.
Then you went on to learn modern physics, which demonstrates that Aristotelian physics is superficial nonsense.
"Not once did we discuss 'per accidents' and 'per se' causal series or 'actualization' or 'substance' or 'form'." Of course not. Typically alchemy is not covered in chemistry class, astrology is not covered in astronomy class, and phrenology is not covered in psychology class.
Those are all ancient mistakes and superstitions that have no place in a modern curriculum, except as an occasional mention of the mistakes people made in the past.
"If I wanted someone to teach me about Aquinas' ideas I'd have to walk to the other side of the university campus." Right, you would have to go to some corner of the campus where the ancient superstitions were still taught, say, a Catholic church.
Aquinas used a superficial analysis of motion, causality, heat, and properties. His analysis is childish by modern standards and teaches nothing of any modern value on those subjects.
David, "We in Europe (and the US is a recent offshoot of Europe) have been swimming in the sea of Christianity for two millennia." Right, and how very brotherly, what with endless protracted wars, power mad kings and queens, global conquest with Christian missions at the tip of the spear, extremely stratified societies. How very brotherly is the history of Christianity.
"it's too easy to think that our present western moral worldview is completely natural." Yes, it is easy to think of morality as natural.
For example, I can greatly improve on the Ten Commandments in a few seconds, so can you.
Go ahead, give it a try. If you were god, knowing what you know now, what would you add to the Ten Commandments to make them more brotherly?
Hello SDP, You are conflating Christianity with Christians. As for improving on the Ten Commandments, it's already been done. That's why it's called Christianity. Do listen to Holland. He puts it much better than I can. And he's an atheist.
24 comments:
It seems the phase of the "Nehru Jacket" lasted longer.
As they say:
Novus Atheismus tam mortuus est quam tunicae nehru
"Can't have brotherhood of man without religion"
This guy is an idiot already, that didn't take long.
"Those are Christian ideas"
So, only Christianity can provide human solidarity? This guy is a nut.
"The brotherhood of man follows from the fatherhood of god"
Did this guy get up that morning searching for the most idiotic things to say?
The brotherhood of man follows from our social sensibilities.
We are a social species. We have innate altruistic tendencies that predate and preexist Christianity.
And where is altruism and social community the strongest? Look toward the most secular societies such as Scandinavia.
But, as for the questions.
Why did New Atheism rise so quickly?
Christopher Hitchens decided to publish on religion instead of politics, and Richard Dawkins decided to publish on religion instead of evolutionary biology. At that time a number of kooks were trying to put religion into the public school classroom under the disguise of ID.
Religion brought us September 11, 2001. Then religion brought us ISIS. Religious terrorism was on a lot of people's minds.
People were interested to listen to atheists come out of the closet to unabashedly denounce the stupidity and destructiveness of religion, so articulate writers like Hitchens, Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, and Ali found an audience ripe for the message.
Why is New Atheism not such a hot topic anymore?
We won.
ID was defeated in court. Obama killed Bin Laden and defeated ISIS. Atheists are now out of the closet.
Also, Hitchens died and the other authors got tired of the subject and went back to things like the philosophy of consciousness, neuroscience, and evolutionary biology.
Some people still think they look sharp in a Nehru jacket.
Their friends probably finally shrugged and gave up on them.
All of his arguments are so incredibly bad,
Worse that thinking that a demolished refinery is actually causing the wheels of a train to move?
Worse than thinking that deceased grandfathers contribute to the motion of sticks being held by their grandchildren?
Ah Golden Oldies!
SteveK,
"Worse that thinking that a demolished refinery is actually causing the wheels of a train to move?"
So, if somebody else makes a bad argument that makes the argument of Aquinas good?
Real causation is in the present and is always mutual, thus there is no call for a first mover.
Religion brought us September 11, 2001. Then religion brought us ISIS...denounce the stupidity and destructiveness of religion
Choosing to say "religion" to lump all God-belief with radical Islamic terrorists is why such atheists are a complete laughingstock to anyone with any intellectual integrity. That's about as useful as lumping Obama with Stalin because both are political leftists.
We won.
You categorically did not. The childish New Atheist movement had very little to do with the decline of Christianity, which has been happening for far longer than Internet atheist evangelists, and did nothing whatsoever to usher in the hilarious Age of Reason they believed themselves to be heralding.
The rot of Western culture combined with, and at least partly caused by, increased material security has far more causal impact on the decline of Christianity in the West than a bunch of arrogant edgelords who couldn't reason their way out of a fifth grade debate loss. The apparent melding of Christianity with the Republican Party also hasn't helped, but still nothing to do with Dawkins or Hitchens.
Also, you said you weren't a New Atheist, so don't you mean "they" won?
Stardusty,
So, if somebody else makes a bad argument that makes the argument of Aquinas good?
It is a good indication that the "somebody" can't distinguish between a good and bad argument. Especially when they continue to make bad arguments.
So, if somebody else makes a bad argument that makes the argument of Aquinas good?
No, but a certain somebody concluded that Aquina's arguments were bad on the basis of their own bad arguments. "Essential causal series don't exist," this person argued. "Aquinas is dumb," they said.
"somebody"
Vague strawman.
"Essential causal series don't exist,"
All causation is in the present, mutual, and multilateral.
The Thomistic description of causation is nonsense.
"Aquinas is dumb,"
Strawman. Smart people 700 years ago made what are now known to be bad arguments.
Today, otherwise smart people continue to repeat those same bad arguments.
As for the First and Second ways of Aquinas, if one has the benefit of a university education or equivalent yet one still fails to grasp the absurdity of those arguments then some part of that individual is stuck in some sort of cognitive time warp, or retrograde thinking, or has some sort of reserved space for irrationality.
People are like that, highly complex and multifaceted. A genius in one field of study might be a total klutz in another.
Given the high degree of confusion you have exhibited on these subjects over the years the best suggestion I can make for you is to do a sort of personal mind cleansing, flush out all that ancient nonsense about actualization of a potential, essential series, and being in act.
Then, pick up a university physics textbook, read some Russell and Bell, and learn some things that have been discovered about how the cosmos really progresses.
You will find that all change, and thus all causation, is in the present, and occurs mutually and multilaterally. There is no necessity for a moving object to be moved in order to continue moving. Material is conserved and therefore has no call to be sustained in its existence.
Once you learn modern physics you will see that the goofy ideas of Aquinas evaporate as just so much silly ancient mythology.
"Choosing to say "religion" to lump all God-belief with radical Islamic terrorists is why such atheists are a complete laughingstock to anyone with any intellectual integrity."
That's what you like to think, but the truth is that 911 was pretty mainstream, for Islam.
There was widespread support for 911 among Muslims. Whole countries are operated on repressive religious grounds, mostly now in Islam, but also Israel (an apartheid state run by religious kooks bent on stealing all the land their ancient forbearers stole by genocide invasion).
As far as the average Muslim is concerned Hamas struck a justified retaliatory blow, a great victory for Allah. Just look at the widespread support for the attack, particularly among the neighbors of Israel.
"The childish New Atheist movement had very little to do with the decline of Christianity"
I didn't say the New Atheists were the sole or even primary winners.
We won, therefore the need for the New Atheists faded.
"don't you mean "they" won?"
No, I mean we won. ID was defeated in the courts. Obama pulled the trigger on Bin Laden. The path for the decline of religion has been set and is continuing apace.
OP,
"Bad old arguments and tropes"
There are no good arguments for god on offer.
All arguments on offer for the existence of god are unsound.
The 5 Ways of Aquinas have errors based on false Aristotelian physics, as well as a variety of invalid logic and false premises.
The Kalam argument is nonsense, since there is no requirement that the cosmos had a beginning.
The fine tuning argument is nonsense since it treats physics relationships as free parameters.
The argument from reason is nonsense since reasoning is just an evolved brain process.
And on and on.
All arguments for the existence of god on offer quickly break down as poorly formed nonsense.
But by all means, do you think you have a good one?
I gay-run-tea I can immediately identify errors in any candidate you might wish to offer.
"Naked appeal to emotion"
This guy is hilarious, appeal to emotion, coming from a priest, pot meet kettle...
Now, somehow appeal to emotion is so terrible, as if priests don't use appeal to emotion every day.
"New nasty style"
Again, pot meet kettle. As if being threatened with eternal torture is such a kind thing to do.
One rather conservative youtuber from Texas put it like this:
"Islamophobia? Hell, I got a blowed up phobia."
"Reality as what can be seen an measured is hard to justify"
Really? Somehow it is extravagant to suggest that what is evident is what is real?
Somehow it is hard to justify not simply dreaming up imagined invisible spirits and demons and angels?
What a strange inversion of logic this guy uses, that believing in invisible ghosts is somehow the norm and discounting such fantasies as unevidenced imagination is somehow controversial.
"They made religion seem silly and primitive and prescientific and mythological"
No, religion simply is so. Religion did that to itself by being so. All the New Atheists did was declare the obvious, the emperor has no clothes.
I mean, are you kidding me? The Bible, the Quran are just books of mythology, obviously.
Young Earth Creationism.
The literal transubstantiation.
Intercessory prayer to an unchangeable being.
The goofy costumes, props, and rituals.
Nutty stories about a global flood, holy genocide, an apocalypse to come.
On and on and on. Of course religion is silly and primitive, I mean, just look at it.
"We don't want an objective moral norm"
Objective morality is logically impossible, and provably logically impossible from god or anything else.
"There were complaints that the leadership of the New Atheists were all old white men"
Right, the Catholic church doesn't have that problem!
"Aquinas"
All of his arguments are so incredibly bad, it is difficult for me to understand how anybody takes them at all seriously. As Limbaugh used to say ...with half my brain tied behind my back...
"I came from nothing and I am going to nothing"
Yep, does that bother you? When I was a child I invented imaginary friends. I stopped doing that when I became an adult. It seems as though grown men will continue to invent imaginary frieds to assist in the discomfort the nothing to nothing prospect seems to induce.
Maybe if the realization of nothing to nothing bothered me I would continue to invent imaginary friends, but it doesn't, so I don't.
Why did you delete your rant only to repost it? Are you OK?
Your concern for my wellbeing is touching indeed.
"your rant"
I mean, did you listen to the intro of the video? Rant is clearly the order of the day.
"The brotherhood of man is inescapably a Christian idea"
I don't know if this guy is operating on wishful thinking, ignorance, bias, cult indoctrination, propaganda indoctrination, or perhaps some mix of elements of all of the above.
So, Eastern cultures, all indigenous people globally, everybody on Earth who is not a Christian and had pretty much no Christian influence could never come up with these "inescapably Christian ideas".
This guy is clearly a brainwashed kook. I mean, who claims such nonsense?
Somehow, to him, this guy's culture is the only culture capable of deriving certain fundamental human sensibilities.
Rant? Just listen to the intro of the OP, you can get lots of kooky rant.
"You can't imagine no god and the brotherhood of man, you can't do that (clapping hands emphatically)"
Rant? This guy is a nut. Somehow not only is religion necessary to fraternity and solidarity, it has to be Christianity! Nobody else, in all the world, in all times and places, nobody at all, has ever come up with the notions of fraternity and solidarity. Those ideas are simply impossible without Christianity. Talk about a goofy rant.
Oh, but I am being such a nasty mean old new atheist. Be nice to the guy, I mean, sure, he is denigrating the whole of humanity outside his little circle of friends, but, respect him as he disrespects the rest of humanity.
"The brotherhood of man follows from the fatherhood of god"
Only for the morally bankrupt, bereft of their own innate sensibilities for fraternity and solidarity. This guy is so lacking in his own social sensibilities that not only does he need some fantasy of an imaginary super being telling him to be good, he can't imagine anybody having those innate sensibilities absent a celestial dictator.
It seems like this guy might be another David Wood.
Your concern for my wellbeing is touching indeed.
That's what friends are for.
Stardusty,
"The brotherhood of man is inescapably a Christian idea"
I don't know if this guy is operating on wishful thinking, ignorance, bias, cult indoctrination, propaganda indoctrination, or perhaps some mix of elements of all of the above.
It appears he is operating on historical fact.
Kevin,
The apparent melding of Christianity with the Republican Party also hasn't helped, but still nothing to do with Dawkins or Hitchens.
I'm curious why you think political parties have influence on Christian beliefs. I would assume it would be the other way around. Why and how would influxes of Christians to one party or the other lead to a decrease in Christian belief among a population as a whole?
Re 'the brotherhood of man'. I am with the good bishop Barron (aka 'this guy') on this. We in Europe (and the US is a recent offshoot of Europe) have been swimming in the sea of Christianity for two millennia. Though all moral systems have to rest on at least some evolved characteristics, it's too easy to think that our present western moral worldview is completely natural. Tom Holland, author of Dominion, is good on this. He's a classical historian and knows something about ancient Greek and Roman society. Try this video. What worries me is that this era seems to be coming to an end.
StardustyOnce you learn modern physics you will see that the goofy ideas of Aquinas evaporate as just so much silly ancient mythology.
You tried to make this point a long time ago with Cal Mezger - and you failed miserably. Metaphysics is not physics. I've taken several years of physics and not once did we delve into that subject. Not once did we discuss 'per accidents' and 'per se' causal series or 'actualization' or 'substance' or 'form'. If I wanted someone to teach me about Aquinas' ideas I'd have to walk to the other side of the university campus. You've learned nothing.
"I've taken several years of physics and not once did we delve into that subject."
Then you should know that Aristotelian physics is only presented in modern physics education as an example of mistakes ancient people made.
Then you went on to learn modern physics, which demonstrates that Aristotelian physics is superficial nonsense.
"Not once did we discuss 'per accidents' and 'per se' causal series or 'actualization' or 'substance' or 'form'."
Of course not. Typically alchemy is not covered in chemistry class, astrology is not covered in astronomy class, and phrenology is not covered in psychology class.
Those are all ancient mistakes and superstitions that have no place in a modern curriculum, except as an occasional mention of the mistakes people made in the past.
"If I wanted someone to teach me about Aquinas' ideas I'd have to walk to the other side of the university campus."
Right, you would have to go to some corner of the campus where the ancient superstitions were still taught, say, a Catholic church.
Aquinas used a superficial analysis of motion, causality, heat, and properties. His analysis is childish by modern standards and teaches nothing of any modern value on those subjects.
David,
"We in Europe (and the US is a recent offshoot of Europe) have been swimming in the sea of Christianity for two millennia."
Right, and how very brotherly, what with endless protracted wars, power mad kings and queens, global conquest with Christian missions at the tip of the spear, extremely stratified societies. How very brotherly is the history of Christianity.
"it's too easy to think that our present western moral worldview is completely natural."
Yes, it is easy to think of morality as natural.
For example, I can greatly improve on the Ten Commandments in a few seconds, so can you.
Go ahead, give it a try. If you were god, knowing what you know now, what would you add to the Ten Commandments to make them more brotherly?
Hello SDP, You are conflating Christianity with Christians. As for improving on the Ten Commandments, it's already been done. That's why it's called Christianity. Do listen to Holland. He puts it much better than I can. And he's an atheist.
Post a Comment