First Drafts - The Prospect magazine blog

135 Responses

1. George Smith says:

   August 6, 2007 at 11:50 pm

   Wow! Such is belief, belief is what you make it. When I read a thriller I’m involved to the point of fearing for the hero’s life even though I know he’s going to come through all right. Anyway, he’s in danger only in the pages of the book not in reality. Yet part of me believes in the danger. There are so many examples of people choosing a belief and then finding the reasons to justify it. Perhaps important investigations and activities should begin with a questioning of beliefs. If only a seed of doubt had taken root in certain great minds…
2. Vitor says:

   August 8, 2007 at 4:12 am

   Based on this excellent article, I wrote a humble contribution of my own, which I posted in my weblog. I would love to receive some feedback to it, if anyone is interested. It deals with what people are mostly discussing here anyway, so it might be a good read:

   http://vitorinbrazil.blogspot.com/2007/08/der-neue-bermensch-teil-2-new-overman.html

   Thanks in advance!
3. celso lourenço says:

   August 9, 2007 at 5:25 pm

   voce se perdeu nos seu pouco conhecimento, e conclui tudo colocando-se como conhecedor.
   se enforce para conseguir enchergar o simples, e verá a DEUS.
   Pergunto: o que milhoes de pessoas veem e voce não consegue ver?.
   pergunte isso para voce mesmo.
   um abraço
   celso.
4. bill harris says:

   August 11, 2007 at 6:01 pm

   Hi Vitor,

   As I’ve read your website article with great interest, I’ll respond here in order to draw your salient points into the general conversation:

   Both you and Mr. Scutton characterize a particular atheist position as one of labeling believers brain-dead. To this I plead nolo contendere. Certain facets of belief (although not necessarily yours!) require a willful suspension of reality, whereas others do not.

   This is because, roughly speaking, traditional belief in a supernatural being requires he/she accomplish either one of two tasks in order for humans to justify their sentiment:

   (1) Describe and order events in a Providential way. This is to say that God has a “plan” which might explain and guide social behavior to a god-given end.

   (2)Offer a supernatural explanation of natural events.

   In the post-Darwin world, subscribing to either of the above makes one brain-dead, pure and simple.

   Atheist ire, moreover, is raised to fever pitch when “creationism” (ostensibly nothing more than Providentialism and/or supernaturalism) becomes an issue of public policy. Here, one’s insistence upon supernaturalist and providentialist explanations should indeed be labeled as willfully ignorance.

   In passing, I might mention that as Nietzsche never accepted Darwin anyway, why should anyone care that he thought that humans were lost without the god they themselves killed…blah, blah, blah? Newsflash: Science superseded religion because it offered a far more coherent account of how things happen, naturally speaking. So in short, we are neither lost, nor lacking anything in the sense of awe and wonder.

   And if you don’t believe me, please go read some science for yourself: fun and amazing stuff! For starters, I’d recommend Kitcher’s description of how Natural Selection works and then, perhaps, a brain teaser such as QM experiments that contradict Bell’s Inequality. ‘Far more interesting, indeed, than wondering whether or not Noah’s wife was named “Joan of Arc”.

   Equally subject to rightful derision is the Catholic justification of religion as some sort of existential choice. Here, religion-based accounts for worldly events are somehow equivocated with the scientific/natural. Vanilla, meet chocolate. Catho-thought, having been beaten down to a useless pulp by the mid-nineteenth century,now wants to claim itself as an equal based upon preference. Yet this act, in and of itself, relegates humans into two discreet categories of thinkers and those that prefer otherwise….

   Yet religion’s third basic premise will always be with us; and I’m referring, of course, to the spiritualist dimension.
   This, of course, rests within the highly personal domain of sentiment which is generally said to lie beyond the domain of public debate. One can only “Testify” to the receiving of grace, and as such become discursive only to the extent that the listener wills it so.

   Moreover, it would appear that much of religion’s recent success in The Americas is founded upon eu-(v)-angelical
   movements: the “good messenger”, as it were, simply gives testament to personal happiness through the receiving of grace.

   Fair enough. Atheists (such as myself!)have no more right to question others’ personal feelings than to have theirs treated likewise. Issues and hard feelings arise only when
   superstition blinds the light of public reason, or casts a shadow over knowledge itself.

   Bill Harris
5. ash. says:

   August 13, 2007 at 11:51 am

   the scared is the world of mythology. It produces vision. It produces a rush of energy. Better that than drugs? (I say!)
6. bill harris says:

   August 13, 2007 at 6:23 pm

   Hi Ash,

   Myths are stories we tell ourselves in order to satisfactorily fill in the gaps of our knowledge.
   This is a legitimate enterprise to the extent that we acknowledge our reason for telling stories; and that we do not permit our imaginative faculty to supersede the pursuit of knowledge itself.

   Plato, of course, understood this. In his dialogs, factual and reasoned discussion suddenly give way to playful dialog precisely at the point where none of the participants can add anything further to the concrete.

   Stories always give rushes because as humans we desire a genre of finality that science cannot provide. In today’s world, fiction serves our purpose far better than the dredging up of New and Old Testament lore because of its immediacy in addressing contemporary issues and dilemmas.

   Moreover, the “immediacy” of modern fiction refracts its own “glora” off of an established picture drawn by modern knowledge; inevitable science and progress, as it were.
   Small wonder, then, that creationism feeds off of the semi-literate.

   What answers we seek to fill in our personal gaps depends upon the content of our intellectual point of departure. Those that “dare to know” will seek different stories than those wallowing in willful ignorance.

   Bill Harris
7. ash. says:

   August 13, 2007 at 9:29 pm

   myths are a sources of great comfort. i think!
8. George Beinhorn says:

   August 14, 2007 at 5:38 am

   Oh groan. Religion from the angle of biology, anthropology, sociology, law, politics, literature, art…but, oh no, never…religion.

   They all talk about religion. They never quote those who’ve experienced it. Why doesn’t anyone quote the saints - the only true authorities.

   Want to really get down and scientific about religion (Mrs. Hitchens, Dawkins, et al.)? Then you must probe the subject using appropriate means - just as any scientist, bent on discovering truth empirically, would do. So much easier to twiddle the mind, than to spend years and years meditating and praying.

   The “reporting” on religion now taking place has about as much depth and meaning as talk-show blather. It’s all about, about, about - never probing essences. It can’t; religious experience is not about the mind, but the heart and soul.

   For more, see “Darwin, Dawkins, Distance Runner” at http://www.fitnessintuition.com.
9. Jon Jermey says:

   August 14, 2007 at 7:11 am

   This essay is a wonderful example of dodging the question. The notion of an omnipotent bearded old man in the sky is untenable? OK, let’s redefine it. Nobody REALLY believes in that grumpy old patriarch, do they?

   Unfortunately there are lots of people who do; and many of them believe that grumpy old man has told them to kill infidels, burn buildings and mutilate their children. And this hand-waving defence of whatever Scruton wants to call ‘religion’ simply gives aid and comfort to these poor deluded millions.

   If Scruton wants to defend religion, he should travel to Palestine, to the Bible Belt, to Sikh India, and find out what the majority of his co-believers actually believe in. He might not be so eager then to class his vague transcendental feelings under the same term. Happiness is great: but why bring God into it?

   See PZ Myers at http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/07/all_the_mistakes_of_the_godly.php
   for a through demolishing of this kind of nonsense.
10. Steve Meikle says:

    August 14, 2007 at 10:38 am

    I would rather be hated by an atheist like Hitchens than patronised by a liberal like Scruton.

    Holding to something you “know” to be false (ie religion if one accepts as Scruton does that its arguments are irrational) is an exercise in self indugence and futility. I might even call it masturbatory, rather like teenager still playing at believing in Santa Claus after he knows there is no such thing

    Militant atheists see the issue more clearly than liberals, obviously.

    But evangelical christians (if they remain untainted by that pernicious fanaticism miscalled fundamentalism) see it most clearly of all.

    Jesus is God and creator. I have evidence and experience and no need to waste my time trying to cobble together a sense of meaning by playing at religion just because some liberal minds fear to consistent.

    If God does not exist religion is a hoax, patronizing utterances by sociologists of relgion notwithstanding

    What a great pity theological liberals are such fuzzy thinkers when it comes to religion
11. Shalom Freedman says:

    August 14, 2007 at 10:53 am

    Any defense of religion based upon the idea of the ’sacred’ in an of itself seems to me insufficient. The idea of a personal God whose demand is for human beings to choose, and create the sacred is at the heart of the one religious tradition I know to some degree in depth, Judaism. In Judaism the idea of the sacred in and by itself without relation to the Creator is I believe, meaningless. Therefore while it is possible to see that Scruton sees something in seeing the universal inner need for the ’sacred’ he does not, from the point- of- view of the Jewish tradition anyway, see enough.
    The ultimate beginning and the ultimate end, the meaning of all, including the continued ‘life of humanity’ depend in the Jewish tradition on a personal Creator Who relates to humanity with command and compassion, with the demand that we do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God.
12. Jim says:

    August 14, 2007 at 1:45 pm

    “To repeat: religion is not the source of violence but the solution to it…”

    In the results found by the actuarial Correlates of War project, differing primary religions is one of the few factors that measurably increases the statistical likelihood of two countries going to war. Religion may put violence in a new context in some ways, as you argue, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is also demonstrably a major cause of violence.
13. Rol says:

    August 14, 2007 at 3:54 pm

    Jim,

    As you state, differences in religious belief are correlated with a higher likelihood of war. But “differences in religious belief” does not equal “religion”, so it’s not accurate to say that “religion” causes these conflicts, as you do in your last sentence.
14. Matthew Doyle says:

    August 14, 2007 at 4:07 pm

    Despite being an “militant” atheist (militant only in the sense that I don’t think religion should go unquestioned), I found this article had a few good insights. However…

    Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens do not focus on the socio-cultural functions of religions too much, I will admit, though Hitch does give some scant time to it. This does not mean that they are wrong, or dogmatic, or ignorant or any other epithet you wish to sling. They are not seeking to elucidate its functionality, they are (sucessfully, I believe) evaluating, questioning or demolishing its “truth claims.”

    The idea of the “sacred” as something which is widespread across humanity does not in any way contribute to the “new atheist” argument.

    The usefulness of the sacred is only useful to the people who use it, and as you suggest with the idea of the scapegoat, is positively harmful to the person who is required to bear the burden of that violence. Jesus was in no way an answer to violence. The Jesus story “scapegoated” plenty of people (inquisition, crusades, witch hunts). Jesus’ “sacred function” therefore (whether you believe it had basis in truth or not) failed. Countless people across the centuries have been murdered, not just Jesus. Solution to violence my eye!
15. MrWonderful says:

    August 14, 2007 at 5:37 pm

    Matthew Doyle says what I was going to say–that Harris, Hitchens, etc. do not disparage “the sacred” but do indeed disparage the factual wrongness, the brutality, the silly magical thinking, the unacknowledged contradictions, and the sheer self-satisfied ignorance that specific religions dispense and find praiseworthy.

    As Harris says in both The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation, many people discount religion as the “cause” of violent or lunatic behavior because they don’t really understand or believe that people can actually BELIEVE the (ludicrous, sadistic, etc.) things that their faith claims to be true. But, obviously, people do believe these things, both as individuals and, more destructively, in groups.

    “Religion” may serve a noble function, but religions lead people into believing pernicious nonsense and into acting horribly, and then feeling virtuous about it.

    If “religion” exists to create, validate, and help us make use of “the sacred,” for all the reasons discussed in the essay, then we need to salvage the sacred and rescue it from religion. If people’s experience of the sacred is contingent on their truly believing that an omniscient and omnipotent invisible friend watches over them (and created all 360,000 species of beetles), then the sacred is a luxury that civilization is becoming less and less able to afford.
16. mt says:

    August 14, 2007 at 10:26 pm

    The issue is like whether the murder rate would decline if we all were to start speaking French instead of English. Maybe, but there’s no resolving this question a priori, and in effect it’s a red herring. For evidence against religiosity being smart or prudent you don’t have to step back nearly so far. Advocates of religions would have us back out of the universe all together to see and appreciate their case.
17. Alan Vanneman says:

    August 14, 2007 at 11:41 pm

    Roger Scruton’s Modern Philosophy is perhaps the best book ever written by someone who takes Wagner seriously as a thinker rather than a composer. Today he argues that religion is the solution to violence rather than the cause, despite implicitly acknowledging that religion has in fact caused a lot of violence. What about all those witches, for example. Did religion “solve” violence or just murder thousands and thousands of harmless old women?

    Mr. Scruton will “explain,” of course, that burning witches is “bad” religion, not real religion at all, because, of course, real religion solves violence. It doesn’t cause it, just as Catholics will tell you that the “true Church” is always right, no matter how often the Church of the moment, which isn’t the Church at all, of course, gets it wrong.

    Worst of all, Mr. Scruton earnestly confuses the use of religion with the truth of religion. Religions don’t claim to be useful. It’s not a “whatever gets you through the night” sort of thing. It’s Truth with a capital T, Truth infinitely greater than any other sort of truth–trivia like quantum mechanics or evolution or parliamentary democracy or any other sort of fad.

    Mr. Scruton knows that people would laugh in his face if he claimed that anyone who isn’t a member of the Anglican Church is assured of eternal damnation (and that plenty of those who are members are headed in the same direction). But if we are to accept religion on its own terms, that’s what it comes down to. Anything less is mere sophistry, and that’s what Mr. Scruton has provided.
18. dave redick says:

    August 15, 2007 at 1:04 pm

    This is a long-winded, wordy, way of justifying man’s need for an emotional,’feel good’, ‘be better than others’, crutch. WHy not just buy a Prius. BTY, Hitchens book uses a small ‘g’. Dave
19. Peter Pytlowany says:

    August 15, 2007 at 2:59 pm

    G.K. Chesterton’s “Everlasting Man” is a worthy citation for those interested in this topic. This was a significant source for C.S. Lewis’s disavowal of atheism and fervent embrace of Christianity.
20. Shawn Lawsure says:

    August 15, 2007 at 5:33 pm

    While the “sacred” theory proposed here may have merit is it wise for the human race to continue on in this fashion. Now that we have identified the “reasons” behind religion can we move on and find better ways (like, with science and reason) to handle the issues.

    I guess, if you follow the logic in this article, it’s okay for a psychopath to murder someone because it’s part of his nature and it makes him feel good. Or, by killing one person, that prevents him from killing a whole bunch of people… so thank a god!

    I don’t need to continue on because it looks like other people have already made the appropriate rebuttals to the points in this article.
21. mike cordle says:

    August 15, 2007 at 7:22 pm

    Where is the place for kindness?

    Back in 1977 I turned to religion as a result of two things: reading Skinner’s Beyond Freedom and Dignity and wanting a woman who happened to be a fundamentalist Christian. Skinner’s soulless and unmoored world frightened me at the same time that I “fell in love” with a young Christian. Religion - as we know, from the same root we get the word ligament - offered a way for me to hold the center together and get the girl!

    Now, after more than a quarter century of disappointment in both religion and the girl, I find myself relatively well read and agnostic.

    I can’t hold the center of religion together philosophically and the center of atheism seems too unkind.

    Isn’t there a place for kindness? Hitchens, et al, seems so unkind; and, of course, so do so many fundamentalists. Is there no place in between?
22. ash. says:

    August 15, 2007 at 7:57 pm

    re dave redick @1.04pm. religion is uplifting, intoxicating and can produce a feeling of great elation. This goes way way beyond a “feel good” factor.

    It is a source of love. and provides rules for life - for those who feel a need for it.
23. Mark Humphrey says:

    August 15, 2007 at 10:09 pm

    The idea that religious faith, of whatever sort, is somehow essential to morality and purpose, is in error. In fact, it can be shown that faith, religious or secular, undermines the epistemological foundations of moral principle.

    Morality is a code of objective values that guides one toward the goal of living a good life–a life consistent with human potential. A good apple displays those characterisitics consistent with the nature of appleness: firm, healthy, red, sweet, juicy, etc. A good horse embodies the properties consistent with its nature: fleet, athletic, friendly, beautiful. A rotten apple, or a lame or vivious horse fall short of the natural potential of their respective species.

    A good human life is one lived in accordance with its own highest possibilities, both broadly human and particularly individual; which when achieved, bring happiness, fullfillment, completion. Moral values are those values that one ought to seek in pursuit of a good life. Moral vices are choices that one ought to avoid for the sake of protecting one’s prospects for living well.

    Thus, moral principles can be and have been (elsewhere) proven to exist, as natural facets, or facts, of human life. Just as there are facts, or principles, of auto mechanics, or economics, or physics, or biology; there are objective facts, or principles, relating to human choice in pursuit of a proper human life.

    When one throws off reason and embraces faith, one undermines the epistemological foundations necessary to establishing the existence of any fact, of any principle. For faith is antagonistic to reason.

    Reason is the process of making identifications, and logical deductions and inferences of those identifications, all based on the foundation of the evidecne of the senses. Reason builds a hierarchy of increasingly abstract, logically integrated concepts, starting with the most concrete, and reaching out to the most abstract. Within this hierarchy, every concept is logically consistent with every other concept, however remote one might be from the other.

    Faith is choosing to believe in something without good evidence of its existence, or in spite of evidence that contradicts its existence. As such, faith is incoherency. It requires that one give up the responsibility of understanding, of struggling to make sense of the world, for the sake of some Thing imagined to be more important or virtuous than the proper exercise of one’s mind. To embrace faith is to disregard the vitally important distinction between what is real, and what is imagined.

    Obliterating the distinction between the real and the imaginary means that one obliterates facts. For facts can be established only through the exercise of reason, man’s natural means of acquiring knowlege. Limit or sabetage or denigrate reason, and one thereby limits, sabetages, or denigrates facts. But moral principles are facts, the class of facts relating to the logic of human choice and purpose. To attack reason by upholding faith–religious or secular–is to assault the very foundations of moral principle.

    The great virtue of the Enlightenment was its respect for the validity, power,and reach of reason. Ethan Allen, American Revolutionary, wrote a tract entitled: “Reason, the Oracle of Man”. To resurrect religion as somehow primary to man’s well-being, is to empower the primitive, and bring us nearer to the ideals of the Middle Ages.
24. John Martin says:

    August 16, 2007 at 4:05 am

    I have been an atheist since childhood and an ordained priest in the Anglican church for over thirty years and it has never been a problem for me. It gave me access to the distilled truths of the ages and allowed me to preach one basic sermon which was that we Christians are to be the Christ in the lives of others, ie: servant-hood. I do not believe that the distinction between right and wrong can be properly made and is not useful. Life simply presents us with a series of choices which are highly influenced by the way we are brought up. This attitude has enabled me to enter into helpful relations with murderers, incest perpetrators, ex-convicts and others, much to the chagrin of my wife. The Christian dynamic of confession, forgiveness, absolution leading to new life is equally true for the secular as for the religious. Before a person can lead a full life they must face up to their cock-ups (sin}and admit their failings to whoever needs to know for your own sake (congruency}as well as for the peace of mind of others. As scripture says, “the truth” {what ever that is}”will set you free.
    As for Christopher Hitchins, I feel sorry for him, cutting himself off from the wisdom and experience of the ages. There is a foolish belief that contemporary people know so much more and are some how better for it. What a delusion from someone so intelligent
25. anthony steyning says:

    August 16, 2007 at 1:25 pm

    The problem with Roger Scruton is that he loves to believe, needing the comfort of it, the warmth of it, first selling us the line that atheism is the root of all evil and now that it’s not about God but that we can’t live without the sacred, sneeking in another one through the backdoor. It’s obvious that HE can’t, needing the circus of robes and incense to still his fears. Which is fine, so do the millions. Just don’t call yourself a philosopher, when you haven’t the courage for it.
26. annie morgan says:

    August 16, 2007 at 1:35 pm

    It isn’t ‘religion’ per se that causes all the trouble, it is the dogma and doctrines therein. No matter how you look at it, when followers of a religion insist that theirs is the only one, violence is the result.
27. ash. says:

    August 16, 2007 at 9:09 pm

    think the concept of the sacred is about submission. perhaps it’s root being in the (lack of) submission to one’s biological father. nothing wrong with that, mind!
28. Today’s top links (about books) at First Drafts - The Prospect magazine blog says:

    August 21, 2007 at 8:18 pm

    [...] for blogs too—the most popular and commented-on post on First Drafts by a long way is the one linked to Roger Scruton’s article on atheist [...]
29. Tony Kelly says:

    August 22, 2007 at 2:51 am

    Roger Scruton notes that for Hegel “Monotheism is a form of self-creation as the spirit learns to recognise itself”. The next step is for the human spirit to recognise its real purpose. This is explained in “Resolving Aristotle’s Antinomy of Creation”, paper No. 96 on the Philica.com website.
30. elena balyberdina says:

    August 22, 2007 at 9:55 am

    It seems to me that there is an alternative way to deal with one’s realized aggression. Mr. Scruton’s hypothesis that humans long for some kind of purging themselves from accumulated violence through sacrificing the “sacred” seems far-fetched and exotic. How about not being aggressive in the first place or if one happens to be - say i am sorry?

    The necessity of killing of an innocent man to undo of one’s sins against him seems to be an awful perversion of human psychology and merely reflects some kind of a weird problem Scruton might have. What does Nietzsche have to do with any of that? Nietzsche’s hypothesis was at last that provacative. He entertained an idea, which is very compatible with the nature of a modern man, namely, who would do anything in order to promote his agenda and if it takes a posing as a sacrificed man, he will do it. Nietzsche was much more skeptical about man’s nature and it seems that Scruton misunderstood the latter. It happens in philosophy anyway.
    In conclusion, it is very bizarre to read this piece, because on the one hand it might have some “explanatory power” of religion and on the other hand reveal pathology of it and necessity to do something about it.
31. monkeywicked says:

    August 30, 2007 at 9:56 pm

    Reading both Scruton’s article and the many responses to it, I became increasingly aware of how problematic the word “religion” is here. Everyone seems to have a specific and specialized understanding of the term, and often that leads to attacks and defenses of completely different targets. Some people are attacking cosmological orthodoxy while others are defending spiritual individualism–two very different concepts.

    I found Scruton’s article illuminating–it helped me understand some of the aesthetic qualities I seek out in literature–but I think he makes a mistake if he believes he is talking about ALL religion. In fact, I see this essay as being a definition of one possible form religion can take, a potentially ideal form. It is one definition of religion, but it’s certainly not the definitive definition. When he writes, “Religion is not the source of violence but the solution to it” what he really should be saying is, “Religion, as I have described it here, could be a solution to violence and our other dark human impulses.”

    Others, such as Hitchens, might argue, “Religion, as I have defined it, is one of the root causes of ignorance and violence.” And he ALSO might be correct.

    Once these semantics are cleared up, many of the arguments simply disappear.
32. Andrew Wright says:

    September 5, 2007 at 2:56 am

    I have admired Scruton since I read a work on basic philosophy by him quite a few years ago. However, I must say that this piece, while instructive and insightful as one would expect, is far from effective as a defence of religion. Apologists for religion who have to adopt an anthropological standpoint are defeated before they begin. Myth and ritual, in order to be effective, must be viscerally accepted as true by participants. As Scruton says they must “know not what they do”. The best an approach such as this can achieve is to persuade those of us attached to objective truth to leave the poor dupes to their illusions, which is a stance I refuse to adopt on principle. This is not helped by the fact that the narratives in traditional religious myths are all pre-modern and it is hardly surprising if they have difficulty coming to grips with the issues facing today’s world.

    Scruton also scates around the other primary motif of religious myths, the sexual taboo, which causes untold individual misery throughout the world, with little benefit to show for it. In modern competitive merit-based societies, there is no longer any great need to ensure inheritance through legitimate progeny. And modern understanding of the phenomenon of homosexuality is causing a slow-mothion train-wreck as traditional religion tries to enforce the taboo.

    Certainly the point about the contribution of religion as sublimated scapegoating to conflict-suppression within a social group is well-argued and fairly convincing. However, the obvious point that when the scapegoat is another social or religious group this can lead to amplification rather than suppression of violence remains the elephant in the room. At this stage, I’m still with Hitchens.
33. alefbet says:

    October 9, 2007 at 2:39 am

    Response to Hitchen’s basic question.

    Yes, there are monarchs who have acted within and in keeping with the moral guidelines of their religious systems.

    Whether or not their morality overlaps or subsumes Hichens’ morality, is the real question.

    In as much as his morality is derivative of Judeo-Christian morality, there is a significant overlap. In as much as it is a failure to live up this morality, entirely subsumed.

    ***

    Not all religions are equal. Islam is by far the worst. It allows taqqriqua, which is to say, sanctioned falsehood, and at a philosophical level, constitutes the most primitive theology available to man. I.e. what we do is the will of Allah. To the point that Ghazali seems to deny the physical effect of the guillotine, to the point that we must be slaves to Allahs will.

    The entirely analy retentive nature of this religion is exemplified by its adherents nearly universal inability to even so much as use as synonym the word God, in place of Allah.

    ***

    Second to Islam comes Hinduism, and Judaism. As backward as they are old.

    ***
    By all means, Christianity is the most sophisticated, most hypocritical, most demanding, least realistic, and most soiled of them all. Its followers are preoccupied not with loving, but with talking about forms of love they do not care in the slightest to understand. If they were worth a trifling of their avowed values, they would be doctors, medics, and philosophers… not a bunch of pedantic, chatterbox intellectual dimwits. The Church is the greatest barrier to Christ, and to any normative divinity. It stands in the way of truth as much as Bush stands in the way of democracy.

    ***
    That said, what is worse than an uninformed atheist? One which reduces everything to formulations of game theory, Monte Casino outcomes, and reductionist rationalism? His only defence of his superficiliaty are the shells of empty concepts, democracy, freedom… for which he has neither time, nor any true interest, because he is too busy looking out for his gonads, his stomach, and his wallet.

    ***

    Basic message, don’t get carried away.
34. Carol Berger says:

    February 27, 2008 at 3:42 pm

    I thought you might be interested in some of my work in the sacred and profane and especially my work on the sacred in Wagner. Recently re-published essay from my collection, “Sounds of the Spirit”, entitled “Protecting the Restorative In Spiritual Drama” which is about Wagner and the relationship of sacred music to music of a spiritual nature.

    Finally look for my piece on “Inperfect Messengers, Perfect Art” dealing with divine grace in the works of flawed human artists.

    If interested, please email me privately at cberger
35. Chris Longfoot says:

    December 14, 2008 at 10:55 pm

    I’ve just come across this essay, and found it very stimulating. Most of what I could say has been already said - but I would like to add the following.
    If it had not been for “an experience of the sacred” when my husband had a terminal illness, I would not have returned to Christianity. Just accepting the Bible as the word of God and written to be taken literally I found nonsensical- without experiencing the sacred I repeat there would be no Christianity for me!
    The Bible as myth does make sense. The problem with the myth approach becomes a problem with interpretation.
    I’m particularly drawn to Marcus Borg’s interpretation of the Adam and Eve myth. Put simply, when we become self-conscious we also become aware of our alienation from each other, God and the world. This naturally causes anxiety - and the way to overcome this anxiety is to reconnect with God and the world - the REAL purpose of religion.