Alex’s Heresies – embracing a physical reality

Victoria is likely to allow discriminatory employment practices against homosexuals and single mothers by faith-based institutions where these people offend their faiths.

Religious dogmas continue to be placed ahead of humanity for many religions and we still allow them to occupy privileged positions in our Australian society. Read The Age article here.

Alex McCullie

Conservative Christians fight back against the religion-lite of Karen Armstrong and other progressive Christians.

I mentioned previously that Richard Dawkins and Karen Armstrong contributed articles to the Wall Street Journal about God, evolution, and God’s new role, if any. Now Albert Mohler, Author, Speaker, President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, agrees with Richard Dawkins that Karen Armstrong is an atheist in disguise. He further accuses her of being loose and dangerous with her theology.

Demonstrating the point that this exchange is really not a meaningful debate, Karen Armstrong begins her essay with this amazing statement:  “Richard Dawkins has been right all along, of course — at least in one important respect.  Evolution has indeed dealt a blow to the idea of a benign creator, literally conceived.  It tells us that there is no Intelligence controlling the cosmos, and that life itself is the result of a blind process of natural selection, in which innumerable species failed to survive.”

Statements like these lead to Mohler’s assessment that Armstrong “offers a superficial and theologically reckless argument that comes down to this:  Until the modern age, believers in God were not really believers in a God who was believed to exist.” And, later, he claims that, “she makes statements that amount to elegant nonsense.” Amusingly Mohler agrees with Dawkin’s statement that:

Now, there is a certain class of sophisticated modern theologian who will say something like this: “Good heavens, of course we are not so naive or simplistic as to care whether God exists. Existence is such a 19th-century preoccupation! It doesn’t matter whether God exists in a scientific sense. What matters is whether he exists for you or for me. If God is real for you, who cares whether science has made him redundant? Such arrogance! Such elitism.”

Like Dawkins, Mohler clearly puts Armstrong and other progressive theologians into this group of sophisticated modern theologians and comes to the conclusion that:

So the exchange in The Wall Street Journal turns out to be a meeting of two atheist minds.  The difference, of course, is that one knows he is an atheist when the other presumably claims she is not.  Dawkins knows a fellow atheist when he sees one.

Perhaps surprisingly, many atheists and other non-believers have sympathy with Mohler’s conservative view that progressives like Armstrong, Borg and Crossan are being ‘too clever by half’ in promoting a very benign, slippery non-god God.

Alex McCullie

More marginalised with the Republican Party out of power, the US religious conservatives are having to work harder to continue their fight against progressive social reforms. Their target is Democratic President, Barack Obama and his attempts at long-overdue reforms of the discriminatory health care systems in the US. There is no doubt that the US has excellent health care for the well-off but it’s dismal for everyone else.

Still that doesn’t worry the Christian conservatives. They fear state-funded abortions and the breaking of their God’s law. As I have said before, a consistent theme for traditional religions is theology over humanity. Read an article from Reuters.

Religious critics and progressive and liberal religious together should show these Christian conservatives for what they really are – dangerous moralisers working against human interests.

Alex McCullie

USAToday reports that the biggest US churches are modern and evangelical – no surprise there. In an older related article USAToday describes a 20 year comparison of religious profiles in the US with a survey of generational religious changes over last 20 years.

Most religions lost ground with significant state-by-state variations. The broad non-believer category increased significantly (8% in 1990 to 15% in 2008).

One big casualty has been the mainstream Protestant churches, experiencing sharp declines. As discussed before, progressive Christian leaders present more credible religious beliefs (or perhaps  better described as non-beliefs) and progressive social attitudes to essentially the disenfranchised, liberal-minded, Christians. However the overall push towards evangelicalism and non-belief does appear ominous for progressives and liberals to compete in that  US religious market-place.

One article goes on to suggest the willingness of non-believers to declare themselves with today’s more tolerant society and as a rejection of the perceived irrelevance and destructiveness of organised religions. Child-sex scandals have dug deep into the churches’ moral standings. As an aside, modern religious people rightfully talk about the importance for religious tolerance but often do not apply that thinking to non-religious beliefs.

Alex McCullie

Despite the apologists explaining away (or attempting to explain away) any “wars” between science and religion, US film distributors have rejected latest Darwin film as too controversial. The producer, Jeremy Thomas, is quoted as saying:

“The film has no distributor in America. It has got a deal everywhere else in the world but in the US, and it’s because of what the film is about. People have been saying this is the best film they’ve seen all year, yet nobody in the US has picked it up.
“It is unbelievable to us that this is still a really hot potato in America. There’s still a great belief that He made the world in six days. It’s quite difficult for we in the UK to imagine religion in America. We live in a country which is no longer so religious. But in the US, outside of New York and LA, religion rules.
“Charles Darwin is, I suppose, the hero of the film. But we tried to make the film in a very even-handed way. Darwin wasn’t saying ‘kill all religion’, he never said such a thing, but he is a totem for people.”

Read full article here.
Alex McCullie

I hope this is not serious, from a help column in the Denver Post. Still some attitudes out of the US do not give me confidence.

Dear Margo: Our daughter started college a year ago, and we’ve noticed during her visits home that she’s not the sweet, innocent girl we sent away for higher learning. We raised her with strong Christian beliefs, but lately she’s saying that she’s joined an atheist club on campus and is questioning everything we taught her. Now my husband refuses to let her in the house and is threatening to turn her in to the FBI. I’ve tried to cure our daughter and reconcile with her, but nothing seems to work. I’ve prayed over her at night while she sleeps, enlisted friends in a phone prayer tree and even spoken to my priest about the possibility of an exorcism. I’m at my wits’ end. How can I recover my daughter and keep her from hell? — God-fearing

Dear God: Whoa, dear. While I am sympathetic to anyone’s devotion to their religion, you need to realize that your daughter is a sentient being with the right to reject your religious views if she so chooses. Your husband is pathetically misguided if he thinks he can call the FBI to report the “crime” of your daughter joining an atheists club. Ditto for the exorcism. This young woman is not possessed, demonic or doing weird things; she is merely thinking and questioning the religion she grew up with. I would encourage you to understand that all people, your daughter included, have the right to think for themselves, particularly about something as meaningful as religion. As for hell, well, she appears willing to take her chances. — Margo, contemplatively

Alex McCullie

Too much good social work and not enough hard-core religious doctrine may be the sins of US Catholic nuns. According to Associated Press, the Vatican has authorised a postolic visitation (sounds ominous) to investigate any straying from the orthodoxy. Simply to tell the nuns to spend more time with scripture and less with the needly sounds good for humanity! Read the full article here.

Alex McCullie

The Roman Catholic Church (US) rejects health care plan to poor and moderate income US families. Why? The proposed joint partnership would also subsidise abortions, against church doctrine though supported by many practicing Catholics.  Here is one of many examples of enforcing church doctrine means that the reality of current lives takes a back-seat to the mythology of the next. Read full story from Wall Street Journal.

Alex McCullie

“Are dinosaurs alive today? Scientists are becoming more convinced of their existence.

Have you heard of the ‘Loch Ness Monster’ in Scotland? ‘Nessie,’ for short has been recorded on sonar from a small submarine, described by eyewitnesses, and photographed by others. Nessie appears to be a plesiosaur.

Could a fish have developed into a dinosaur? As astonishing as it may seem, many evolutionists theorize that fish evolved into amphibians and amphibians into reptiles. This gradual change from fish to reptiles has no scientific basis. No transitional fossils have been or ever will be discovered because God created each type of fish, amphibian, and reptile as separate, unique animals. Any similarities that exist among them are due to the fact that one Master Craftsmen fashioned them all.”

Extract from Biology 1099, Accelerated Christian Education Inc. (1995). (see full article with this quotation at Fundamentalist exams on a par with A-levels TES Connect)

This beggers belief but, unfortunately, it is likely to be true… (Would moderate Christians please speak up in opposition instead of their usual muted responses). Religion is this form, lamentably all too common, continues to threaten the health of our societies. Governments in the name of pluralism seek to pander to their distortions and excesses.

Alex McCullie

Religions have a history of demanding special treatment even within well-established secular societies like Australia. It’s bad enough that they get special tax concessions but they want to continue with faith-based employment discrimination even when not relevant to the activities required. Here is an article from The Age, highlighting the pending fight between equal opportunities (21st century style) and religious sensibilities (pre-enlightened style).

Alex McCullie