Chickenshit ***** wrote
http://heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,11821210%5E24909,00.ht
ml
God lives, as atheism dwindles
02jan05
An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support - John Buchan
haha, he made a funny. appeal to humor.
IN 1960, Time magazine declared God dead. Half the world seemed
officially atheist and the rest were expected to soon join.
The tables have obviously turned.
how so?
Now, only about 2.4 per cent of the world's population is considered
atheist,
according to the World Almanac, and the numbers are dwindling.
china alone is far more than 2.4% and they are overwhelmingly atheist.
Meanwhile, spirituality is experiencing a global resurgence.
how do you know this?
In his book The Twilight of Atheism: The Rise and Fall of Disbelief in the
Modern World, historian and theologian Alistair McGrath examines where
the atheist dream went wrong and explains why faith is destined to play a
central role in the 21st century.
because the country with the largest nuclear arsenal is being run by a
religious fanatic?
Interestingly, he also makes it clear that, despite a resurgence in faith,
Western Christianity has not recovered from a faith crisis of the '60s.
the only reason it would seem more people have "faith" is because religious
fanatics breed like rabbits.
McGrath says the origins of atheism lay primarily in a protest against the
power, privilege, and corruption of church institutions -- beginning with
the
French Revolution and ending about the time of the collapse of the Berlin
Wall in 1989.
that's what mcgrath says, but he's completely wrong. the origins of atheism
is the simple fact that religion makes no sense.
The atheism that swept across Europe in the 19th century and dominated
most
of the Western world in the 20th century was encouraged by a cerebral
Christianity with its emphasis on cold doctrines, which might have engaged
the mind but left emotions and imagination untouched.
there is no such thing as "cerebral christianity". one either believes in
jeebus or one uses his brain. (for you booleanists, this would be an XOR)
Atheism envisioned a glorious future for a humanity freed from outdated
dogmas and moral restrictions, with the unlimited potential of scientific
advancement and the human imagination. Humans could not only be good
without God, but they could be much better.
and i have yet to see this disproved.
God was chased out of heaven by Marx, banished to the unconscious by
Freud and announced by Nietzsche to be deceased. Well, not quite.
and god was ultimately sent packing to the depths of hell by logic.
McGrath, a lapsed atheist, documents what he says are the philosophical
inconsistency and moral failures of atheism, especially when it acquired
political power, for example in the guise of communism.
communism, unlike atheism, actually was a protest against power and
privilege. atheism is based on logic and reason, communism is based on
hatred of the rich.
to discard reason because of the moral failings of an economic theory is
quite disjointed.
But he also documents religion's "failures of imagination" and complicity
with oppression that often fostered an environment in which atheism could
thrive.
Atheism proclaimed science was God. But scientific advances often
coincided with moral confusion and environmental disaster.
you're leaving out the crucial piece here that links everything together:
greed and militarism.
Science was expected to reveal a universe that was random and mechanical.
Instead, science uncovered even more layers of intricate order that
suggested
an intelligent design.
no, science revealed a universe that is random and mechanical. nothing
suggests "intelligent design" (isn't this a redundancy?)
The discovery that the universe began with a creation-like Big Bang around
13 billion years ago encouraged the argument for a creator as the first
cause
of nature.
what "caused" the big bang is irrelevant. anything outside of the universe
does not exist. the universe is spacetime. anything "before" the big bang
is outside of spacetime and therefore does not exist. therefore the "cause"
does not exist.
The discovery that the fundamental laws of nature contained constants that
appear to have been fine-tuned so that the cosmos would eventually yield
intelligent life, lent new credence to the design argument for God's
existence.
these "constants" were not "fine-tuned". it is probable there is a wide
margin of error within which life, as we know it, could still exist.
with an even wide margin, life, as we would not know it, could still exist.
claiming that nature is tailored to life is like saying a hole is tailored
to the puddle.
Quantum theory made the cosmos seem more like a thought than like a
machine.
this makes no sense.
Modern science tells us the that our universe cannot sustain itself, that
it's
dependent on something outside of itself, and that our universe had a
beginning.
our universe did not have a "beginning", it had an asymptote; it will not
sustain itself.
We are seeing not a battle between God and science, but a discovery of God
in science.
we are seeing no such animal.
The German physicist Max Born, who pioneered quantum mechanics, said:
"Those who say that the study of science makes a man an atheist must be
rather silly people."
probably because quantum mechanics has nothing to do with religion.
Einstein said the world was like a well-constructed crossword puzzle. "You
can suggest any number of words, but only one will fit all the facts," he
said.
and einstein was a nonbeliever.
Science can't "observe" God. But we can all observe a universe that yields
evidence of either God's handiwork, or an amazing accident.
more like an accident. and not very amazing at that.
The evidence has to point one way or the other. And scientific discoveries
of
this past century clearly show that our universe is no accident, that
there is an
intelligent designer behind it all.
which scientific discoveries? and intelligent designer is redundant. if it
was designed, obviously the designer was intelligent!
Albert Camus said death was philosophy's only problem. One of atheism's
great failings is that it cannot offer any comfort in the face of death.
you keep reusing the same old logical phallacy: argument from authority!
i could distort the writings of carl sagan to sound not only theist, but
insulting to atheists, if i tried hard enough.
David the Psalmist said we could not hide from God. Ever. Anywhere. We
either faced him in this life or the next -- one way or the other.
and now you're trying to prove the bible by using the bible!
i'm still not convinced!
--
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