| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Michael Gray" |
| Date: |
25 Mar 2007 08:47:25 PM |
| Object: |
Atheists can only trust their reason, apparently. |
Burkhard Müller
The concept of God – and why we don't need it
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-03-22-bmuller-en.html
"In these newly religious times, it no longer seems superfluous to
rearm the atheists with arguments. When push comes to shove, atheists
can only trust their reason, writes Burkhard Müller.
Some years ago I wrote a book entitled Drawing a Line – A Critique of
Christianity [Schlußstrich – Kritik des Christentums], which argued
that Christianity was false: not only in terms of its historical
record, but fundamentally, as a very concept. I undertook to uncover
this falsity as a contradiction in terms. While I do not wish to
retract any of what I said at the time, I would now go beyond what I
argued then in two respects.
For one thing, I no longer wish to adopt the same aggressive tone. The
book was written at the beginning of the 1990s, when I was still
living in Würzburg (in Bavaria), a bastion of Roman Catholicism. It is
a prosperous city, powerful and conscious of the fact, which made it
more than capable of provoking my ire; whereas for thirteen years now
I have been living in the new East of Germany, where roughly eighty
per cent of the population no longer recognize Christianity even as a
rumour, where it appears as the exception, not the rule, and where one
has the opportunity to reflect on the truth of the claim "this is as
good as it gets".
The second point is this: it seems to me that institutionalized,
dogmatic Christianity, as expressed in the words of the Holy
Scriptures and – more succinctly still – in the Credo, is losing
ground. This is not only at the expense of a stupid and potentially
violent strain of fundamentalism, as manifested in Islam and the
American religious Right, but in Europe mostly at the expense of an
often rather intellectually woolly and mawkish eclecticism. I will not
be dealing here with any theological system in its doctrinal sense. I
want rather to sound out the religious impulse, even – and especially
– in its more diffuse form, and to get to its root. That is to say, to
enquire of the concept of God whether in practice it accomplishes what
is expected of it.
For people do not believe in God because they have been shown the
proof of his existence. All such proofs presented by philosophers and
theologians through the millennia have, by their very nature, the
regrettable flaw that a proof can only refer to the circumstances of
existing things, whereas God, as the predecessor of all circumstances,
comes before, so to speak, and outside the realm of the demonstrable.
These proofs, then, all have the character of something tacked on,
giving the impression of a thin veneer on a very hefty block of wood.
Belief in God, where it does not merely arise out of an unquestioned
tradition, demands a spontaneous act on the part of the believer which
the believers themselves will tend to describe as an act of faith,
their opponents as a purely arbitrary decision; one, nevertheless,
that always stems from a need of some kind. People believe in God
because along with this belief goes an expectation that a particular
wish will be fulfilled for them, a particular problem solved. What
kinds of need are these, and how can God meet them?
First of all, of course, we ought to come to an agreement on who or
what this God might actually be – not in the sense of a definition or
pointed theological explanation, but simply so that we do not talk at
cross purposes. I would say: the source of the world, personified. In
Christianity, God is most often expressed as the Creator. His two most
important specifications are contained within this idea: first, that
he is separate, in substantial terms, from the world – in contrast to
pantheistic ideas which see him as a kind of refined fluid that is
dissipated everywhere and which, as Goethe rightly observed, represent
nothing more than a polite form of atheism. Second, that despite this
separation the world remains entirely focused on him. This rules out
the gods of Epicurus, who inhabit the wedge-shaped spaces between the
spherical worlds and do not concern themselves with anything, as it
does the Theistic concept that sees God as the watchmaker who has
constructed and set up the world, and thereafter left it to its own
devices. It is also questionable to what extent the deus absconditus,
the "hidden God", who has gained his popularity through the horrors of
the modern age and who is supposed to gain veracity – paradoxically –
precisely through his absence, might fit into this concept, or whether
it would be better to put him aside, just like the god of the Theists,
as a kind of pensioner of the cosmos. I propose to stick to what both
classical Christianity and any dogmatically unencumbered present-day
believer mean when they talk of "God".
People think they can find something in God that they feel is sadly
lacking in the visible world. This urge must be very old, perhaps as
old as mankind itself; for allusions to religious belief can be found
even in the traces of the most ancient civilizations. People who think
of themselves as atheists have to consider the following argument: you
are back in the same position as animals before anything began to dawn
in their heads; is this really what you call progress, and the entire
history of mankind merely a confused detour, starting out from brute
physical laws only to return from whence it came? It is not easy to
answer this question in the affirmative.
And what are the qualities ascribed to God in order to satisfy that
great human thirst? A catalogue, necessarily somewhat approximate,
might run as follows: God provides the explanation for the world as it
is, which would otherwise remain utterly inexplicable; God is the
guarantor of good, in the heart of man as well as in the way of the
world; it is God the Eternal – no less and none other – that is set in
opposition to the alarming emptiness of time.
That there is something – and not nothing – is actually the great
miracle. In comparison, all the other remarkable things, including the
existence of living things and of human beings, pale into
insignificance as mere modifications. The world cries out for a
reason, for an explanation. Yet if one thinks about it, one will
realize that this yearning must, at an absolutely fundamental level,
remain insatiable: for to explain, to account for something, is to do
nothing more or less than to relate two facts to each other, one as a
consequence, the other as its precondition. Yet where does this
precondition come from? The earth, say the Hindus, rests upon an
elephant's back; that is why it does not fall into an abyss. But where
is the elephant standing? Well, upon the shell of an even bigger
tortoise. And the tortoise? It rests upon the coils of an immense
winding serpent. And the snake? When one gets to this point, says the
old wag Bertrand Russell, one is told by the devout Hindu: "Suppose we
change the subject!"
Russell can smile, because the Hindus have failed to recognize the
nature of gravity, which does not, of course, simply operate
downwards, but into the centre of the attracting mass, thereby
enabling the globe to balance freely. But where, then, did gravity
come from, and how does it exert its effect? Modern science has not
come any closer at all to explaining this; indeed, it is precisely
gravity that has shown itself especially resistant to all attempts at
reduction. It does what it always has done: present itself to the
observer as an immovable, primary fact, impossible to elucidate any
further: this is as far as it goes. Or, as is said in Faust (Part Two,
Act IV), "Der Philosoph, er weiß es nicht zu fassen,/Da liegt der
Fels, man muß ihn liegen lassen" ["As wise men know, their reason it
surpasses. / The rock lies evermore where it has lain"], with the
bitter afterthought "Zuschanden haben wir uns schon gedacht" ("We've
racked our brains, to our disgrace, in vain.").[1] And even if it did
go any further – what would be the use? Every scientific model that is
advanced affords nothing more than a breathing space, before we
descend to the next turn of the screw in the ceaseless regression,
like a ladder in a stocking that can never stop unravelling.
Everything that exists wants an explanation, and every explanation
turns round and presents itself as a new riddle.
At this stage it seems highly advisable to stipulate that it was God
who created the world. This is how the Holy Scriptures begin. So what
purpose devolves upon God? To bring the endless regression of
questions to a conclusion. Yet this is only achievable through the
concept and manifestation of God as the end to all questions. God is
that which needs no further justification or explanation; God is what
is there. Belief in God entails the desire to have things this way;
love of God entails experiencing this as a blessed relief. But if one
treats the matter not from a psychological point of view, but a
logical and economic one, it will be noticed that the same outcome can
be reached for considerably better value: one does not see God, one
has to explicitly summon up the courage to believe in the invisible.
That takes strength. Were we to stick with the visible and were we
willing to acknowledge its intransigent majesty, allowing it to be
founded upon nothing but itself, we would still have to deal with the
inaccessibility of the original mystery, albeit this time with
considerably less expenditure of reverence and assertive energy.
Strictly speaking, anyone who believes in God is immediately faced not
with one, but three basic unexplained facts: first, God himself; then,
the creative impulse that starts out from him (for why should the
Almighty condescend to such small-scale handicraft?); and finally, the
disparity between the perfect original creator and such a botched job.
Plato sensed this problem of a perfect God having created the
imperfect world and introduced the intermediate authority of his
"demiurge" – the craftsman to whom God delegated the creation of the
world; this is an attempt to dodge the question by creating a
buck-passing, pseudo-official hierarchy. It can't work.
To spare God such embarrassments, our world has been dubbed "the best
of all possible worlds", which from the very outset represents an
untenable claim, as we have no possible point of comparison.
Schopenhauer described it, more cogently, as the worst of all possible
worlds, because, he argued, if it were even just a little worse, it
would no longer be capable of existing. Let us consider it calmly and
on its own terms, without the fruitless yearning described by
Nietzsche as the behaviour of "backworldsmen" ("Hinterweltlertum");
that is to say, the desire to find out at all costs what is behind the
world, as if it were a flat façade. Then we can be content with our
existence, just as it is. The Latin book I use to teach states "He who
looks up to the stars does not deny the existence of God". But why
should the stars not be enough for the observer? Their spheres are
gigantic beyond all imagining; they outlast us and are silent. In that
respect they resemble perfectly the thing which we generally imagine
as God. They render him – as a mere duplication of their majesty –
dispensable. Let us show ourselves worthy of their great silence by
replying, as best we can, with a small silence of our own. They are
mysterious, yes; but a compact, single mystery. As mysteries go, that
is the least we must expect.
Incidentally, it is not only believers, but scientists too, who cannot
stand this silence; they insist on replacing it with a Big Bang.
Nothing before it, no space, no time; then everything develops in an
expansive act of monumental scope. And beyond that, we are not to be
permitted to ask where it came from: it is this above all that the
theory of the Big Bang has in common with the old God. I have no means
of verifying how good or bad the mathematics and empirical data are
that are being used here; it is enough for me to see how urgent a need
is gratified by the Big Bang to be convinced that we are dealing with
a pure theological fantasy – one, moreover, rasher than theology
itself, since it is unaware of what it is doing and does not realize
that nothing is achieved by deriving the world from within the world.
God explains nothing; he explains less than nothing, since the
assumption of his existence introduces more problems than if one were
to assume nothing. Amazement was the act that gave birth to
philosophy. Why was it, then, along with everything that followed,
especially science, so keen to make that amazement disappear at all
costs – as if it were its inverse duty, when it came to the crunch, to
see to it that amazement was no more? I suggest leaving amazement well
alone, just as it came into the world: no other emotion that
accompanies the realization will turn out to be more satisfying.
Secondly, let us consider God as the foundation of good. That would
make him, first of all, the guarantor of morality. He is said to have
established morality through the enactment of appropriate
commandments, to keep watch over their observance, and to sit in
judgement at the end of time, or at the end of each individual life,
on every single person according to the stipulation of the
commandments (though, since humans must inevitably fall short of these
rigorous demands, divine grace also plays its part). To what degree
morality is an exclusive property of humans, set up expressly by God
for men, I shall not discuss further here; at any rate it seems to me
that very clear intimations of it can be found among the animals that
live socially.
One point in particular is worthy of interest: that the possibility of
moral behaviour is bound up with one's regard for the law and that
there is no chance of ever doing and respecting what is right unless
it is marked and sanctioned as such by the higher authority. Such a
form of morality is no different from criminal law. It holds that the
good do good because they love the good, and the bad because they are
afraid of being punished. Only the second group fall foul of the
Criminal Code – or rather, all humans are regarded as villains, as a
precaution. Fair enough as far as it goes, as no injustice is done to
the good. They too are reliant in the end, in terms of their
lifestyle, on wrongdoers being curbed – in the cold, reasoned form of
an "if X, then Y", which leaves no doubt as to the seriousness of Y.
Now it is certainly those cases dealt with by criminal law that
represent the hard core of what any moral code must regulate. But this
law has nothing to do with true ethics. Ethical behaviour is its own
reward; it neither hopes for reward nor fears punishment. In this
sense the Holy Scriptures do not justify any ethics; someone who does
what is approved and refrains from what is frowned on only because he
is thinking of heaven and hell is and remains an egoistic opportunist
and nothing more. An ethical code that finds authentication through
law is practical, but worthless as ethics. It could be said, with only
slight overstatement, that a female monkey with children of her own
who adopts another monkey's child (a far from rare occurrence) is
behaving more ethically than a believer who does the right thing
because of God – since there is no room in her brain for the concept
of a judging God. At any rate I would, however, acknowledge, in the
believer's favour, that the notion of "good" is no more alien to him
than it is to a monkey and that he misunderstands himself if he
believes that he must attribute his natural goodness to God.
Having come this far, I fear that it is impossible to avoid the old
subject of theodicy. To complete the picture I have to discuss it,
even though I cannot hope to say anything new in this area that has
been covered so comprehensively by others. Albert Camus expressed the
problem in the pithy sentence "Either God is good, and therefore not
all-powerful; or else he is all-powerful, in which case he is not
good." Older religions, for instance Judaism, can be content with an
ambivalent God who has room in his nature for darkness and even evil –
think of the Angel of Death sent by Jehovah over Egypt to strangle all
first-born. This, at any rate, is not the God that Christianity takes
for granted; its God is Love. Here, the difficulty presents itself
that there is manifestly so much hate in the world. How could God
allow Auschwitz to happen? To this there can be no answer that acquits
God, in his capacity as God. There should, of course, be no attempt to
talk one's way out of this with reference to the "Lord in his
mysterious wisdom"; everything about this "mysterious wisdom" may
indeed be obscure, if indeed it is God's – but the glaring fact
remains that a God who has allowed such things to happen to his
children cannot have loved them.
It would be better, for us and for him, if he did not exist, and if
everything had just happened, as if all mankind's suffering were just
a careless accident For if one seeks to connect such events with a
preordained global order, one increases the physical pain – which is
what it is, and which ultimately wears off, one way or another –
making it something uncontrollable and metaphysical into the bargain.
One remains stunned, one's focus hopelessly drawn back to these
events. The tribulations of the world will always remain a heavy
burden – but it would be so much lighter if we could simply understand
the world as chaos, instead of seeking to find sense in it.
At the same time, the hate and malice of history is still by no means
the worst thing one is confronted with in the putative heavenly
kingdom. For these things can always be understood, if need be, as
degeneracy, as surplus, as the exception – as the sad, but not
inevitable result of the metaphysical freedom unleashed on man by God
– which also entails the possibility of choosing the wrong thing.
Whether a creator who has made his creatures such that they can even
forfeit their wellbeing is not in truth playing a cruel game with
them, is not a question that will be examined more closely here –
worthwhile though the discussion would be.
Instead I wish to draw attention to how the world was set up before
ethics and before mankind. All animal life supports itself exclusively
by means of the continual destruction of other life. That a different
model can also flourish is shown by plants, which quite literally live
on light and air alone. Why would God have designed us and the million
or so other animal species in such a way that, in order to exist for
longer than even a few days, we need to kill plants at the very least
and often enough other animals? The mere word "food chain" provokes a
shudder, expressing as it does the notion of eating and being eaten,
right up through each link of the chain, as the very system of the
world – from single-celled organisms through worms to songbirds and
ultimately to what ends up on our tables as our Sunday roast. Every
animal, says Nietzsche, is the walking grave of thousands of others.
The living world is an infernal miracle. Hyenas start consuming their
steaks while their prey is still trying to flee them. The female
praying mantis bites off its male partner's head during the act of
copulation and begins to devour it. Many ichneumon flies will paralyse
a caterpillar by means of a well-aimed sting in a ganglion and lay
their egg, thus preparing the way for their larva to gradually consume
the immobile yet still living body (thus kept fresh the whole while)
from within. What is more, if it is unlucky it will fall victim to
another kind of ichneumon fly in the process, which in turn lays its
own egg in the larva, with the result that, like a Russian doll, three
creatures are contained within one another: the original caterpillar,
followed by fly larva A, followed by fly larva B. Finally, having
matured into a full-blown imago, B hatches out of the victim's double
skin, leaves its own skin behind and begins the cycle anew. This
extraordinary phenomenon is known as hyperparasitism. This, as I have
observed, is not sadistic excess, but a vitally necessary rule of life
for entire genera and species. Is this God's world?
We like to conjure up old visions of Paradise whereby in the redeemed
world the lion will lie down next to the lamb. That may be an ideal
from the lamb's point of view, but in such a world the lion would have
to perish, since unlike the lamb he cannot digest the green diet that
is all that is available in Paradise. In order to refrain from eating
lambs he would be obliged to cease being a lion. Lions are, at the
most fundamental level, not capable of redemption. Are humans? Our
anatomical endowments, our omnivorous set of teeth, would suggest
otherwise – even before we begin to define ourselves as ethical and
historical beings, with the peculiar and highly imaginative horrors
which that entails.
Thus the concept of God proves to be one unfit to satisfy both the
need for a foundation of the world and the need for a foundation of
good. In both cases we are better off without God. The same cannot be
said of the third, and strongest, need, out of which the idea of God
was born: renouncing this is not possible without great pain. God –
God the Eternal – is conceived of as the one and only bulwark against
that absolute void, the nihilism of time. The fact that he is
considered to be eternal does not have to mean that he is simply
without beginning and end, immortal like the gods of antiquity and
unborn besides; but rather that he, along with everything to which he
grants this grace, is a concept above and beyond time in general.
We become aware of the terror of time without having any particular
philosophical inclination, but inescapably as a result of our own
mortality. All experience teaches us that man lives for a time before
falling victim to a sudden misfortune or to a long-drawn-out ageing
process, whereupon his deceased body decays, ultimately leaving behind
no trace. What on earth was the point of his living at all? As
Goethe's Mephistopheles says with such diabolical clarity:
"Past" – 'tis a stupid word.
Past – why?
Past and pure Naught, sheer Uniformity!
Of what avails perpetual Creation
if later swept off to annihilation?
"So it is past!" You see what that must mean?
It is the same as had it never been... (Faust, Part Two, Act V) [2]
This explanation is as close as he comes to admitting to being the
adversary of God that he is. If there is no God, he is right. The
nihilism inherent in time goes far beyond the empirical fact of the
universal mortality of all human beings; human life is, as Jean Améry
put it, the project that is always futile, the building of a house
that is promptly torn down at its own completion ceremony. If this
startles us, as it is bound to, then the door is opened to an even
worse realization. Space holds no riddles for us, or at least none
that might ever go beyond the mysterious nature of the world; it is
equal in extent and matter to what it contains. But what does time
have a comparable relationship with? Nothing at all. It too holds sway
over its material; yet it casts its evil spell of dissolution over
everything that enters it. Even the most apparently definite things,
such as our internally consistent self, enter an atomizer and are
transformed into the vague mist of memory and the even vaguer mist of
our plans. Philosophy talks of time as an a priori category, while
classical physics sees the equivalent series of numbers at work (and
as for what modern physics makes of it, it is best not to even ask
here).
All of which has little to do with time as we experience it. As far as
we are concerned it appears rather as a chimera, as a monster
formulated out of the three entirely different bodies of past, present
and future. The past no longer exists – it appears to lie plainly
before us, albeit untouchably distant; the future does not yet exist –
it hovers in the air, an insubstantial haze. Both, each in its own way
ungoverned by what is supposed to define it, are unreal precisely
because of this. But the present forms only an infinitesimally short
space of linear time; no sooner does it come into existence than it
has vanished again, a mere turning-point between both the other
nullities. Here, too, the basic certification of existence cannot
really be assigned. It is only in time that we exist – and yet,
precisely through its nature, we do not exist. Maybe it would be best
if, like animals, we were simply to forget, in order at least to
perpetuate our present. But even that won't work. One cannot resolve
to forget, for memory is at work even in the act of intention.
Time slips away from us, flows towards us, happens to us, runs away.
But where might the many drops of this rivulet end up? After all, they
must be somewhere! Time that would be real even as the past: this is
where God comes into play as the great well of history. To see him as
such is to depict him as even more majestic than he would be were he
the mere creator of the world and repository of all good: for in this
sense a power is attributed to him which we cannot even begin to
imagine.
It is easiest if this eternal God manifests himself as a judging God –
for in this capacity he must represent eternal memory. The idea that
there is a judgement "at the end of time" is not only supposed to
validate the idea of "the good" but, almost more than that, to provide
some assurance that not a single hour of the past has truly been
annihilated: it has all remained faithfully stockpiled. Resurrection
of the dead, the Last Judgement, eternal life: this is how the
otherwise perfectly meaningless succession of generations brought
about by birth and death acquires its meaning. For this way in which
humanity serves in shifts means that an incomparably greater number of
souls can be blessed with salvation than if Adam and Eve along with
their children had simply never had to die. Thus history, otherwise
nothing but a wild army of racing clouds, gains the backdrop of a
heaven which captures its transient figures like a photograph.
One of Baron Münchhausen's tall tales goes like this. He was
travelling by stagecoach one bitter winter's day when the driver
sounded the horn to play his songs – but there was not a sound to be
heard from the frozen horn. The coach driver tried again and again
before eventually giving up, dejected. At last they reached the
nearest postal station and went in to warm up, hanging the posthorn on
a nail near the stove. And as it became warm, all of a sudden the horn
began to play all the songs that had earlier been frozen and had
refused to sound – now they filled the heated room all on their own.
We should probably think along the lines of this parable when the
frost of time thaws at eternity, all the sweeter for never having been
lost, and yet, now quite different.
It would be wonderful if this were the case, instead of our half
falling into an abyss of nothingness while still alive, and in death
vanishing completely. In contrast to the two other points, it has to
be said here that God, if he existed, would indeed satisfy this last
need. But what pledge would we have that this is the case? We should
be on our guard against letting the strength of our own desire induce
us to infer a corresponding truth. We have not been shown even the
smallest sign that this restitution and resurrection, so fervently
longed for as they are, will ever really take place. A handful of such
cases (if, in fact, amazingly few in total) reported in the New
Testament scarcely constitutes irrefutable proof in the eyes of the
unprejudiced. Moreover, the suspicion has found its way into the text
itself that it was ultimately the disciples who stole the body of
Christ. It would be so nice. It would be nice, too, for a man dying of
thirst to be able to summon an oasis into existence by the force of
his thirst; but unfortunately, whether the oasis exists or not is
entirely independent of his thirst. The utmost that thirst is capable
of producing on its own is a mirage. It is as such, as a delusion,
that God hovers on the horizon of human history.
Unlike believers of all persuasions, atheists are scarcely accustomed
to manifest their beliefs in organized or vigorous fashion. There are
several reasons for this. For one thing, after the heroic early days,
they felt less threatened and disturbed in their views by the
continued survival of religions than the religions conversely felt
threatened by atheism. After all, everyone has to find his own
salvation. For a long time thereafter, in Europe at least, time seemed
to work in atheism's favour. Rather than waste time in futile battles
of words with unreasonable people, one could simply wait for their
position to crumble and decay of its own accord, following historical
gravity as it were.
But this golden age is now coming to an end, perhaps; and in future it
may once again be the atheists who are expected to account to society
for their point of view – that is to say, if discussions are still
taking place and not replaced by a range of sanctions. At all events,
it now no longer seems to me unnecessary to re-equip atheism so that
it does not stand completely naked in the face of a growing new
culture of religion. For one thing should be clear: if it comes to a
real battle, it will be the atheists who have to manage without help
from on high. They have no God, no holy texts; they are promised
nothing that would make it worth venturing into the fray with the
blindness of a true believer – they must rely on their arguments, and
their arguments alone. Granted, the believer has to stand up for his
beliefs with more energy than his adversary, deploying his whole
person; but in doing so, he has the benefit of his strength of will.
Those who do not believe in something may seem to have it easier than
those who do; conversely, those who do not want something have to work
far harder than those who do. Atheists – be on your guard!"
[1] Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust. Parts One and Two, translated
by George Madison Priest, New York, 1932.
[2] Ibid.
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| User: "johac" |
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| Title: Re: Atheists can only trust their reason, apparently. |
25 Mar 2007 11:49:06 PM |
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In article <mb9e039ah5aner9m82qgga1qan505uv1l6@4ax.com>,
Michael Gray <mikegray@newsguy.com> wrote:
Burkhard Müller
The concept of God – and why we don't need it
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-03-22-bmuller-en.html
"In these newly religious times, it no longer seems superfluous to
rearm the atheists with arguments. When push comes to shove, atheists
can only trust their reason, writes Burkhard Müller.
<snip>
I don't think that atheists would argue that point, but let's hear what
a prominent xtian had to say on the subject:
Martin Luther
The damned *****, Reason
The following quotes concerning the evil of human reason are from the
father of Christian Protestantism, Martin Luther:
Die verfluchte Huhre, Vernunft. (The damned *****, Reason).
Reason is the Devil's greatest *****; by nature and manner of being she
is a noxious *****; she is a prostitute, the Devil's appointed *****;
***** eaten by scab and leprosy who ought to be trodden under foot and
destroyed, she and her wisdom ... Throw dung in her face to make her
ugly. She is and she ought to be drowned in baptism... She would
deserve, the wretch, to be banished to the filthiest place in the house,
to the closets.
Martin Luther, Erlangen Edition v. 16, pp. 142-148
Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid
of spiritual things, but -- more frequently than not -- struggles
against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from
God.
Reason must be deluded, blinded, and destroyed. Faith must trample
underfoot all reason, sense, and understanding, and whatever it sees
must be put out of sight and ... know nothing but the word of God.
There is on earth among all dangers no more dangerous thing than a
richly endowed and adroit reason... Reason must be deluded, blinded, and
destroyed.
Martin Luther, quoted by Walter Kaufmann, The Faith of a Heretic,
(Garden City, NY, Doubleday, 1963), p. 75
Reason should be destroyed in all Christians.
Whoever wants to be a Christian should tear the eyes out of his Reason.
To be a Christian, you must "pluck out the eye of reason."
People gave ear to an upstart astrologer [Copernicus] who strove to show
that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and
the moon. Whoever wishes to appear clever must devise some new system,
which of all systems is of course the very best. This fool wishes to
reverse the entire science of astronomy; but sacred scripture tells us
[Joshua 10:13] that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the
earth.
Martin Luther, "Works," Volume 22, c. 1543
We know, on the authority of Moses, that longer than six thousand years
the world did not exist.
Martin Luther, "Lectures on Genesis"
All our experience with history should teach us, when we look back, how
badly human wisdom is betrayed when it relies on itself.
JesusCult home page
Compiled by John Roncalio. 2003
---
http://www.jesuscult.com/Luther_Anti-Reason.htm
--
John #1782
"We should always be disposed to believe that which appears to us to be
white is really black, if the hierarchy of the church so decides."
- Saint Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556) Founder of the Jesuit Order.
.
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| User: "Michael Gray" |
|
| Title: Re: Atheists can only trust their reason, apparently. |
26 Mar 2007 01:15:31 AM |
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On Sun, 25 Mar 2007 21:49:06 -0700, johac
<jhachmann@remove.sbcglobal.net> wrote:
- Refer: <jhachmann-9AC68C.21490625032007@news.giganews.com>
In article <mb9e039ah5aner9m82qgga1qan505uv1l6@4ax.com>,
Michael Gray <mikegray@newsguy.com> wrote:
Burkhard Müller
The concept of God – and why we don't need it
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-03-22-bmuller-en.html
"In these newly religious times, it no longer seems superfluous to
rearm the atheists with arguments. When push comes to shove, atheists
can only trust their reason, writes Burkhard Müller.
<snip>
I don't think that atheists would argue that point, but let's hear what
a prominent xtian had to say on the subject:
Martin Luther
The damned *****, Reason
The following quotes concerning the evil of human reason are from the
father of Christian Protestantism, Martin Luther:
Die verfluchte Huhre, Vernunft. (The damned *****, Reason).
Reason is the Devil's greatest *****; by nature and manner of being she
is a noxious *****; she is a prostitute, the Devil's appointed *****;
***** eaten by scab and leprosy who ought to be trodden under foot and
destroyed, she and her wisdom ... Throw dung in her face to make her
ugly. She is and she ought to be drowned in baptism... She would
deserve, the wretch, to be banished to the filthiest place in the house,
to the closets.
Martin Luther, Erlangen Edition v. 16, pp. 142-148
Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid
of spiritual things, but -- more frequently than not -- struggles
against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from
God.
Reason must be deluded, blinded, and destroyed. Faith must trample
underfoot all reason, sense, and understanding, and whatever it sees
must be put out of sight and ... know nothing but the word of God.
There is on earth among all dangers no more dangerous thing than a
richly endowed and adroit reason... Reason must be deluded, blinded, and
destroyed.
Martin Luther, quoted by Walter Kaufmann, The Faith of a Heretic,
(Garden City, NY, Doubleday, 1963), p. 75
Reason should be destroyed in all Christians.
Whoever wants to be a Christian should tear the eyes out of his Reason.
To be a Christian, you must "pluck out the eye of reason."
People gave ear to an upstart astrologer [Copernicus] who strove to show
that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and
the moon. Whoever wishes to appear clever must devise some new system,
which of all systems is of course the very best. This fool wishes to
reverse the entire science of astronomy; but sacred scripture tells us
[Joshua 10:13] that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the
earth.
Martin Luther, "Works," Volume 22, c. 1543
We know, on the authority of Moses, that longer than six thousand years
the world did not exist.
Martin Luther, "Lectures on Genesis"
All our experience with history should teach us, when we look back, how
badly human wisdom is betrayed when it relies on itself.
JesusCult home page
Compiled by John Roncalio. 2003
---
http://www.jesuscult.com/Luther_Anti-Reason.htm
That is really spooky.
We must have been channelling Rupert Sheldrake!
--
.
|
|
|
| User: "johac" |
|
| Title: Re: Atheists can only trust their reason, apparently. |
26 Mar 2007 05:52:44 PM |
|
|
In article <67pe039u7gtnfquno6q8577ca2n7jgs6c3@4ax.com>,
Michael Gray <mikegray@newsguy.com> wrote:
On Sun, 25 Mar 2007 21:49:06 -0700, johac
<jhachmann@remove.sbcglobal.net> wrote:
- Refer: <jhachmann-9AC68C.21490625032007@news.giganews.com>
In article <mb9e039ah5aner9m82qgga1qan505uv1l6@4ax.com>,
Michael Gray <mikegray@newsguy.com> wrote:
Burkhard Müller
The concept of God – and why we don't need it
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-03-22-bmuller-en.html
"In these newly religious times, it no longer seems superfluous to
rearm the atheists with arguments. When push comes to shove, atheists
can only trust their reason, writes Burkhard Müller.
<snip>
I don't think that atheists would argue that point, but let's hear what
a prominent xtian had to say on the subject:
Martin Luther
The damned *****, Reason
The following quotes concerning the evil of human reason are from the
father of Christian Protestantism, Martin Luther:
Die verfluchte Huhre, Vernunft. (The damned *****, Reason).
Reason is the Devil's greatest *****; by nature and manner of being she
is a noxious *****; she is a prostitute, the Devil's appointed *****;
***** eaten by scab and leprosy who ought to be trodden under foot and
destroyed, she and her wisdom ... Throw dung in her face to make her
ugly. She is and she ought to be drowned in baptism... She would
deserve, the wretch, to be banished to the filthiest place in the house,
to the closets.
Martin Luther, Erlangen Edition v. 16, pp. 142-148
Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid
of spiritual things, but -- more frequently than not -- struggles
against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from
God.
Reason must be deluded, blinded, and destroyed. Faith must trample
underfoot all reason, sense, and understanding, and whatever it sees
must be put out of sight and ... know nothing but the word of God.
There is on earth among all dangers no more dangerous thing than a
richly endowed and adroit reason... Reason must be deluded, blinded, and
destroyed.
Martin Luther, quoted by Walter Kaufmann, The Faith of a Heretic,
(Garden City, NY, Doubleday, 1963), p. 75
Reason should be destroyed in all Christians.
Whoever wants to be a Christian should tear the eyes out of his Reason.
To be a Christian, you must "pluck out the eye of reason."
People gave ear to an upstart astrologer [Copernicus] who strove to show
that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and
the moon. Whoever wishes to appear clever must devise some new system,
which of all systems is of course the very best. This fool wishes to
reverse the entire science of astronomy; but sacred scripture tells us
[Joshua 10:13] that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the
earth.
Martin Luther, "Works," Volume 22, c. 1543
We know, on the authority of Moses, that longer than six thousand years
the world did not exist.
Martin Luther, "Lectures on Genesis"
All our experience with history should teach us, when we look back, how
badly human wisdom is betrayed when it relies on itself.
JesusCult home page
Compiled by John Roncalio. 2003
---
http://www.jesuscult.com/Luther_Anti-Reason.htm
That is really spooky.
We must have been channelling Rupert Sheldrake!
--
I knew you were going to say that! Rupert told me.
--
John #1782
"We should always be disposed to believe that which appears to us to be
white is really black, if the hierarchy of the church so decides."
- Saint Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556) Founder of the Jesuit Order.
.
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