| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Michael Gray" |
| Date: |
05 May 2006 12:20:06 AM |
| Object: |
News: WTF is God for? |
"What is God for?
James Randerson
April 20, 2006 10:24 AM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/james_randerson/2006/04/what_is_god_for.html
Arguing with creationists is like hunting for a bar of soap in the
bath: they are impossible to pin down. Give them a transitional
fossil, a creature that links, say, fish and amphibians, and they
counter that the gap in the fossil record has been replaced with two
gaps either side.
So it was refreshing to read from Richard Harries, the Bishop of
Oxford, that creationism is a "false science" that should not be
taught in schools. "To confuse the biblical account of creation with
perfectly proper scientific accounts of evolution is ... a category
error," he added in .
Sunday's Observer.
But his piece was not an apology to scientific rationalism for the
historical injuries it has suffered at the hands of religious faith,
rather it was an attack on what he called "the current bout of media
atheism". The likes of Richard Dawkins and American philosopher Daniel
Dennett, he said, are duffing up a straw man when they call religious
faith the "root of all evil". Christianity has moved on from
victimising scientists who challenge it, he said, so Dawkins et al
should focus on examining religion's strengths, rather than
cataloguing its failures. "A good rule of intellectual debate is that
you should try to face your opponent's strongest argument. Anybody can
expose their weakest ones," said Mr Harries.
Fair enough. Let's leave aside the decades of slaughter in Northern
Ireland and the bloody clashes between Sunni and Shia Muslims over who
has the best way of worshiping the same God. Let's cast aside the
thousands of Africans who have died of AIDS after following the
proclamations of Catholic priests that condoms would not protect them
against HIV. And let's not include the warped version of Islam that
led the 9/11 hijackers to believe that they would be spiritually
rewarded for murdering thousands. Let's focus on religion's strengths.
Surely the best justification for having God in your life is that it
gives you a set of moral rules to live by. Even the most ardent
atheist would not disagree with "love thy neighbour" and "thou shalt
not kill". The alternative is surely societal breakdown and moral
abyss. "If God does not exist then everything is permissible," said
Dostoyevsky, and indeed, without the threat of eternal toasting what's
to stop us?
Religious leaders are quick to point out the consequences of not
believing. The Republican congressman Tom Delay, for example, has
blamed high crime rates and tragedies like the Columbine High massacre
on a scientific philosophy that teaches us we are "nothing but
glorified apes who have evolutionized [sic] out of some primordial
soup of mud".
And Benjamin Franklin hoped that faith would be integral to making
America a great nation. "Religion will be a powerful regulator of our
actions, give us peace and tranquility within our minds, and render us
benevolent, useful and beneficial to others."
Madeleine Bunting is right that profound faith has motivated some to
extraordinary selfless actions, but the question is, does religion
benefit society?
Gregory Paul of Baltimore, Maryland has tried to answer that question.
He compared data on the level of religiosity of people in 18 developed
countries with data on various social ills. If Delay and co are right
about Chistianity's benefits, the level of faith in the population
should correlate with people doing fewer bad things. But it doesn't.
The analysis revealed that higher rates of belief in a creator
correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult
mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy and abortion.
Not surprisingly, when the study was published last year in the
Journal of Religion and Society, it attracted plenty of criticism. It
is by no means perfect and the small sample of countries is dominated
by data from the US, a highly religious country with more than its
share of social ills.
But it is not the only data. The current issue of the same journal
includes a larger analysis by Gary Jensen at Vanderbilt University in
Nashville, Tennessee. He compared homicide rates with measures of
religiosity in 54 nations and found that nations with high numbers of
people believing in both God and the Devil have the highest homicide
rates. A third study published in 2003 found that levels of
conservative Protestantism in cities in the southern US states
correlated with homicide rates there: more conservative Protestants,
more murders.
On their own, these studies aren't good enough to proves that religion
is the source of all these social problems - although it is tempting
to think that it might be. But it kicks the idea that faith makes for
a better and more moral society firmly into touch. So if even the best
arguments for religion are found wanting, we're inevitably left asking
what is God for? To those of us who reject faith, the idea that
without God we are incapable of behaving morally is the most offensive
and patronising myth peddled by religion.
Which of these is the better person, I would ask? The atheist who
practices "Christian" values because he has decided of his own free
will that kindness and consideration for others are the best way to
live his life, or the believer, whose moral actions are carried out
with half an eye on reward in Heaven or punishment in Hell?"
--
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| User: "duke" |
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| Title: Re: News: WTF is God for? |
05 May 2006 04:11:27 PM |
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On Fri, 05 May 2006 14:50:06 +0930, Michael Gray <fleetg@newsguy.spam.com>
wrote:
"What is God for?
Supreme Creator.
duke, American-American
*****
"The Mass is the most perfect form of Prayer."
Pope Paul VI
*****
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