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Faiths-and-Worldviews

Items on religions, ideologies, philosophies, and other ways people interpret the world

Atheism Redux: Marty offers some helpful perspective on responding to the “new” atheism of Dawkins, Hitchens, & Co.:  ‘Send cards of thanks. These authors bring up differences in an age of indifference. Don’t sneer. Many of these authors sneer. Where does that get us? I quote William Paley: “Who can refute a sneer?” . . . Converse, don’t argue. No one wins arguments—which are determined by one’s knowing the answer—about the existence or nonexistence of God, but everyone can profit from a conversation that tries to pose good questions and respond to them.’ (Martin E. Marty, The Christian Century )

Tue 31 Jul 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Egypt’s Top Islamic Scholar Clears Up Muslim Conversion Controversy: Good for him. ‘Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa, one of the most respected Islamic scholars in the world today, re-affirmed that Muslims have the freedom to convert to another religion, but that it would be a “grave sin.” “Choice means freedom, and freedom includes the freedom to commit grave sins as long as their harm does not extend to others,” said Gomaa, according to Agence France-Presse.’ (Christian Post )

Thu 26 Jul 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Really Bad Ideas: Population control: “To put it bluntly: it is difficult to celebrate human life in any meaningful way when people – or at least the growth of the number of people – are regarded as the source of the world’s problems. Alongside today’s respect for human life there is the increasingly popular idea that there is too much human life around, and that it is killing the planet.” An excellent discussion of the latent and blatant Malthusian strands in modern thought—can Rwanda really be overpopulated after the genocide? (Frank Furedi, Spiked )

Wed 20 Jun 2007 from Peter Edman • Link & Comments

The Hitchens brothers: Anatomy of a row: ‘Peter, 55, confirms to me that he was implying in his review that Christopher, 58, was closer to religious belief than he had ever accepted. “There is always, in the atheistical struggle with God, the fight against temptation. If it didn’t matter to you, why write a book about how wrong it is? The first person you have to convince with any book you write, is yourself. If you didn’t need convincing… why go to all those lengths?"’ It does seem as though C. Hitchens is in the “doth protest too much” category. Will he, as Kathy Shaidle asks, “do a Muggeridge”? He seems to have the intellectual integrity, if he can get over his emotional commitments. (The Independent )

Fri 15 Jun 2007 from Peter Edman • Link & Comments

Europe’s Christian Comeback: “In fact, the rapid decline in the continent’s church attendance over the past 40 years may have done Europe a favor. It has freed churches of trying to operate as national entities that attempt to serve all members of society. Today, no church stands a realistic chance of incorporating everyone. Smaller, more focused bodies, however, can be more passionate, enthusiastic, and rigorously committed to personal holiness. To use a scientific analogy, when a star collapses, it becomes a white dwarf—smaller in size than it once was, but burning much more intensely. Across Europe, white-dwarf faith communities are growing within the remnants of the old mass church.” (Philip Jenkins, Foreign Policy )

Tue 12 Jun 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Religious Tolerance and the Common Good: Must read. “God made you for a purpose. The world needs the gifts he gave you. Adulthood brings power. Power brings responsibility. And the meaning of your life will hinge on a simple, basic choice. Will you engage the world with your heart and brains and faith, and work to make it a better place—not just for yourself and the people you love but also for people you don’t even know whose survival depends on your service to the common good? Or will you wrap yourself in a blanket of noise and toys and consumer junk, and stay a child?” I hadn’t realized he is on the US Commission on International Religious Freedom with Mike Cromartie.  (Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, On The Square )

Fri 25 May 2007 from Peter Edman • Link & Comments

Scruton-izing the Reasons for Religion: Several good links on the recent atheism resurgence, most focusing on our own Senior Fellow, Roger Scruton, from whom this quote: “Whatever the disasters that love may cause, . . . love, judged in itself and without regard to contingencies, is a human good — perhaps the greatest of human goods. The important thing is to learn to love rightly and in the right frame of mind. The disasters, if they come, come as accidents and not by necessity. That is the response that should be made on behalf of religion, too.” (Carl Olson, Ignatius Insight )

Thu 24 May 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Christopher Hitchens Is a Treasure: A good, useful atheist. “Hitchens is in our time one of the great masters of mockery and satire. He out-pains Tom Paine, the same Thomas Paine, mocker of the Bible-toting, who endured imprisonment in France after 1789, forewarning the Jacobins that their atheism would cut the ground out from under their declared human rights. In moral heroism, standing up against angry mobs, Hitchens is often Paine’s equal, just as, like Paine, Hitchens seems quite annoyed by Him in Whom he does not believe.” (Michael Novak, National Review Online )

Thu 24 May 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Interior Life Of Atheism: “The Christian is quite free to believe that every religion in the world has gotten something right (some more than others). You are even free to believe that adherents of other traditions have had real encounters with the supernatural (whether divine or demonic). However, if you are an atheist, you have to believe, a priori, that 99.999% of the human race is absolutely wrong about the thing that matters to it most. Christians have the luxury of being able to be humble before the facts.” The case of Emile Zola is worth reading, and the overall tone of this article is spot-on. (Mark Shea, National Catholic Register)

Fri 11 May 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Ceremonial Deism?: Good thoughts. “Ten or fifteen years ago it would have been unimaginable, but the natural unitive force of Christianity, ironically set free at last by the cultural solvent of radical secularism, has caused us to set the family quarrels aside for future resolution—I am not saying we should be indifferent about them or should whip up our denominations into an ecclesial souffle—and treat one another as the brothers and sisters we really are.” I commend the sentiment behind them to the shameful know-nothing branch of the Evangelical Theological Society.  (Anthony Esolen at Touchstone's Mere Comments blog)

Wed 09 May 2007 from Peter Edman • Link & Comments

Christ, My Bodhisattva: Multinational businessman and politician Ram Gidoomal talks about ‘translating’ the gospel in today’s world: “Business is a uniquely global endeavor. Just on Sunday, I was preaching at my local church and a guy in the congregation came up to me and said, “I’m a New Zealander, I’m working in a salmon business in Chile, and I’m here [in London] just for today, on my way to Norway to see the business owners.” There’s no other field that so closely matches the global nature of God’s mission.” (Christianity Today )

Fri 27 Apr 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Freedom and Slavery: A very important speech. Many possible quotes. Two: “Yet what is consistently striking in much of this [African anti-slavery] literature is the fierceness with which nominal Christianity is assaulted and blamed for the slave trade, and the conviction that authentic Christianity is the most powerful argument against it and in favour of human equality.” And “But [Wilberforce] is campaigning for a moral state—that is, for a state that does not compromise its citizens, and that recognises its own accountability to considerations wider than those of immediate profit and security. He wants government to understand that its policies directly shape the moral status of citizens; public policy creates the world in which particular citizens live their lives, it creates a climate, a set of possibilities, a language and culture of public life or international life.” (Archbishop Rowan Williams, Wilberforce Lecture Trust, Hull, April 2007 )

Wed 25 Apr 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

The Maes-Garreau Point: Speaking of “Not in our Time,” just ran across this provocative essay from Kevin Kelly on predictions of the future. 2040, anyone? “In other words we all carry around our own personal mini-singularity, which will happen when we die. It used to be that we could not imagine our existence after our death; now we cannot imagine the details of anyone’s existence after our death. Beyond this personal singularity, life is unknowable. We tend to place our imaginations and predictions before our own Maes-Garreau Point.” (Kevin Kelly, The Technium )

Tue 17 Apr 2007 from Peter Edman • Link & Comments

We’d be better off without religion: “Professor Scruton was the best for religion. I could have listened to him for hours. . . . In a debate redolent with platitudes, Scruton was the least platitudinous, in spite of lecturing us on why Plato got it wrong in his Republic. Arguing on rational grounds that a society would be better off without religion was like arguing that society would be better off without love, he said. And as we all know, love is frequently irrational. He did not deny that there were wrong ways of pursuing the religious quest. But there was nothing irrational in looking for what is sacred. It was part of the human condition to search for meaning.” The Times religion blogger on a debate with Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Roger Scruton, and others. Includes links to audio. Interesting comments on Dawkins. Congrats to Professor Scruton! (Ruth Gledhill, Times Online)

Mon 09 Apr 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Backward Thinking: Abolition, then and now: Don't apologize for yesterday's slavery, stop today's. “Politicized “apologies” may serve partisan purposes, but they make no moral sense. Each generation is responsible for its own transgressions; as the Scripture says, children are not liable for the sins of their fathers.” (Senior Fellow Joseph Loconte with Benedict Rogers, National Review Online )

Mon 26 Mar 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments