As a "non believer" I'm again struck by the Christian compulsion to insist that all non believers inhabit "the desert of autonomous rationalism with technological progress as the only hopeful glimmer on the horizon."

Is this is a contemporary method of telling us we're going to hell?

You need to define what you mean by "non believer." Do you mean those with religious beliefs other than Christian? Or do you mean those with no religious beliefs at all?

We look to history to inform us of the human condition, you write. In fact, we look to history to inform us of some aspects of the human condition. There are very many aspects of the human condition that will not be found in history, because only a select few had the power to create the historical records and much history has been omitted. This is gradually being redressed by scholars in many fields.

Views on morality and ethics existed long, long before Christianity. This reminds me of the argument against secular ethics being taught in schools - Christians maintain you can't have ethics without Christianity, therefore there's no legitimacy in non Christian ethical teachings.

How sad that you persist in your exclusivity - but of course that is one of the defining characteristics of some religions - you carve out an identity for yourselves partly on the basis of whom you exclude.

All institutions have the same fate, including the Christian - the institution becomes its own raison d'etre, and all energies are subsumed into maintaining it, and increasing its influence and power

Two books I found helpful on this subject were “The Death of Forever” and the sequel “Music of the Mind” . Both by the author, Dr Darryl Reanney, a molecular biologist probably made famous through his writing and presentation of the ABC series in 1982, Genesis. (for those whose memory can transpond the warp of time). Great stuff Dr Sellick, Great stuff.

One question though; I believe this question was really the embodiment of the Jewish problem with acceptance of Christ as anything more noble than a prophet “Is Christ also a myth”? This is the difficulty that Christianity has in its attempts to present doctrine as proof.

What does separate Myth from fact? (Two central questions)!

Briar Rose:

To be human is to follow the quest for truth. And the truth?; whatever turns you on really.

If you are not turned on by religious faith, choose to exist with no personal God, no anchor of moral values based on religious teaching from the great, noble and inspirational traditions such as Christianity, then go for it. In the end it all relates to yourself, your choice to be made alone.

But “Bingo”, another question; “Who cares in the end”. The answer = Christianity cares. Its obliged to care, it’s the caring instinct of the religion, part of the projection of the myth into the physical reality of the present. Christianity does care and so moves along, and simply “IS”, as "IS" God.

Is it all really a myth? More questions than answers. But notice now, we have moved to the zone of faith! It is entirely the point Dr Sellick makes. If Christianity "Bogs-In", it ceases to work, it must hold to the myth to be useful to humanity.

It is interesting that Sells used the word DOGMA in the title of this essay.

What has dogma got to do with Truth & Reality?
Dogmas are institutionalized and propagandized ideas ABOUT Truth & Reality.

At best they may point to the Truth. So too with narratives.

What if the originating text of Christian-ISM, namely the Bible, has nothing to do with Real God, and is really a POLITICAL document put together by the church "fathers" to consolidate their worldly power against the other factions of their time and place (who were also competing for power).

This essay gives a completely different understanding of the origins and POLITICAL purposes of the Bible.

http://www.beezone.com/up/forgottenesotericismjesus.html

A quote from the same author.

"Anyone who seriously considers the modern Western intellectual and philosophical critique of conventional religion discovers that there simply is no basis in Reality for conventional religious presumptions and ideas."

A critique of what is usually called religion in this day and age:

http://www.beezone.com/up/criticismcuresheart.html

Diver Dan
where we disagree is that I do not subscribe to what to me is the illusion that there is one "Truth."

It is my impression that Christianity "cares" only when Christians have determined that there is something to be gained for their Christianity by this "caring." i.e. conversion.

As well, Christianity only seems to "care" when the object of its care is already compliant with its doctrines.

As Sells has stated, he believes that non believers are condemned to "the desert of autonomous rationalism with technological progress as the only hopeful glimmer on the horizon."

This sounds to me to be a dreadful judgement on any human being who does not subscribe to Christian doctrine. Or Sells' variation of it, because Christians don't seem to have achieved agreement on their own principles either.

I think that the present day Christian institutions bear little relation to the teachings of Jesus Christ, some of whose statements I deeply admire and draw sustenance from.

Sells arguments don't give me any sustenance at all. They alienate and exclude me. Is this what Christianity has become?

I think I'll stick with Jesus. As well as the many many other sources of moral information and guidance available to me since the world began keeping records.

These essays give an Illuminated Understanding of the all important relation between religion, science & culture.

http://www.dabase.org/christmc2.htm Einstein meets Jesus.

The above essay is featured in this book which was written with the distinct purpose of clarifying and illuminating the seeming never-ending cultural war between exoteric religiosity and scientism.

http://www.beezone.com/AdiDa/ScientificProof/tableofcontents.html

This essay also does the same thing. Again it could be titled Einstein meets Jesus.

http://www.dabase.org/spacetim.htm

The Renaissance and the subsequent rise of the "culture" based on scientism and exoteric religiosity (which are two sides of the same reductionist coin), was a time when egoic meat-body man became the entire focus of knowledge, culture, and HIS-story. Rather than the presumption of the Divine or ideas about the Divine.

Put in another way the Renaissance was the collapse of the "God"-civilization that preceded it--the civilization based on mythologized presumptions of what was traditionally conceived to be spatially and temporally behind and above the world.

The Renaissance destroyed that earlier form of civilization. With the Renaissance, "God"-myth-based civilization was replaced with human-based civilization, or grossly bound ego-civilization -- or the civilization based on the myth of the separate (and separative) human ego-"I".

That ego-civilization came to its essential end in the twentieth century. That civilization idealized the grossly bound ego-"I", and it ended with a world of egos destroying one another. Exoteric religion also played its part in idealizing the separate ego-"I" (including its various collective or cultic forms).

Indeed, it is, principally, the combination of grossly bound scientific materialist anti-"culture" with widespread exoteric "religious" fanaticism that has produced the dark realities of this late-time.