Dear Peter,

It is possible to look into the face of a person who may never have lived and if he ever lived is now dead and see truth?

That is rubbish. Absolute total rubbish.

Truth does not exist as an abstraction without support. You are confusing religious belief with truth. Your ‘truth’ is in effect a synonym for irrational belief.

Real atheism does not concern itself one way or another with Christ any more than with with Zeus or any other version of deity. Atheism is the belief that there is no God. Christ is a humanoid version of God in Christianity as Zeus was a humanoid version of God in the classical Greek religion. Judaism is a theistic religion. Atheists do not believe in the Jewish God who has absolutely nothing to do with Christ. Although Islam respects Christ as a prophet, Muslims do not regard Christ as God in any way. They believe there is no God but Allah. Atheists do not believe in Allah. Islam and Judaism are monotheistic religions. Christianity has invented a God in three parts. Atheists simply do not believe in God in any form.

Atheism is not the opposite of Christianity. Atheism is the opposite of theism of which Christianity is only one version. Christianity is theistic but not monotheistic.

The end of violence? There has been no noticeable decrease in violence since the invention of Christianity. In fact much of the violence since then has been perpetrated by Christians.

Peter, you may mean well, but it seems to me that you are demanding that people accept your superstition as somehow embodying truth.

Most of us will face the death of loved ones by cancer or other means. Your superstition will be helpful to some. Other superstitions will be helpful to others. I am dealing with my grief without those superstitions.

How can Sells suggest that a belief in God is not at issue, when it is surely at the foundation of his proposition that we should accept death willingly, even embrace it? A belief in God, and in an 'afterlife', and immortality, is surely at the root of his conviction?

What then of suicide or euthanasia - if we are to willingly embrace death? Only in due season then? And, how are we to know when 'the time is right' and in what circumstance?

And to suggest in his last post that 'Trinitarian theology' is the only kind? 'God' may be endemic, but in cultural, and not restrictively Christian terms. In culture, 'God' may be axiomatic, but in many and varied forms, with many associated beliefs or understandings. To contend that the Christian God is the only true God is to deny the vast mass of humanity who maintain a sound theology, but based on a different understanding of God. But of course, for generations Christian charity has denied the validity of other belief systems, no matter how nurturing and socially constructive they may be, and has alternatively sought to 'convert' the 'misguided' to belief in 'the one true God'. Could this not be just pride and superego?

Many cultures accept death, and have customs for dealing with it - the best caring for the dying, the worst leaving them to rot. Neither Christianity nor Judaism has a monopoly on dealing with death with compassion and reverence, and all too often these days Capitalism looms as the all-consuming 'God' - a God of self interest.

I dislike the current usage of the term 'Judeo-Christian', particularly with the word 'tradition' appended. It smacks of a convenient, even political, 'construct'. Old Testament, New Testament, and that's an end of the association, as far as I am concerned. I prefer 'Human', and can only hope this may one day be the 'Tradition' - the pursuit of 'Humanity' or 'Humanity for God', as the prevailing and common understanding and tradition. Let history be a record, and Humanity look to an all-compassionate future.

Dear George,

After retirement I did courses in the local university. One was about nineteenth century English protest movements. The instructor brought in two differing eye witness accounts of Peterloo where protesting workers were killed by government forces. The two accounts differed so much that it seemed as though they did not witness the same event. Actually since the two eye witnesses were not at the same place in a chaotic situation they were actually witnessing separate parts of the same event. The two eye witnesses could not see the same thing.

The instructor mentioned the breakup of the Manchester Methodist church which caused a schism in Methodism. There were two main theories as to the basic cause of the breakup. The immediate cause was disagreement about getting an organ.

Marxist historians (my instructor was one) put the schism in the context of the class struggle. The church elders were mainly factory owners, and the congregants were mainly workers. The Marxists had it that the workers objected to the dominance of the capitalists so their separation from the church was a revolutionary act. Methodist historians saw it as a doctrinal dispute with those opposing the organ supporting the ‘purity’ of worship without sensual embellishments.

I wondered about the difference and doubted both explanations. The records were available in Brisbane. From those records another explanation emerged. The church elders wanted the organ. However, they were businessman and treated it as they would treat any new enterprise. They would organize it and then raise the money to finance it. Their concept would be effected with other people’s money. Instead of floating a stock offering as they would if it were a public corporation they increased the dues. The congregation did not want to pay the increased dues and split. If the elders had financed the organ by themselves there might have been no split.

Since I was neither a Methodist nor a Marxist the instructor was puzzled by my interest. I wanted to find out more about the Methodist schism since neither explanation sounded right, and I was curious.

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My previous post made the point that one’s explanation of history is based on one’s general outlook. I think you share that view. Possibly my interest in the Methodist schism was due to something in my outlook that I’m not consciously aware of besides mere curiosity.

In regarding Hitler and the Nazis many consider them uniquely evil. That excludes us from considering the evil impulses within ourselves. That gives us a tool to denigrate others. We can call them Nazis, and they are beyond redemption. I think there is a little Nazi in almost everybody.

Another mistake is to assume that Nazism was an aberration having little to do with the pre-Nazi past. We are all prisoners of the past. As Faulkner said, “The past isn’t even past.” Mosse identified certain trends that Nazism exploited that were already present in German society.

In the eleventh century when armies went to the Crusades on the way through Germany they massacred Jews.

Martin Luther’s diatribes against Jews were printed in the Nazi papers. An extract:

http://www.humanitas-international.org/showcase/chronography/documents/luther-jews.htm

First to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. …

Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed. For they pursue in them the same aims as in their synagogues. Instead they might be lodged under a roof or in a barn, like the gypsies…

Third, I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings, in which such idolatry, lies, cursing and blasphemy are taught, be taken from them. …

Fourth, I advise that their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of loss of life and limb…

Fifth, I advise that safe¬conduct on the highways be abolished completely for the Jews. For they have no business in the countryside, since they are not lords, officials, tradesmen, or the like.

The Nazis merely followed a well established Germanic Christian pattern. Their operations were more efficient than the past actions, but Hitler followed Christian tradition.

Dear Peter (Sells),

As you know, I have always tried to understand you, and am not that ready to call your post rubbish or superstition. I disagree with much (not all) of what David writes (mostly about Christianity) but I can understand him. So let me try to understand you on the background of my position.

As a Catholic I see my beliefs - the rational presuppositions of my faith - come in four steps:

1. What I wrote about as disbelief in Sagan’s maxim which claims that (natural) science can inform us about ALL reality.
2. Beliefs (“models of the supernatural”) that make me a monotheist, believer in one God (trinitarian or not), which brings me in company e.g. with (religious) Jews and Muslims.
3. Additional beliefs that make me a Christian (in addition to cultural determinants and preferences).
4. Additional beliefs that make me a Catholic (in addition to cultural determinants and preferences).

Step 1. I expresses my fundamental philosophical (metaphysical or ontological) preference, Step 2. the religious background of my world-view, Step 3. my religion, Step 4. my religious preference or “orientation”. I think Step n does not make much sense (especially to outsiders you want to argue it with) if you do not accept Step n-1 (or argue it first).

In my view you are speaking at the level of Step 3. without accepting Steps 2. and 1. Without belief in God and the supernatural, Christianity - with whatever function you ascribe to Jesus - would be a castrated religion not very different from secular ideologies. Does this make sense to you?

Dear david f,

I certainly agree that "one’s explanation of history is based on one’s general outlook" and I am grateful for your illustrations and interpretations broadening my outlook.

>>I think there is a little Nazi in almost everybody.<<

This is true if you equate Nazi with evil, a more general term, but I think I understand what you mean. It is certainly true that Jews were outcast, persecuted, and worse, practically throughout the pre-Enlightenment times when Christianity was the sole religion forming Western culture (Christendom). However, this civilisation gave us not only negative things, like hatred and persecution of Jews (or atrocities perpetrated by Crusades on Muslims, other Christians and Jews, etc) but also positive things that eventually led - through a very painful transformation - to what we today like about the West, including, Spinoza, Einstein, Mendelsohn etc. You might remember that not being a historian, nor philosopher of history, I like to quote A. N. Whitehead: “Faith in the possibility of science, generated antecedently to the development of modern scientific theory, is an unconscious derivative from medieval theology." (Science and the Modern World).

Thank you for the link and quote from Luther’s pamphlet that I knew of but never actually saw quotes from. I am probably not going to read it all (similarly Mein Kampf), but in spite of trying to place it in historical context, I am horrified. Do you know of some Catholic cleric, contemporary of Luther, who would have written about Jews using a similarly abhorrent language? I am just curious. The almost only positive thing that can be said about Luther in this respect is that his version of Christianity gave us also Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

>> Another mistake is to assume that Nazism was an aberration having little to do with the pre-Nazi past.<<
This is a point that apparently also Daniel J. Goldhagen, author of “Hitler's Willing Executioners”, is trying to make, and it is also how the problem is being seen by one side of the Historikenstreit I referred to in a previous post.