Hi Jack,

I've been thinking over your comment that " .... It's as if the Church missed out on the French Revolution, the American Revolution and most importantly the Enlightenment and the rights and freedoms accorded to the individual."

Maybe it's a matter of similar underlying conditions which produced both - Western European Christianity in its earlier and modern forms, AND the Enlightenment, with a lot of bitter and dynamic interaction between the two.

Christianity in Europe has never been as monolithic and absolute as Islam, given its geography, multitude of political entities, often at war with each other and with any absolutist tendency of the Churches, and differing histories - all of which made absolutism, or Caesaropapism, unworkable, thereby inevitably opening the door to differences, schisms and, ultimately, hugely varying points of view and philosophical developments.

In contrast, Islam has had the utterly deadening hand of absolutism (or competing absolutisms) coupled with a total prohibition on questioning, discussion and therefore genuine philosophical, social, scientific, political and economic development above a basic minimum.

In other words, Christianity - unwittingly but unstoppably - helped to spawn scientific enquiry, technological development, independent enterprise, and an expansion of the scope of human rights.

As an atheist, and an anti-Gramscian post-Marxist, I'm quite comfortable with acknowledging the key roles that the various and competing strands of Christianity may have contributed ultimately, if indirectly, to the Enlightenment and to our modern-day perspectives on human rights.

We should give credit where credit is due, and build on the achievements of those who have come before us, instead of tearing them down and expecting Utopias to rise up out of ashes.

Cheers,

Joe

Sellick writes: " Islam cannot be judged by the actions of Islamic terrorists just as Christianity cannot be judged by the actions of the German Church that allied itself with Hitler or by the skewed theology used to support apartheid in South Africa.......or the acts of christian terrorists in Ireland, or the perversion of scripture in condoning slavery, or for the institutionalising of endemic misogyny in christianity.........or for the violent and wrathfull overthrowing of native peoples' theologies, legends and folk tales so they can be coerced into believing christian theologies, legends and folk tales.
And of the German Church he refers to.......It was a creature of Pope Pius X11, Eugenio Pacelli, negotiated by him as Pius X1's Nuncio to the German Republic and later the Third Reich. History is being served by releases of thousands of files and other documents that have been progressively released since Pacelli's death in 1958. His successor, Benedict XX111, began the process. The harbouring and hiding of Jews by the Vatican on the instruction of Pacelli was window dressing. Cont……

Cont……He also writes: "The great tragedy of the embargo on the discussion of religious belief is that these obvious aspects of culture cannot be discussed." Perhaps in his lachrymose lament he might summon the courage to reveal to us who exactly is/are responsible for this disjunctive feature of human mores. A discerning reader will note that Sellick ensures that while not entirely blameless in ages past, religion is now purified and held distant from taint as per the device in my first paragraph or the taint becomes "culture".

He writes further: "Conceding the above warnings, it is obvious that religious belief does work itself out in how societies function." No, the reverse is true; Societies work out how religions function.

And further: "Religious belief, generally, provides individual identity and community cohesiveness. It provides a narrative within which ones life runs. This is why religion will not disappear any time soon." Utter piffle. Identity and community cohesiveness are innate in humans as evolutionary processes. Chimpanzees share these same characteristics as well as a significant number of other mammalians. Waxing allegorically is a favourite device of the apologist and Sellick's "narrative" is simply that......a device to tell us that everyone needs to be told how to act and what to do. His melancholy prediction as to religion's longevity brings no joy to the materialist's heart but would he equally be honest enough to tell us that history indicated to him that religion's future looks like being a brief one, if indeed that's how he privately viewed the future of religious faith?