“The secular revolution” edited by Christian Smith he makes the case that MJB alludes to. The secularizers, by and large teachers and academics who worship at the idol of originality and personal promotion, have, over the last two hundred years, convinced the general population that the church did not carry Western culture through to the Enlightenment. The very terms “dark ages” and “Enlightenment” say it all. This is secular propaganda, and relies on the myth that the church stood and stands for backwardness and superstition and that religion in general promotes war. On the contrary, there are few who would go to war for Jesus but many who would go to war for their country. Nationalism has always been the source of war, to put it down to religion is a thin reading of history.

Smith makes the argument that we have been convinced by the sociologists that societies naturally proceed from backward, religious communities to secular and progressive ones. He goes on to show that this has been discredited among sociologists and that the real reason for the triumph of secularism is that academics and teachers have persistently made the case that religion has been superseded by science and learning. In other words we have been duped by the academics! The result of this in Australia is that theology is absent from our educational institutions. That means that the very engine that drives Western culture is ignored. This had led to the flourishing of Christian fundamentalism on campuses that have filled the vacuum of informed opinion in academe.

This is why it is so hard to have an informed theological discussion on these pages, there are very few people who know the language to enter such a discussion. The attempts to mend an increasingly broken society by teaching values in schools is pathetic and will not work. As a society we have lost our seminal story and we will be healed only when it is replaced.

BTW this morning’s (26th June) Encounter on Radio National (Cardinal Pell and the nation state) was excellent on this.

Sells can I suggest you do a essay on “The secular revolution” edited by Christian Smith and request it posted on http://www.crookedtimber.org/ I'd be very interested to see replies to it there.

I'd like to focus on the ontotheological concept of God for here.

Could you expand on your it especially why it should only be applied to your 'God'and not allow other faiths?

>the last hundred years of theological scholarship.
Give us the short version.

>Christianity is but one voice among the myriad voices claiming religious truth. And so the obfuscations go. This is a weak defence that is transparently avoidant.

Please enlighten us as to why.

>There are no arguments that can convince us that Christianity is true.
So you are left with faith and that cannot differentiate between a true faith-if one even exists- and a human construct.

& BTW tell the creation science loons to keep the hell out of out science classrooms.

To propose hard and fast arguments about God would be to miss Him completely
So God is Zen.(TIC)

>This displacement happens simply because the Christian story is the best, deepest and truest story around. It produces graceful human beings and truly free selves

A Zen Buddhist or a Hindu could say the same thing.

Pls don’t cheapen this discussion with cheap shots- The above arguments are just the outer appearance of a deeper fear- so I won’t argue that Christians psychologically dependent on a meta-physical father figure because they lack the maturity to face the natural world.

>The reality is that anyone who wants to truly investigate the Christian faith must seek before they will find.

The reality is that anyone who wants to truly investigate the Muslim/Buddhist/Hindu etc etc faith must seek before they will find.

So it basically comes down to there is no proof that God exists, you must open your heart, and be thankful that out of the myriad of different faiths you did it with Sells version of religion before being deluded by doing exactly the same thing in the humans constucts.

Peter, I admire your attempt to confuse us with semanitcs. It seems that most comments revolve around the same understandings of religion. Having spent the majority of my life studying religion, particuarily christianity and islam, I am afraid you missed the reality. A good read of the Nag Hamadi library and the un-abrigded greek interlineal text of the new testament will show you that religion is a con. It is almost impossible to get religious people to see truth, basically because they are in a state of continual fear and denial. To say that facism and communism have created the worst evils is flying in the face of truth. If you look at history you will see that the vast majority of conflicts have been of a religious nature. I am sure that the amount of people killed in the name of god over the years would far out way those millions that died during the last century at the hands of facists and communists. You must also take into account those native populations that have been wiped out around the world during the invasions of god fearing people and their murderous attempts to convert everyone. The truth is that religion is at the forefront of the death and destruction of societies and people in our age. There is no god, Jesus was just a bloke that was a great psychic and confused about life and where it was going. Sure there are some very powerful forces within the universe that have control over many things, but they dwell within different dimensions to us and have realities that we can't understand, just like the difference beween our reality and an ants reality. For us, the answer is in opening the door between this 3rd dimension and the next, the 4th. Then we will see truth from a different aspect. Try that reality and you will see that it is more rational and logical than any religion thats aim is to conquer all by whatever violent means it can.
The alchemist

Neohuman. I think it is about time you did some work yourself. If you are really interested in this stuff instead of just nailing me then spend some time to get informed, I listed some authors, if you want some specific book titles just let me know.

Ontotheology is no big deal, it is just theology written from the point of being. This includes Aristotle’s first cause or unmoved mover, Anselms ontological proof of God, modern cosmologists idea that there is a designer. It is essentially an argument from nature instead of history. This is the god who does not exist and is the god that theists and atheists cling to in order to justify their positions. It is about time we acknowledge that THERE IS NOBODY OUT THERE.

Trinitarian theology escapes the criticism that there is no evidence for the existence of God by understanding God as the relationship between the truth (the Father), history (Son) and our experience of these (Spirit). Rather than using the category of being as ontotheology does it uses the category of relationship. This formulation is fundamental to how we understand anything at all and its erasure from academe has produced a dumbing down of intellectual life evidenced in PhDs in gender studies, pubic hair and the latest cult film.

Hard and fast arguments about God miss the point in the same way that hard and fast arguments about a particular marriage miss the point. This is because persons are mysterious, they cannot be evaluated even by the person himself let alone by another. Since God can only be conceived as the relationship between the persons of the Trinity we cannot define Him just as we cannot define another person or the relationship between persons. The Christian God is therefore not a God who can be proved or disproved but only met.

Ps I would gladly tell creationists to keep out of the classroom, you can see why from the above.

Pt1
>Neohuman. I think it is about time you did some work yourself. If you are really interested in this stuff instead of just nailing me then spend some time to get informed, I listed some authors, if you want some specific book titles just let me know.

Do I have to send you off to read atheist and humanist literature, this is a real time debate work with me.

>Ontotheology is no big deal, it is just theology written from the point of being.
Point of being pointless (humor)

>This includes Aristotle’s first cause or unmoved mover,
No reason to think it has to do anything with the Christian God

>Anselms ontological proof of God,
did a tutorial paper on that got 10/10 shot it to pieces.

>modern cosmologists idea that there is a designer.

The God of Paul Davies isn’t the Christian God and even if you have a cosmologist that does pounds to peanuts they haven’t critically justified why it is the Christian God and not some other.

>It is essentially an argument from nature instead of history. This is the god who does not exist and is the god that theists and atheists cling to in order to justify their positions. It is about time we acknowledge that THERE IS NOBODY OUT THERE.

Thank you for acknowledging that you are a religious humanist now we can move on :)

Seriously though again even if we needed a divine spark for existence –which like this non-existence physical god there is no evidence for- if it exists meta-physically there is no reason to think it has any connection to your Christian concept of divinity.

>Trinitarian theology escapes the criticism that there is no evidence for the existence of God by understanding God as the relationship between the truth (the Father), history (Son) and our experience of these (Spirit). Rather than using the category of being as ontotheology does it uses the category of relationship.

Fair enough but by this line of reasoning is just as valid for of faiths

Jesus spoke in riddles and had a greater understanding of psychology and human nature than we give him credit for.
He was an intellectual in sheeps clothing.
As an intellectual he was an irritant in an oyster and made a pearl.
The Church often uses the word salvation like a cargo cult and does not explain the paradigm shift required in this life well before any other prologue in other worlds.
What are we being saved from? It is not sin but our limited and introspective paradigm of life. We are to be liberated. Jesus said few find this. It is not the universal anodyne the modern church preaches.
Why are Sunday schools so boring?
Why is Christianity and God presented as so dour, male and patriarchal?
Jesus was a zen master and not white. He was semitic.