I'll just say this: Science has saved more children, more pain and given more hope in 100 years than Christianity managed in 2000.
Science is like nature: neutral in its power and reliant on human wisdom to achieve good. I wish religion would focus on Good and leave God alone!
Quoting a work of fiction to expouse the "It's old but there is nothing better" opinion of religion is sort of meaningless. Well written though.

Sells you argue that it is the arrogance of modernity to dismiss a tradition that has refined itself over such a long time span yet is this not what we mean by learning from history. If we just accept all that has gone before man is forever destined to continue on making the same mistakes. Change is not always a negative. Change can bring about improvements in society or foster unity even if it dispels widely held myths or beliefs.

"...we can have any concept of God without talk about God or theology, is just silly. Dogma is just theology that the church for more than 2,000 years has decided is a firm basis for faith."

The trouble is there are many Churches, many dogmas and many versions of the story of God within Christianity. This would suggest that there has not been much refinement over time, only more division and confusion and yes even more power play.

I watched part of Foreign Correspondent last night about the effects of the famine in Ethiopia. In the face of all this one man spoke about God's will that they continue to produce more babies - it just made me shudder. This is what 'our' history has inflicted on these people. What devastating consequences our interference has meant for these communities. We can only suspect this is why people like Dawkins continue the fight for rationality and for compassion in the face of religious dogma

Pretty mild stuff for a change, Sells.

Where are the hellfires of yesteryear?

But I wish you would provide a little more depth at crucial moments, such as:

"Dogma is just theology that the church for more than 2,000 years has decided is a firm basis for faith. This is not a decision that has been made as some kind of power play to support the hierarchy of the church, or some practical measure to ensure that public morality is upheld, or indeed so that the weak-minded can have something to cling on to in the face of death, but an attempt at truthful speech."

You specifically deny the motivations usually attributed by opponents of organized religion - the power play, the morality control mechanism, the emotional crutch - without any supporting information.

Even a sentence would help. An example, perhaps.

Otherwise you leave yourself open to the "well he would say that, wouldn't he" observation.

Much of the available evidence is unfortunately against you.

On power: the entire Roman Catholic church relies upon rigid adherence to dogma - in their case, from a single, dictatorial source - as a form of power play to support their otherwise unsustainable organizational architecture.

On public morals: there are entire political parties, whose dogma-driven policies are transparently designed to uphold their own definition of public morality.

On weak-mindedness (your words) in the face of death: I'm afraid that you will find that the general public - as opposed to theological academics - regard the unique selling point of religious observance to be its comfort to them as they contemplate death.

>>It is the arrogance of modernity to dismiss a tradition that has refined itself over such a long time span, and has fought off heretical attacks that would corrupt the truth it seeks to enunciate<<

The process that you describe as refinement may also be characterized as evolution, as in the survival mechanism of a simple organism.

It is not a form of arrogance, to challenge such expedience.

Merely curiosity.

The Unitarian Church Plumb(actually Rev J H G Chapple) established in Timaru only lasted about 10 years after he left. The Christian church group that took over the building in 1935 and preaches the Gospel still continues today. God is not mocked and has had the last laugh in Timaru. God is indeed alive and well today and the church he establishes will last. Those that look elsewhere fail to pass on anything read as the reviewer notes so well in his article.

Kiwilucio
Thanks for the historical information. I had no idea that the novels were loosely based on an actual character.
Peter Sellick

What Pericles fails to acknowledge is the reality of the Church - the People of God here, firmly, on planet Earth. It began with an inner circle of followers ( ie people who responded to the call of Jesus the Nazarene to "come follow me". ) who gradually came to know him as the Lord amongst them who commissioned and entrusted them to reveal Him and His ways to the world. It is a great story that has flowed through history from amongst a particular people of history.

The subject and content of the last sentence has seen emerge from the human heart and mind of reason literally innumerable books, poems, sacred song, liturgy, invaluable human institutions, and a Truth that unfolds further with human advancement through the sciences, reflection and prayerful response.

Like all human exercise it is open to error, corruption and division. Yet it survived its early post Crucifixion years, formed in turbulent times and still exists across the millennia with a core unity.

The adherents to the rationalist, secular movements across the last three hundred years, the "enlightened" centuries, have little to show of their own. We can of course all share and have ownership in the virtue and benefit of evolving knowledge and practice that has seen the human and his/her world flourish.

I know not what particular element of rational thought alone will see us through the next century. From what flows the faith and hope we need as a people? Not as a strong particular instance of the people each of us may claim? From what story?

Pericles, you talk of power, control and exploitation of weak mindedness as being the Church's attributes. Let us apply some reasoned thought. This is hardly the behavioural properties for institutional success in the long term. Notwithstanding the obvious and acknowledged blots of wrong, unjust and at times perverse behaviour across time, a reasonable person would have to make some acknowledgement of such fact and evidence of long existence, and the goodness that has flowed within and from the Church to the human project of life. Truth.