“So to make a trade between a certain kind of rationality and so called intuitive understandings is to queer the argument right from the start. This is the kind of argument that is accepted by many today and Christians should be very angry that they have been so maligned. It is time the church spoke out about how the argument between rationality and religion has been framed…

The fact is that the modern world is based firmly on Christian understandings of what it means to be human. While paganism could only seek to escape from the material world of the body, Christianity, with its proclamation that God had become a man, affirmed the body and gave rise to hospitals and medicine to care for the body….These are the aspects of Christianity that produced a seismic shift in culture.”

True indeed, and very well-said.

There is gross ignorance about what the scientific method is. Those who say that science “proves” that there is no God or that it will invariably lead to atheism shows their ignorance about the matter, because atheism and theism are both faith-based belief systems.

Dr. Francis Collins the director of The Human Genome Project became an evangelical Christian through studying science. Collins was awarded the highest civilian US medal, the Presidential Medal of Freedom).

After listening to him for 2 hours it is difficult to see how science contradicts Christianity.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjJAWuzno9Y

Former atheist and brilliant scientist, Alister McGrath (currently Prof. of Historical Theology), completely demolishes Richard Dawkins to being a science fiction writer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxc0NpTZE18 (Dawkins vs McGrath)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0bUAImz-zw

(Dennett, Prof. of philosophy; one wonders why McGrath takes the trouble to debate him. An ‘A’ level student can easily poke holes in his arguments)

What too can one make of Peter's earlier OLO article:

"Environmentalists: the New Pharisees?"

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=488

And the "loving" Jesus said to the Pharisees:

“Woe to you scribes and Pharisee, you frauds! You are like white-washed tombs, beautiful to look at on the outside but inside full of filth and dead men’s bones.” Matt 23:27

“Thus you show that you are the sons of the prophets’ murderers. Now it is your turn. Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers' guilt. Serpents, brood of vipers! How can you escape the condemnation of hell?" Matt23: 31:33

Such hyperbole and aptly endorsed by Runner: "The problem is hard, proud lustful hearts that refuse to acknowledge their own filth.

It appears that as long as one is Christian, one is not "filthy" in the eyes of the Christian God and can trash the environment with impunity. Bleating Godbotherers, Bush, Howard and Blair thought nothing of wilfully killing off the Iraqi people (and beyond) with the use of depleted uranium thus violating all the laws of nature and using civilians as cannon fodder in perpetuity.

I suggest that Peter Sellick (scientist?) enrols in a crash course in Environmental Toxicology! He really needs to get out and about more!

Ah yes the USA medal of freedom.

It has been given to all kinds of people for all kinds of activities.

George the village idiot from Texas gave it to John Howard and Tony Blair for services rendered in the illegal imperial invasion of Iraq.

How many hundreds of thousands of people have died thus far?
And what about the traumatized survivors?
And the ruination of Iraq altogether?

And what about the long term effects of depleted uranium as a result of that mis-adventure.

Perhaps the good Francis Collins should commission a comprehensive study into the topic?

I also saw that the raving looney psychopath Edward Teller (one of the toxic fathers of the bomb and the big-time force in the development of the H-BOMB too) was awarded the medal by the village idiot too.

Why do people consider atheists as also being "faith based" ?
My interpretation of an atheist is having no belief in a god of any sort. How does that then give me some kind of faith ? Faith in nothing is hardly a belief.

Fractelle, I love reading your postings you put a lot of thought into what you say and you are erudite and articulate in quite a simple way sometimes. I wish more correspondents were so cogent and reasonable

I commend readers to (Bishop) Tom Frame’s article “Godless nation no longer beggars belief” in The Australian Literary Review of 5 August. This is about the implications for Australia of the widespread loss or positive rejection of religious belief. He writes:

“With the eventual discarding of Australia's Christian meta-narrative there will… be a void to fill. No replacement has yet been found despite claims for the existence of agreed values, conveniently ignoring their origin in the cultural legacy of the nation's Christian past. The world's leading atheists and anti-theists do not have a clearly articulated vision of what a godless world will be like. Most insist they don't need one.

"Although profess few common values or shared virtues, do not have comprehensive answers to the world's problems and are not offering a positive program of action to deal with greed and selfishness, betrayal and violence, they simply assert that a world without God is always and everywhere to be preferred. They ask that others trust their interpretations, accept their pledges and have faith in humanity. Accepting such an invitation is not without significant risk.

“In the absence of an underlying and unifying story capable of providing a set of values and virtues able to shape human behaviour, interactions between people will become increasingly reliant on the force and effect of contracts and regulations.

"With even less consensus about the point and purpose of human living, the public interest and the common good will become ever harder to determine as demands for individual fulfilment and personal satisfaction become irresistible. …

“Although they comprise a declining proportion of the population, religious believers will continue to participate in public conversations about what matters and what ought to matter in life. There will certainly be conflict between Christians and those who espouse what has been called positive atheism, the belief that there is no God. It cannot be any other way. Put simply: Christianity and positive atheism will never be indifferent to one another. … Christians want to promote their faith and share its blessings. Anti-theists abhor zealous evangelism and want it prohibited. ”

Constance.
Thank you for your kind words of appreciation, as undeserved as they are. I wanted to offer the following quote by Walt Whitman to Peter Sellick, but at second thought I think we all - perhaps especially Christians - can benefit from it:

“Have you learn’d lessons only from those who admire you, and were tender with you, and stood aside of you?
Have you not learn‘d great lessons from those who reject you, and brace themselves against you? Or who treat you with contempt, or dispute the passage with you?”

Yes, I do live in Cologne. Having been born in what is now Slovakia, I am too young to have other than childhood memories of WWII, but too old to remember the Stalinist and post-Stalinist times, where at school I heard for the first time most of the objections against religion and Christianity (paraded also on this OLO) thus developing a wish to better understand not so much the objections themselves as the persons raising them. I lived more than thirty years in Melbourne and consider Australia my real home, however because of my wife I am spending my retirement years in Germany.