2. I agree with your first sentence, but religion seems to go throught this process again and again ad nauseum. The next bit of your argument is simply misplaced. Marx was an atheist. Marx developed communism. I don’t see a causal relationship. In fact, there are many passages in the gospels where Christ sounds like a communist, don’t you think? Then your logic gets truly silly. Stalin didn’t kill anyone in the name of atheism. China didn’t invade Tibet in the name of atheism. By making this kind of point, you open up a whole new line of attack for me. Earlier, I mentioned Eric Rudolph. His terrorism was motivated by Christianity. If I allow myself to make the same jumps you do in pointing to Stalin and Tibet, I get to use not only Christian terrorists but every criminal who happens to be a Christian. So, unless you’re ready to take some responsibility for the fact that the US prison system is overflowing with Christians (which would be absurd), don’t try to blame Stalin on atheism. Correlation is not causality. Unfortunately, the propaganda of the cold war stressed the link between atheism and communism, and we haven’t outgrown our programming as a country.

1. I think we are in danger of talking past each other on this one, since it appears to me that you continue to adopt a different view of religion and a different definition of faith. If I were to accept religious upbringing as “programming” people to accept “cleverly packaged” stories and ideas, and faith as “belief without evidence” I would very likely agree with your comments.
However, I tried to suggest in my previous comment that I do not believe in “blind faith,” nor am I particularly interested in any form of religion that involves “programming” people. I DO, however, see any world view, whether an atheistic, purely empirical worldview, or a theistic, spiritual worldview, as proceding from fundamental, unproveable assumptions which can only be said to be accepted “on faith.” Once accepted as presuppositions, these fundamental assumptions then support either a more or less coherant, satisfactory worldview. Whether the resulting worldview is indeed coherant and/or satisfactory seems to me to depend a great deal on reasons that are as much or more subjective as objective.
My fundamental presuppositions are threefold: There is an objectively real world; God is the objectively real meta-reality who stands behind, permeates and sustains the world; and God is as s/he is in Jesus the Christ. These presuppositions form the foundation of my Christian world view. It must then be judged whether the resulting world view is coherant and satisfactory, and, for me, it has been for 50 years or so.

2. “Correlation is not causality.” Okay, so where ideology x is followed by action y, there are three logical possibilities:
a. Action y is sufficiently consistent with ideology x that causality can be inferred.
b. Action y is sufficiently foreign to ideology x that causality can be rejected.
c. Action y represents a distortion of ideology x such that a relationship between the two can be established, but not causality in the sense that the distortion is neither necessary nor invited.

None of these is a necessary condition; each situation must be evaluated so as to see in which category it falls. Were Stalin’s and Mao’s actions consistent with their atheism? Were Eric Rudolph’s actions consistent with Christianity? Certainly not with the Christianity I know. And I would have to take great issue with the statement that his actions were motivated by Christianity. They could not possibly have been, since his actions were so contrary to the teachings of Christianity.
My contention is that no ideology is immune to distortion, and to advocate any point of view makes it available in the marketplace of ideas and therefore subject to distortion. It sounds to me that As The Rt. Rev. David Jenkins, bishop (ret.) of Durham once said, “The main thing you can say about people who say they believe in God is that they don’t, but that’s not God’s fault.”

2. I agree with your first sentence, but religion seems to go throught this process again and again ad nauseum. The next bit of your argument is simply misplaced. Marx was an atheist. Marx developed communism. I don’t see a causal relationship. In fact, there are many passages in the gospels where Christ sounds like a communist, don’t you think? Then your logic gets truly silly. Stalin didn’t kill anyone in the name of atheism. China didn’t invade Tibet in the name of atheism. By making this kind of point, you open up a whole new line of attack for me. Earlier, I mentioned Eric Rudolph. His terrorism was motivated by Christianity. If I allow myself to make the same jumps you do in pointing to Stalin and Tibet, I get to use not only Christian terrorists but every criminal who happens to be a Christian. So, unless you’re ready to take some responsibility for the fact that the US prison system is overflowing with Christians (which would be absurd), don’t try to blame Stalin on atheism. Correlation is not causality. Unfortunately, the propaganda of the cold war stressed the link between atheism and communism, and we haven’t outgrown our programming as a country.

Chuck Chapman on August 24, 2006 at 9:14 am said:

As to the rest of what you said, I would simply briefly state that, in my opinion (borne out, I think, by world history and current events), one of the most dangerous things in the world is an uncritical adherance to religion.

Well, if you’re going to keep making so much sense, it’s going to be very hard to argue with you.

I have a few thoughts on this, though. First, how is a critical adherence to religion compatible with faith? Doesn’t this idea undermine a lot of what Jesus supposedly said? Second, every religion breeds extremism and lunacy eventually. I would be perfectly satisfied to leave the kind of tame religion you’re talking about alone if it weren’t for the fact that history shows us that any faith can and will metastasize into something ugly and dangerous. Episcopalianism comes from Catholicism. What else did Catholicism give us? The Inquisition. Eric Rudolph. Famines that can be directly tied to the ban on birth control. Now, if you go into an average Catholic church on Sunday, you won’t find the kinds of people responsible for these things, but they’re out there somewhere, and when they commit whatever atrocities will next spring forth from religion, those who are complicit in and who promote the lie of god are partially to blame, no matter how great a guy you may be personally.

1. Somewhere along the line religious leaders, particularly in churches like Baptist and Roman Catholic where the leadership suffers from some major control issues, tried to redefine “faith” as “blind, unquestioning adherance to whatever we tell you.” This does not sound consistant with “Seeking, you will find; knocking, the door will be opened to you,” or, “I will send you the Comforter who will lead you into all truth” (as opposed to infallibly revealing it to you through popes, councils, or preachers on the radio), or, “Now we see through a glass darkly, then, face to face” etc. etc. Nor does it sound consistent with the Psalms or the book of Job where people question God all the time. For me, “critical faith” means a faith that is strong enough to stand up to the tough questions, not a faith that is so weak that it must be protected from them.

2. Any and all ideologies are susceptible to breeding extremism and other unhelpful, if not destructive, mutations. The argument could be made that Marx’s brand of atheism produced the mass killings under Stalin and the cultural destruction of Tibet. Are you willing to accept complicity in those events? Or do we acknowledge that a constituitive part of human makeup is a tendency to take anything too far, especially things considered to be beneficial? After all, in the church, “heresy” usually meant a church teaching that had been taken too far in one direction so as to present so skewed a picture as to no longer be true.

As to the rest of what you said, I would simply briefly state that, in my opinion (borne out, I think, by world history and current events), one of the most dangerous things in the world is an uncritical adherance to religion.

Well, if you’re going to keep making so much sense, it’s going to be very hard to argue with you.

I have a few thoughts on this, though. First, how is a critical adherence to religion compatible with faith? Doesn’t this idea undermine a lot of what Jesus supposedly said? Second, every religion breeds extremism and lunacy eventually. I would be perfectly satisfied to leave the kind of tame religion you’re talking about alone if it weren’t for the fact that history shows us that any faith can and will metastasize into something ugly and dangerous. Episcopalianism comes from Catholicism. What else did Catholicism give us? The Inquisition. Eric Rudolph. Famines that can be directly tied to the ban on birth control. Now, if you go into an average Catholic church on Sunday, you won’t find the kinds of people responsible for these things, but they’re out there somewhere, and when they commit whatever atrocities will next spring forth from religion, those who are complicit in and who promote the lie of god are partially to blame, no matter how great a guy you may be personally.