While They Debate God's Existence, Earth Burns

Re: Knowyourbible

#1 where are even the religious holidays mentioned in the Bible? including Christmas celebrations (for the birth of Jesus), Halloween, even Easter egg hunts? All these holidays came originally from paganism. Early Protestants noted how much of the celebrations and the tradition of saints and relics within the Catholic Church were purely from the pagan Greek mystery religions.

>Much of this is true. Since the Bible does not say how one is to celebrate the birth of Jesus, Christianity absorbed local customs and celebrations. Recognizing that Christianity influenced the secular world does not mean that the secular world has never had any influence on the religious world.

It is not against the law to dishonor your parents.

> Patricide was quite common in ancient cultures before Judeo-Christian teachings took root. Incest was not all that uncommon either.

adultery is not against the law -

> Monogamous marriage is the only form of marriage acceptable in Western culture. Has been for centuries. Adultery is grounds for divorce, which carries punitive measures.

(1) torture is not forbidden in the Bible
(2) slavery is not forbidden in the Bible
(3) rape is not forbidden in the Bible if the girl was a virgin--in fact in one passage all a rapist had to do was to pay the father off so many pieces of silver and marry the girl.)
(4) pollution is not forbidden.

> All of these items are covered under Jesus’ directive to Love Thy Neighbor or to Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You. Concerning slavery, perhaps you have not heard of the Abolitionist movement. A group of Christians (who would nowadays be labeled right wing Christian fanatics) whose protests helped end the institution of slavery.

#4 Our political freedoms and democracies did not have their origins from sources in the Bible.

> The punishment of King David for arranging Uriah’s death was an example for the people that even a king was answerable to God, and that a King was no better than the common man. If he abused his people he could be punished. Thus in the Western viewpoint Kings got their authority from God. If they disobeyed God’s law or mistreated their subjects, the people were no longer under any obligation to obey them. You will note through out history, the frequency of Western Kings being over thrown. Though not perfect you will note that countries where Judeo Christian traditions took root are among the freest nations in the world. The nations where it did not, the people often have none of the liberties we take for granted. More often than not they suffer persecution at the hands of tyrannical leaders.

#5 Women's rights and children's rights were not obtained through biblical sources. About a hundred and fifty years ago, a parent could severely beat a child base on the biblical law not to spare the rod.

> Yes, a parent was permitted to punish their child. Nowhere does it say they could severely beat them. That is a falsehood.

The foundation for children's protection law came only after the SPCA was created.

You left out some important facts. The first person in history ever to raise the subject of the humane treatment of animals was none other than St. Francis of Assisi. The social worker who brought the case of Mary Ellen Wilson to the attention of the ASPCA was Etta Wheeler – A Methodist Christian. The founder of the ASPCA Henry Bergh (son of Christian Bergh) – was himself a Christian. The predecessor to the ASPCA, the RSPCA was confounded in England by the Rev. Arthur Broome...So your point was?

Christianity IS far more humane than it used to be. It also looks nothing like that of the earliest Christians; or Christianity practiced during the Dark Ages.

>The Dark ages describes a five hundred year period when the Roman Empire abandoned Eurpope and European tribes battled one another and invading hordes from Asia, and the Middle East. Imagine modern day Iraq on steroids. This was the world Christianity inherited. Europe was a barbaric continent, without laws, without morals. It was dog eat dog, every man for himself, might makes right. Christianity brought civility and laws to these barbarians. Not overnight, but eventually. Ever heard of the Peace and The Truce of God? These teachings proclaimed by the church stated that Christian Kings should not wage war on other Christians and that innocent people (woman and children) should be protected in time of war. Before this time rape, pillage and plunder was the rule of the day. Christianity took centuries to cultivate in Europe. But by and large it shaped Europe into a much more civilized and advanced continent than the world around it.

Some of the best humanitarians have been atheists. Did you notice the three billionaires that gave money to help the poor were atheists?Bill Gates, Ted Turner and Warren Buffet

> Not saying I don't give these guys some credit, but St. Francis and Katherine Drexler didn't give some of their money away. They gave it ALL away to charity. Mother Theresa dedicated here ENTIRE life to caring for the sick. It wasn't something she did on weekends at the country club. Atheism has yet to produce a single example of human devotion on this scale.

Dinah: There is no person in western civilization over the age of sixty who existed separate from a mentality influenced by Christian principles. All social changes flow with ideals as compassion, truth, freedom, peace, equality and personal worth. The educational focus of children was on personal character development through prayer; to seek guidance from a God of LOVE. So, the answer to the question by a majority in this age group most likely would be YES.
============================================

Dinah, most of the belief systems in Christianity came outside of it -- and it is Christianity that has changed over the millennium.

This topic deserves books -- but I will give just a few examples:

#1 where are even the religious holidays mentioned in the Bible? including Christmas celebrations (for the birth of Jesus), Halloween, even Easter egg hunts? All these holidays came originally from paganism. Early Protestants noted how much of the celebrations and the tradition of saints and relics within the Catholic Church were purely from the pagan Greek mystery religions.

#2 regarding ethics, do you realize that only TWO of the Ten Commandments are institutionalized in our secular law -- Killing and Stealing. Sometimes bearing false witness is against the law (if under oath or to a policeman are examples.) That makes three at most.

-- It is not against the law to dishonor your parents (there is a death penalty for this in the Old Testament)
-- You can use the name of the Lord in vain.
-- adultery is not against the law.(It had the death penalty -- but not between a married man and a single woman)
-- You can covet your neighbor's possessions. Advertisers rely on this all the time.

#3 More important there are laws that are considered basic to civilization AND whose source did not come from the Bible. Examples

(1) torture is not forbidden in the Bible
(2) slavery is not forbidden in the Bible
(3) rape is not forbidden in the Bible if the girl was a virgin--in fact in one passage all a rapist had to do was to pay the father off so many pieces of silver and marry the girl.)
(4) pollution is not forbidden.

All of the above was forbidden in the Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead -- in addition to not unnecessarily causing anyone to cry. (Good ancient Egyptians believed they had to testify to the above at death to prove they deserved eternal life.)

#4 Our political freedoms and democracies did not have their origins from sources in the Bible. (In fact Kings used the Bible for their authority The Age of the Enlightenment that our country is based on came from the idea of using Rationality and Science, instead of just following biblical scripture

#5 Women's rights and children's rights were not obtained through biblical sources. About a hundred and fifty years ago, a parent could severely beat a child base on the biblical law not to spare the rod. (The foundation for children's protection law came only after the SPCA was created. Advocates for children had to argue that since animals could be protected from beatings, and humans came from evolution, children should receive the same protections.)

Christianity IS far more humane than it used to be. It also looks nothing like that of the earliest Christians; or Christianity practiced during the Dark Ages.

It is Christianity that has changed the most – not visa versa

LT: "If the atheist worldview is correct, either helping the world or letting it burn is justifiable, and there is no way to prove which is correct."

No, it is only religious fundies who think this way -- because

(1) you can always say you believe, and you will still go to heaven.

(2) the earth is only temporary anyway, and only heaven matters.

Atheists know this is the only world they will ever have. Atheists often care more about the poor because they know this is the ONLY world they ever have.

Some of the best humanitarians have been atheists. Did you notice the three billionaires that gave money to help the poor were atheists?
i.e., Bill Gates, Ted Turner and Warren Buffet are atheists.

It is fundi Christians who are happy to do nothing about global warming, let large corporations pollute freely, etc... because the world is not considered important.

"A-theism validates theism by having only a negative to replace it. What atheism needs is a positive vision which would evacuate the need for that negative title. What might it be?"

This is completely wrong.

Atheism does not believe in a negative. It believes in the natural forces that created the universe and the scientific mechanism of evolution to account for life on earth.

To follow your own LOONEY logic: You validate Zeus by your negative view(s) against it. For based on YOUR reasoning, one can only a negative view for something that really exists.

Such Hooey. You are trying to use Anselms's proof in the negative. But since this is worthless metaphysics -- your effort is just the same.

I thought "thugs" taking over the earth was going to be a political reference to the Bush administration.

While fundamentalist religions worry most about gay marriages and abortions, it allows thug political leaders like George Bush to do great damage to this and future generations:

* to do nothing about the threat of global warming,

* to create massive deficits that will make it harder for our children and grandchildren to solve their problems,

* AND to create wars that devaste innocent peoples across the globe.

So sorry to discover your post is just another rant from a right wing fundi idelogue!

Bill L,

"Vicar of Christ"??? That is also a votable issue since all the scriptural references are late additions by embellishing scribes if you believe most of the contemporary NT exegetes.

http://www.faithfutures.org/JDB/intro.html and

http://www.faithfutures.org/JDB/jdb073.html

John 14: 26 not historic ( 62-. Spirit under Trial: (1) 1Q: Luke 12:11-12 = Matt
10:19-20; (2) Mark 13:11 = Matt 10: 19-20 = Luke 21:14-15; (3) John 14:26.)
John 16:13- not reviewed by Crossan or others that I can find
Matt 16: 18-19 not historic (73- Who Is Jesus?: (1) Gos. Thom. 13; (2a) Mark
8:27-30 = Matt 16:13-20 = Luke 9:18-21; (2b) Gos. Naz. 14; (2c) John 6:67-69.)
1 Timothy- not written by St. Paul (See Crossan’s “In Search of Paul”, Harper, San
Francisco, 2004, p.105)

2 Peter 1:20

Since Schillebeeckx basically ruled out prophecies by concluding God does not know
the future, one can rule out the infallible nature of this verse.
Also from Raymond Brown’s, An Introduction to the New Testament, 2 Peter was
the last canonical work written i.e. ~ 130 AD, author unknown. Tis a bit dated for use in claiming infallibility plus the verse is not from Jesus or Peter but some possible remembrance of a scribe.
From another source:
Also think about the logic (or lack thereof).
“I believe the Bible is inspired.” “Why?” “Because it says so.” Would your
anyone let that logic pass if it came from the followers of any other book
or person? “I believe x is inspired because x says so.” Fill in the blanks:
x=Pat Robertson
x=the ayatolloah Sistani (sp?)
x=David Koresh
x=the Koran”
more “logic”?
“I believe there is One God Jehovah because He is revealed in the infallible
Bible. I believe the Bible is infallible because it is the Word of the One God Jehovah.”

Concerned, if you have two or more people there will be differences in opinion. The Commission may vote, but nothing doctrinal is put forth by the Church unless the Vicar of Christ declares it. The Church has never taught limbo as a doctrine despite what some priests or Bishops may have taught.

Bill B,

Since voting on NT passages bothers you, see below.

(as noted on another blog)

"Hmmm, the Jesus Seminar of NT exegetes and its voting techniques?

Reminds me of "After the Vatican's International Theological (or is it "Theoillogical") Commission finishes their VOTING on limbo", hopefully they will turn their VOTING towards the likes of Adam and Eve, Job, the OT in general, the various versions of the Nativity and lack of attestations for a large number of NT references especially in John's Gospel i.e. even the Vatican theologians need voting to decide matters about God and here I thought there would be no differences of opinion being members of the one truthful Church.

http://www.catholic.org/international/international_story.php?id=21542

The current crop of Atheists are making their points specifically BECAUSE the Earth is burning. Religious fundamentalists are leading wars and changing laws. How hard is this to understand?

Catholic bigwigs meeting in the Vatican to discuss dogmatic nonsense is a waste of time. Trying to show the public the folly of suicide bombing, abstinence education in subsaharan Africa and ID-based school curricula IS trying to combat the burning of the Earth. Hoping that people who don't expect to be raptured in the next few years is hoping that they will care about the environment for the long term. Are the religious really so stupid as to think that the debate points of Dawkins et al are just rhetorical excercises? They are fundamentally important for trying to solve the very real problems of the world today.

I am sad to report that the bead count having been tallied, there is a zero percent probability that Crossan actually said what is written above.

S. Landry: I find it difficult to believe that you actually stated, "there is a common, human, understanding of what is moral and ethical." I don't have to "study" anything to know that your position is absolutely false. I don't even have to have a religious belief, be it Christian, Muslim or Satanic. Did you even think about this? Is there a common understanding regarding the morality of pornography, sex outside of marriage, prostitution, abortion, greed, lying, homosexuality, pedophelia, euthenasia ...! I cannot express the extent of my disbelief without sounding offensive, so I won't.

I will say, however, that should you desire to use the Bible as your example, you should understand what it says it the context it is given. Your Old Testament proof texts were dictated to the Hebrews, not to you, me or anyone else for that matter, that were not Jews. Following Christ, the rules were changed, ergo a "New" Testament which deals with people individually. The "mystery" Paul writes about was God's inclusion of us gentiles through the sacrifice of Christ.

As to reason as our moral guide, reason would say that since homosexuality is the leading cause of the spread of aids, get rid of the gays and save us taxpayers and medical users a lot of money. Reason says that if you lower the minimum wage, then businesses can lower their cost of goods sold and everyone would make out. Reason also says that if this is the only life I get, the heck with what YOU need, I'm only concerned with what I need. Who cares what my smog level is from my monster SUV? Who cares if the offspring generated from my inate and overpowering lust for sexual gratification can't fend for themselves when I die? Just because I can breed, this doesn't equate to a moral responsibility. WHO CARES if I LOVE to eat transfatty foods? Reason would state that I control my body and exercise absolute control over what happens to it, doesn't it? Isn't that the foundational premise FOR abortion? How is it different from what I eat?

Personally, I'll take a benevolent God over reason any day of the year. Especially one who wants to be known and has made Himself known.

You said:

"From outside that debate, one might try a parable: once upon a time, parents gave their 12-year-olds the keys to the family car to see whether they would learn to drive before they wrecked the car and killed others as well as themselves."

I'm not an evolutionary biologist, but my guess is this group's dna will not survive very far into the future. And that's an amoral, but none the less, positive progression in my view.

What does any of this have to do with the question?

LT: "If the atheist worldview is correct, either helping the world or letting it burn is justifiable, and there is no way to prove which is correct."

This is frequently misunderstood. Atheists do not suggest there is no basis for ethics other than self-enrichment. In fact, if you examine people who have studied ethics and moral decisions by people of all types of faiths (and lack thereof) there is a common, human, understanding of what is moral and ethical. It does not require religion. Moreover, if you look at the Bible, we do not get our morals from there. If we did, our brothers-in-law would be required to impregnate our wives if we couldn't, and non-virgin brides and disobedient children would be stoned to death. We obviously use some other faculty to determine which of the admonitions in the Bible we should take seriously and which we shouldn't. It is this faculty, one which requires the use of reason, which is where moral guidance originates.

"Whether you come from theism, or atheism, does it bother you that, while enjoying that debate thugs were taking over the world?"

There is no person in western civilization over the age of sixty who existed separate from a mentality influenced by Christian principles. All social changes flow with ideals as compassion, truth, freedom, peace, equality and personal worth. The educational focus of children was on personal character development through prayer; to seek guidance from a God of LOVE. So, the answer to the question by a majority in this age group most likely would be YES.

Our history is one of power transfers. From the Church,--to state,--to the people! In my opinion 'the people' did the best job! Then, perhaps blinded by the glamour of technology;--the people relinquished power to academia;--where educational focus moved to the physical environment;--and soon we began to rever human intellect, more than God, and the invisible 'person'. In the sixties we dismissed a God of LOVE from the public mind; the cries for peace and love were silenced;---and corporate power began its takeover;--gaining control of our health system,--education,--food,--our government,---of all our basic needs! People willingly returned to slavery, oblivious to a deeper personal potential. So, I would expect if we continue in this direction, the answer to the question by the next century could be NO!

I believe it is vital that while academia still holds power, agreement must be reached as to the existence and nature of God. For this reason: As we prayed--'good' entered our world; physical principles, and a personal potential that always existed became realized; we moved toward comfort and compatibility. Today, we try to copy those actions, teach 'communication';---but the ideals that radiate from every aspect of social direction can't be taught in the usual manner of physical instruction! The words have no physical properties, and defy academic definition. Neither the priest, or minister can instruct on usage; but the Church must be credited for awakening realization of these personal character traits. They perhaps are aptly described as the 'human spirit';--it was a REAL, LIVE, SPONTANEOUS energy that directed our course. Entirely personal realizations, applicable and flexible to all circumstance!

As these ideals are not physical reflections, but seem to have been realized through; are definitely related to eras of prayer; I believe we should credit not human intellect, but God for our ascent! The other fact that can't be dismissed is all progress is relative to our capacity to love, to come together in thought---and these ideals were the common ground! The meeting place of our ancestors was not linear,--but exists deep in personal thought!

Pam wrote, "The ones who are going to 'a better place' after death don't need to care about what they're leaving behind."

Not so: If the claims in the Bible about Christ are true, then it is not justifiable not to keep the world from burning for two reasons. First, all people are God's creation in His image, which makes them worth relieving from suffering. Second, all people are in need of salvation from Christ Jesus, but a lot of them need to experience God's love through Christians before accepting this gift of grace, which isn't helped if we forget about the world we're leaving behind.

Pam also wrote: "It's those of us who think that Earth is our only home ever who have incentive to preserve it for future generations."

Not so for everyone: If the atheist worldview is correct, either helping the world or letting it burn is justifiable, and there is no way to prove which is correct. If there is no afterlife, it is perfectly rational to maximize one's own self-defined pleasure while alive because life is too short to experience pain. One can feel that it's wrong to care only about oneself, but one cannot prove that such a person is wrong to be selfish.

Under an atheist worldview, it all comes down to personal preference; I challenge Pam to demonstrate otherwise. Though fundamentalists (among whom I don't count myself) sometimes misinterpret it, the Christian worldview, in contrast, does give an irrefutable reason for protecting people from thugs.

Finally, Pam wrote: "Isn't 'feeling better' valid?"

Maybe, but how is that more or even equally logical to my conviction that God as revealed through Christ exists and that I should live for Him? My conviction, albeit ultimately based in faith, has a basis in a work written over centuries by dozens of people and preserved better than any other ancient work. What is the basis for "feeling better"?

Would it be possible within this context to hear the voice of Suheir Hammad, a Palestinian woman poet living in New York, Brooklyn?

>... I need to speak about home
I need to speak about living room
where the talk will take place in my language
I need to speak about living room
where the land is not bullied and beaten into a tombstone
I need to speak about living room
where my children will grow without horror
I need to speak about a living room where the men
Of my family between the ages of six and sixty-five
are not marched into a roundup that leads to the grave
I need to speak about a living room
where I can sit without grief without wailing aloud
for my loved ones

(Quoted in Anna Agathangelou & Kyle Kilian, "Epistemologies of Peace: Poetics, Globalization, and the Social Justice Movement", Globalizations 3/4, Dec 2006)

Both atheism and deism (in different ways) are calls to awakening and responsibility. If we are alone in the universe and there is no divine rescue squad out there, then we are solely responsible for not making a dog's breakfast of the present and our collective future. If there is a god (or gods), then we are called to live (not just talk about) their teachings and take the broadest possible responsibility for ourselves and others.

Sounds good, but usually we screw up. Atheists and secular humanists are often just self-absorbed nihilists whose ideology dresses up a lot of anger and condescension in intellectual clothing. They frequently have a touching and absurd faith in "science" and scientists - you know, those jolly fellows that brought us the atomic bomb, plastic explosives, machine guns, land-mines, and chemical warfare -- along with good things like modern medicine, computers, and improved agriculture.

Likewise, believers often use their beliefs as an outlet for their own self-absorption and anger. They create a god in their own image and use it as a club to beat down their opponents - namely anyone who disagrees with them or lives differently. In this country, zealots and fools have made poor Jesus into a suit-wearing, divine CEO who favors tax-cuts for the rich, who cares more about stem-cells than than the troops in Iraq, and who always votes Republican. Could anything be more self-serving... or dangerous?

So what is point? Wherever we find ourselves in our understanding of life and the universe, we are called to do more than just behave in the time-honored dog-eat-dog manner of our species. Whatever we think, we are called to live by our highest principles. That is the only reality here , but it is a demanding one. No wonder we turn away from it time and time again and go back to fighting each other - it is so much easier!

Professor Crossan writes, "A-theism validates theism by having only a negative to replace it." He could also argue with equal logic that "Non-belief in unicorns validates belief in unicorns by having only a negative to replace belief." The professor's argument justifies belief in everything, thus justifies belief in nothing.

And just what does Professor Crossan want us to believe in? Is it "the mystery of meaning that surrounds us as a person"? You can get that by reading philosophy. No Gods required. Or is it the belief that "humanity is a deliberate divine experiment," which sounds like the anthropomorphic theism he says we shouldn't believe in? It seems that it is Professor Crossan that is without a "positive vision," at least no consistent vision.

Atheists make no claim to a positive vision. They merely do not believe in nonsense.

Joe,
Do you ever think about what you write or do you just reflexively give some trite, snide lefty response to anything that gives you an occasion for baseless moral snobbery? Professor Crossan is certainly engaging in hyperbole- Do thugs have as much power now as say 1939 or even 1968? Certainly not. But you've no call to insinuate he's a bigot except that that's your tired little answer to everything likely. I suppose you count yourself a good enlightened "liberal" for painting others as bigots, Locke and Kant would be sick at what the word's come to mean. Why not have some minimum level of charity and assume he means the likes of Putin (a gangster ruling a country), Kim, Achandineschad (and the men who pull his strings), Taliban and their sympathizers in Afghanistan and Pakistan (and yes they're thugs who just happen to be Muslims and use Islam to justify their thuggery) and just possibly our own dear leader and his whole dirty band. What is a thug after all if not someone with contempt for law and order and the other rules that govern life among civilized human beings and a tendency to use violence as a first resort?

The issue of an afterlife is important. Professor Crossan in his book, Who is Jesus, notes that he does not believe in an afterlife which brings into play the questions raised by the last two commentators.

LT wrote:
"If we don't, i.e., there is no afterlife of any sort, then fundamentally it doesn't matter if "thugs are taking over the world." Anyone who is suffering or dying from this phenomenon was going to die anyway. It sounds callous, but absent an afterlife, any altruistic acts may make one feel better but can only delay the inevitable."

Yes, we're all going to die anyway - but why wouldn't those of us who expect no afterlife want the world to be pleasant for us while we're here, and a good place for our children and grandchildren to inherit? And isn't "feeling better" valid?

LT wrote:"The God question becomes by extension more important than the world question because it helps us answer the afterlife question. The Bible claims that God solved the problem of death apart from Him by sacrificing His Son Christ Jesus so that we could be with Him after death. This is obviously not a proof that there is a God and that His nature is as described in the Bible. However, this answer to the God question gives us a much better reason to stop the earth from burning than some other."

How do you figure this? The ones who are going to "a better place" after death don't need to care about what they're leaving behind. It's those of us who think that Earth is our only home ever who have incentive to preserve it for future generations. Fundamentalists think the "rapture" is coming and the Earth will no longer matter. Fundie preachers have been some of the most anti-green of all, and they welcome the Middle East wars and chaos as a sign that the "end-times" are nigh.

Prof. Crossan would like us to believe that the question of what kind of God, if any, exists is secondary to the pragmatic question of how to help the world. I argue that the reverse is true based on a third question: Do we experience anything after we die?

If we don't, i.e., there is no afterlife of any sort, then fundamentally it doesn't matter if "thugs are taking over the world." Anyone who is suffering or dying from this phenomenon was going to die anyway. It sounds callous, but absent an afterlife, any altruistic acts may make one feel better but can only delay the inevitable.

The God question becomes by extension more important than the world question because it helps us answer the afterlife question. The Bible claims that God solved the problem of death apart from Him by sacrificing His Son Christ Jesus so that we could be with Him after death. This is obviously not a proof that there is a God and that His nature is as described in the Bible. However, this answer to the God question gives us a much better reason to stop the earth from burning than some other.

If there is no God, then there's no basis for anything after death...certainly not the scientism that claims that all causes are fundamentally material. Alternatively, one can posit a God (or gods) of a different character with a pleasant afterlife, but then one still has to find a basis to substantiate this pair of beliefs. Such a basis has to be coherent, which is not possible with a pluralistic mixing of irreconcilable religious texts or any combination of scientific and religious thought. It requires a step of faith to choose among coherent bases, but if a basis isn't coherent, it can't be true.

I'm left confused about Prof. Crossan's complaint that some theists take literally the anthropomorphic metaphor of God. Surely his talk of Jesus in his previous post means that he thinks Jesus was a literal person. He also says, "Early Christians, with whom I stand as a contemporary Christian, claimed that Jesus was Divine, Son of God, God, and God from God." If he believes that Jesus was a real, literal person and agrees with early Christians that Jesus is God, then why is theism only supposed to be metaphorically anthropomorphic?

Smoke and Mirrors wrote:

""There you go again"; ever heard that line before?"

Yes, that's the line that Ronald Reagan used during a presidential debate to win election against Jimmy Carter! Why you ask?!

Crossan says:
"From theism, one might say that humanity is a deliberate divine experiment: let’s see what free human beings will do to themselves and their world."

And this is the God that you would have me worship?? One that is all-powerful, yet plays with humans as though they were an ant farm? Keep your lousy God to yourself.

Crossan writes: Once the claims of anthropomorphic theism are taken literally, atheism become almost too easy to be worth the challenge.

This is very certainly true, and yet many of the people who wish to impose their beliefs on this country espouse an entirely anthropomorphic theism. A vigorous response to that can certainly be forgiven.

Crossan writes: A-theism validates theism by having only a negative to replace it. What atheism needs is a positive vision which would evacuate the need for that negative title. What might it be?

This makes no sense at all, in fact it is so nonsensical that is close to being offensive. The burden of proof is very clearly on those who believe in God. And, given that Professor Crossan's deity is not anthropomorphic, the burden is on him to say what its character might be. Otherwise the idea is so vague as to be meaningless, and it has not purpose in organizing one's view of the universe -- or in preventing us from wrecking the car, so to speak. That last bit is the part that is offensive. Crossan suggests that unless I subscribe to a cosmological world view that is ridiculously fuzzy in details than I am an irresponsible agent in a world that is burning. Why? What evidence is there for that? I would submit that history debunks this idea.

A great point of discussion for atheists and believers (with a commentary by Professor Crossan?) is whether there is a Singularity/God that does or does not know the Future.

As per Father Edward Schillebeeck, the famous, contemporary theologian in his book Church: The Human Story of God, Crossroad, 1993, p.91 (softcover)

"Christians must give up a perverse, unhealthy and inhuman doctrine of predestination without in so doing making God the great scapegoat of history" . "Nothing is determined in advance: in
nature there is chance and determinism; in the world of human activity there is possibility of free choices. Therefore the historical future is not known even to God; otherwise we and our history would be merely a puppet show in which God holds the strings. For God, too, history is an adventure, an open history for and of men and women."

Anonymous

"There you go again"; ever heard that line before?

"By theism, I mean imagining the mystery of meaning that surrounds us as a person"

This might be a comfortable defination you came to in your own head, but I hardly think it applys to your everyday believer. Why would any worship a "mystery of meaning"

The whole point of imagining is that we are aware that we are imagining, otherwise it is delusion.

Mr Grossman wrote:
"does it bother you that while you are enjoying that ancient debate the thugs arre taking over the earth?"

How dare you call our men and women fighting in Iraq and Afganistan thugs??? These soldiers are there to defend the freedom and democracy all over the world. Yes, sometimes we acted like thugs, like Abugharib, Guantanamo and some rapes/kiiling here and there, but these are isolated incidents. It might seem to you that most of these men and women are in the army because they lack good careers here at home and might not have the slightest knowledge of what this war is all about, but you can't take the actions of a few hundered to call the entire army thugs. That's not fair.

I don't agree wiht everything Crossan writes, I do enjoy his tone and message.

Atheism validates theism? If that is so then faith is unnecessary. If it's really faith in God and not faith in men who calim they have God's words then no further discussion necessary. What validates faith in the clergy, no clergy?

Is it fatih in the clergy, God's little helpers? Could it be that faith is in a book? What sort of idiot waould take the life of a fellow human being based upon what it says in any book? Try Nazi just for starters.

The Nazis had a book, a Godsend, "The Protocols of International Zionism" was it's title. That's the sort of book used to claim the right to other people's property and lives. How different is the Bible? A hoax is a hoax and all hoaxes lead to a common effect. The hoaxer get's what he wants and the hoaxed get to deliver it to him.

Make sure the Bible is the word of God before using it to declare anyone is not fit to live. We're waiting for the proof. You may post it on this blog so we can all understand why we got faith in almighty God and not the Bible and/or those who preach and teach from it.

Got faith? Why? All is known.

I'm confused. What "thugs" are taking over the earth? Was that a veiled reference to the dark hoards of scary "Muslims"?

What is this foolishness? He makes it sound like atheists put all else on the back burner to attack religion. I for one say that there is no god and that is all I have to say. Why is it that my (dis)belief is the cause of "the thugs taking over the world". His logic (sic) leaves much to be desired.

Earth burns in part of people fighting over religion -- killing over whose imaginary friend is more righteous.

I do not believe in God. That has no bearing on how I treat other people. One does not have to believe in God to treat other people the way one would wish to be treated. But real ethnic cleansing -- that takes an Old Testament commitment to a cult.

While YOU debate the existence of God. Atheists have no faith in YOU. God has nothing to do with it. Faith is NOT faith in God. It's faith the Bible is God's word.

The Bible is not God's word. It's the confidence man smoke and mirrors used to extract money from people with faith in him, not faith in God.

The Bible is a proved hoax, http://www.hoax-buster.org You don't want to hear that? Why not? It's why faith in religion is on the decline while faith in God remains constant. The average bear knows something is wrong just watching all the bad news religion brings.

Do the three great faiths have common ground? Of course they do for all make monkeys out of men while denying evolutiuon.