{"id":3346,"date":"2010-03-20T23:31:37","date_gmt":"2010-03-20T12:31:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/imaginarydiocese.org\/bishopjohn\/?p=3346"},"modified":"2010-03-20T23:39:05","modified_gmt":"2010-03-20T12:39:05","slug":"3-christians-ponder-atheism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/imaginarydiocese.org\/bishopjohn\/2010\/03\/20\/3-christians-ponder-atheism\/","title":{"rendered":"3 Christians ponder atheism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two Melbourne Anglicans have been engaged in the Global Atheist Convention<\/a> and\u00a0you will be well rewarded in reading them: Chris Mulherin and Stephen Ames. Thirdly,\u00a0a sizzling interview in ‘Inside Catholic’. In turn, \u00a0<\/p>\n

A\u00a0‘Credo’<\/a>, statement of belief,\u00a0said to be common\u00a0to both atheists and Christians is interesting.\u00a0Chris, the Christian, Mulherin former CMS missionary in Argentina reflects on and adds to the Credo to develop its\u00a0‘Christian’ character.\u00a0This is a good example of thinking in terms of ‘similarity and difference’ in developing understanding of both our own faith and the faith of other people.\u00a0Chris begins,<\/p>\n

On Monday I posted Credo<\/a> affirming 10 things that I, as an orthodox Christian believer, have in common with many atheists. Well, I\u2019ve been thinking\u2026 and it won\u2019t surprise my atheist sparring partners to know that my own Credo goes beyond the 10 things in common. This Credo with Commentary<\/em> is a personal response to things heard at the (Global atheist) convention and that I\u2019ve read in this (ABC Radio National Global Atheist Convention) blog<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read Chris’\u00a0fascinating Credo with Commentary<\/a>.<\/p>\n

See also\u00a0Stephen Ames’\u00a0A Response to the Convention<\/a>\u00a0especially the section on gratitude.<\/p>\n

A Theist Strikes Back: A Conversation with Dinesh D’Souza <\/a>is a sizzling interview. It begins,\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n
Dinesh D’Souza: I began this book What’s so Great About Christianity<\/em> as a secular exploration of the way in which Christianity has shaped America and the West. I wanted to show that Christianity is the foundation of the central institutions of the West, such as democracy and human rights. I also wanted to demonstrate how Christianity has shaped values that even secular people cherish, such as compassion and respect for the equal dignity of all people.<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
Then the atheist books began to hit the shelves, one by one. First Sam Harris with The End of Faith<\/em>, then Richard Dawkins with The God Delusion<\/em> and Christopher Hitchens with God Is Not Great<\/em>. There have been several other books, too, by Daniel Dennett, Victor Stenger, and Steven Pinker. Here I encountered a much more belligerent and far-reaching attack on God and Christianity. These men claim that Christianity is not only irrational but also evil. We are seeing a newly confident atheism that is no longer content to sullenly deny God but wants to drive religion completely out of the public square and destroy its intellectual and moral legitimacy.<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
So I went back to the drawing board and produced this book. It’s written in the C. S. Lewis tradition, as a defense of traditional Christianity — what Lewis calls “mere Christianity.” I meet the atheist arguments on their own terms and attempt to answer them with logic and reason and science. I don’t shy away from the atheists’ favorite weapon: skepticism. Only I apply this skepticism to atheism itself.’\u00a0 . \u00a0. \u00a0.<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
\n
Henry Kamen’s scholarly work on the Inquisiton shows that the Spanish Inquisition killed some 2,000 people over a period of 350 years. That’s 2,000 too many, but let’s keep these numbers in perspective. The crimes of Christianity go back hundreds of years. By contrast, in the last century alone, atheist regimes from Pol Pot to Mao to Stalin to Hitler have killed well over 100 million people. Richard Dawkins argues that at least the atheist regimes didn’t kill people in the name of atheism. Isn’t it time for this biologist to get out of the lab and read a little history? Marxism and Communism wereatheist ideologies. Stalin and Mao weren’t dictators who happened to be atheist; atheism was part of their official doctrine.<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
It was no accident, as the Marxists liked to say, that they shut down the churches and persecuted the clergy. Communism and Nazism were explicitly dedicated to creating a new man and a new type of society freed from the shackles of traditional religion and traditional morality. So the atheists can spout all their sophistries, but they cannot get around the fact that atheism, not religion, is responsible for the greatest mass murders of history.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
I haven’t read his book but if this interview is anything to go by: go buy! \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 Well, at least read the above\u00a0interview<\/a>.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two Melbourne Anglicans have been engaged in the Global Atheist Convention and\u00a0you will be well rewarded in reading them: Chris Mulherin and Stephen Ames. Thirdly,\u00a0a sizzling interview in ‘Inside Catholic’. In turn, \u00a0 A\u00a0‘Credo’, statement of belief,\u00a0said to be common\u00a0to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/imaginarydiocese.org\/bishopjohn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3346"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/imaginarydiocese.org\/bishopjohn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/imaginarydiocese.org\/bishopjohn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/imaginarydiocese.org\/bishopjohn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/imaginarydiocese.org\/bishopjohn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3346"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"http:\/\/imaginarydiocese.org\/bishopjohn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3346\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3362,"href":"http:\/\/imaginarydiocese.org\/bishopjohn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3346\/revisions\/3362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/imaginarydiocese.org\/bishopjohn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/imaginarydiocese.org\/bishopjohn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/imaginarydiocese.org\/bishopjohn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}