My comments are interspersed with yours.
Henry Bemis Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Richard Dawkins -- one of the famed 'new atheists'
> has recently called himself a "cultural
> Christian." His comments, and the following
> linked responsive opinion, raise the prospect of
> whether the decline of religion generally, and
> Christianity in particular, is having an adverse
> effect on culture:
>
>
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/christianity-
> s-decline-has-unleashed-terrible-new-gods/ar-BB1kZ
> dRj
>
> Here are some excerpts:
> _______________________________________________
>
> "Still, though Dawkins has spoken of his
> “cultural Christianity” before, this feels
> like another staging-post on a journey towards the
> good Professor finally admitting that the New
> Atheism, of which he was such a shining light, was
> wrong in crucial respects. First, in its almost
> touching naivety that a post-Christian world would
> give way to a values-neutral space, rooted in
> reason. Second, in its semi-adolescent diagnosis
> of Christianity as a retardant upon cultural and
> intellectual progress. A New Atheist would
> generally cite the Spanish Inquisition or some
> wacky US creationist as representatives of the
> world’s largest faith – conveniently ignoring
> any contradictory examples."
While I'm not a fan of Dawkins (he's too militant for my taste). I think the essayist is ignoring something very important; namely, that this world doesn't just have Christians and atheists in it; it also has Jews and Hindus and Muslims, among others. Recognizing this fact must therefore mean that Christianity losing favor doesn't necessarily mean that atheists are winning; in fact, the situation appears to be more complicated.
>
> "One reason for Dawkins’ change of heart might
> be good old-fashioned scientific observation. It
> doesn’t take the brains of an evolutionary
> biologist to work out that New Atheism was
> mistaken in its diagnosis of what would follow
> religion’s decline. The rational world we were
> promised hasn’t materialized and a nastier, less
> reasonable one is supplanting what was there
> before."
>
> "Yet increasingly, the thesis of Tom Holland’s
> book Dominion seems to be winning out, via a
> growing recognition that the ethics we hold as
> natural and universal are, in fact, anything but.
> Much of what atheists ascribed to vague concepts
> of “reason” emerged out of the faith which
> informed the West’s intellectual, moral, and,
> yes, scientific life – a cultural oxygen we
> breathe but never see."
>
I should probably point out here that while some of the values held by Christians (and other religionists) may be valid even in today's world, the mythical stories of how we got those values appear to be just that, myths!
> ____________________________________________
>
> COMMENT: I think it is fair to say that the widely
> held assumption that given the decline of
> Christianity, atheistic 'rationality' would of
> itself sustain cultural and moral values has
> proven to be naive. Right or wrong (and true or
> false), Christianity has provided for centuries a
> foundation (God and Jesus) for basic humanistic
> moral values. Atheism, on the other hand,
> generates rudderless moral confusion, moral
> skepticism, and moral relativism. After rejecting
> Christianity, the humanistic values -- e.g.
> freedom, equality, justice, love, etc. -- become
> platitudes to be overridden or distorted by one's
> favored secular ideology.
I would argue that you could have written the above paragraph about any number of world religions besides Christianity and it would still ring true regardless of which religion you were discussing.
>
> The problem is that Christianity (and religion
> generally) does not come with *just* a nice set of
> 'golden rule' moral values as the metaphysical
> dictates of a supposedly 'just' God. It also
> comes with 'God-inspired' dogma that infects like
> a virus otherwise 'legitimate' Christian values.
> The dictate to 'love thy neighbor' is one thing,
> but the insistence that eternal damnation (or
> marginalization) is the fate of the non-believer
> (or abortionist) is quite another.
>
> For all its faults and limitations, metaphysical
> atheism and its insistence on rationality are
> still necessary to check Christianity (and
> religion generally) when its dogmatism extends
> beyond the implications of the golden rule.
> Dawkins' suggestion that the nice aspects of
> 'cultural Christianity' can be severed from
> ideological, dogmatic, and culturally judgmental
> Christianity, is a myth.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/04/2024 02:01PM by blindguy.