Title: The God Delusion Session 3: What if God was one of us ADULT FAITH EDUCATION SERIES 7:30 pm on Feb 12
1The God DelusionSession 3 What if God was one
of us?ADULT FAITH EDUCATION SERIES 730 pm on
Feb 12th, 2009.St. Augustines Parish, 1060
Baseline RoadOttawa, Ontario
- Timothy Lau,
- MD, FRCPC, MSc
- Assistant Professor, Faculty of Medicine,
Department of Psychiatry, Geriatrics, ROMHC
2The God DelusionSession 1 War of the World
Views
The God DelusionSession 2 Son of Kong or Son
of God
The God DelusionSession 3 What if God was one
of us?
- Design and Causality
- Is the Universe fine tuned?
- The Anthropic Principle
- Designer Biosphere and Paleys Watch
- EVOLUTION
- Does evolution exclude God?
- Naturalism requires blind evolution
- Darwins theory of evolution and its problems
(micro vs. macro, molecular evolution and
biogenesis, gradual changes or leaps, Irreducibly
complex machines, the Fossil Record, conservation
of Information - The problem of morality
- Summary of errors in logic
- Atheism Faith of the fatherless
- Arent religions basically all the same?
- Who was Jesus?
- How are we saved?
- What is the connection between love and
suffering? - Hasnt organized religion in general and
Christianity in particular been corrupted? - Why do we need the Church?
- Too Liberal or Conservative?
- Quo Vadis Where are we going?
- 3 First Principles
- The Forgotten Roots of Science
- Myths of Conflict Faith and Reason
- Naturalism vs. Theism
- The Scope and Limits of Science
- Reductionism
- The Five Ways
- The problem of evil
- The prayer experiment
- Spiritual and physical health
- Rumours of angels
33 Sessions
- Session 1
- A RATIONAL GOD
- Reasonable arguments for Gods existence
- Session 2
- DESCENT OF MAN
- Atheism as irrational and dehumanizing
- Session 3
- ELEVATION OF MAN
- Faith and God, a family affair. A God different
than any other.
4The New Atheists and their Faith
- There is no transcendent reality beyond the
natural world that is to say there is no
immaterial soul and no life after death.
(Session 12) - The natural universe is self-originating, not the
creation of a divine being. (Session 1) - Humans, like the universe have no ultimate
purpose or meaning beyond that which they create
themselves (Session 2). - Science does a better job of explaining nature,
including human nature, than religion. Belief in
God is the source of much of the worlds violence
and disorder, and mankind would be better off
dispensing with religion (Session 2 and 3).
5What we have discussed so far
- There are rational arguments for the existence of
God - All things happen for a reason
- Explanation for existence of the universe, the
origin or life and evolution, in addition to the
problem of evil - A belief in a materialistic universe requires a
materialistic morality Humes guillotine - Humanity is based upon a transcendent reality
- Man is not just an animal, but a rational animal
- The soul is not an epiphenomena of matter
- The soul is what animates us soulanima and
allows us to have freedom, consciousness,
creativity, and sentience
6The limits of reason
- Pascal begins with the Kantian postulate that
"reason's final step is to recognize that there
are an infinite number of things which surpass
it." - In several of his writings, Pascal contends that
it is fortunate for man that the highest truths
are accessible through faith rather than reason.
In other words, faith is available to everyone.
If the only way to find out about God was through
reason, then smarter people would have the inside
track and the less intelligent would be shut out.
Getting into heaven would be like getting into
Harvard. - Apparently God wants to have people other than
PhDs in heaven He seems to have made room for
some fishermen and other humble folk. Reason is
aristocratic, but faith is democratic.
Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
7Why cant we find happiness?
- Pascal notes that for thousands of years man
employed great intelligence and effort to solve
certain basic problems. - We want to have peace in the world.
- We want to live in harmony with one another.
- We want to raise our children well.
- We want our lives to matter.
- Pascal says we have been at this for a very long
time, so why haven't we solved any of these
problems? Why does the pursuit of happiness
remain largely a pursuit?
8Why cant we find happiness?
- For leading atheists like Dawkins and Harris, the
simple answer is that man is ignorant, and
science is the way to dispel that ignorance. - The religious person knows that this is a
half-truth. Ignorance is only half the problem
the other half is the problem of good and evil.
- 2 points to reflect on that materialism
ultimately denies - We know from experience that we have free will
(freedom) we can choose great acts of heroism
but also great acts of depravity. - We can be (consciously) aware of our depravity
9Why cant we find happiness?
- Moreover, science is only one way to achieve
knowledge, and it is a certain kind of knowledge.
But science provides no answer to the most
important questions of lifeWhy am I here? What
should I love? What should I live for?they lie
outside the scientific field. - Faith is an attempt to reach beyond the empirical
realm and illuminate those questions. To look
and find something larger than ourselves as an
explanation for things. Inviting something
bigger than the whole world to live inside your
heart. - To reduce all knowledge to scientific knowledge
is to condemn man to ignorance about the things
that matter most in life.
10Moral Progress?
- Human rights
- Gender and racial equality
- Loss of religious freedom
- But who is human
- Humane treatment of the handicapped
- Unless they are suffering
- Involuntary euthanasia
- Universal condemnation against torture, cruelty,
slavery and racism - Unless sex is involved
11Moral Progress?
- Human rights
- Gender equality
- Loss of religious freedom
- But who is human
- Humane treatment of the handicapped
- Unless they are suffering
- Involuntary Euthanasia
- Universal condemnation against torture, cruelty,
slavery and racism - Unless sex is involved
- Loss of an objectively real, universally binding
moral law - Morality as subjective and relative.
- Rift between the rich and poor has never been
greater - 20th century has been by far the bloodiest
- 2 WORLD WARS, TOTALITARIAN REGIMES, COMMUNISM,
INFANTICIDE ON A SCALE NEVER KNOWN
12An Inconvenient Truth for Atheists
- Christianity built Western Civilization
- Art and Architecture
- Science
- Universities
- Human Rights
- Law Government
- Hospitals
- The 20th century was an experiment in secularism
- whose result was secular evil, an evil that, if
anything, was more spectacularly virulent than
that which came before.
13Session Overview
- The Top 10 objections to Christianity
- 11th objection Does belief in God cause
violence? - What have been the effects of atheism in the 20th
century? - Why Richard Dawkins doesnt understand
Christianity - The Problem of Morality
- The Reduction of Man
- Christianity
- The Elevation of Man
1410 Objections to the Christian Faith
- All religions are the same, deep down.
- This is untrue. The objectors implicit
assumption is that the distinctive teachings of
each are unimportant, that the essential business
about religion is not truth but something else. - This is the main assumption of Dawkins God
delusion. He assumes Islam, Judaism, and
Christianity are the same, and he ignores the
Eastern Religions. He mostly attacks
Christianity because they are easy targets (they
turn the other cheek) and because he thinks he
understands it having been one once.
15Objections
- 2. But the essence of religion is the same at
any rate all religions agree at least in being
religious. - I challenge anyone to define it broadly enough to
include Confucianism, Buddhism, and modern Reform
Judaism but narrow enough to exclude Platonism,
atheistic Marxism, and Nazism. - Hitchens and Harris would like to put atheistic
Marxism and Nazism in the religious category so
that they can condemn it without condemning
themselves.
16Objections...
- You will find real, profound, and strong
agreement between the Sermon on the Mount,
Buddhas Dhammapada, Lao-Tzus Tao-te-Ching,
Confucius Analects, the BhagavadGita, the
Proverbs of Solomon, the Dialogues of Plato. - Even Dawkins just so ethical surveys
conducted by Peter Singer show some common
agreement between believers and non believers. - Yes, but this is ethics, not religion. The
natural law. - We will return to Peter Singers view of ethics
later. -
17Objections...
- 4.Many roads lead up to the single mountain of
religion to God at the top. It is provincial,
narrow minded, and blind to deny the validity of
other roads than yours. - the unproven assumption is that all roads go
upwards, that man made the roads, not God. - There is no human way up (tower of Babel) and man
did not make the road.
18Objections...
- 5. Still it fosters religious imperialism to
insist that your way is the only way. Youre on
a power trip. - No, we believe it not because we want to or
because we invented it, but because Christ taught
it. Every believer by definition believes their
faith to be true. - The objectors assumption is that we can make
religion whatever we want it to be. - If the one-way doctrine comes from Christ, not
from you then He must have been arrogant. - How ironic. No man was ever more merciful, meek,
loving and compassionate. The objector is always
assuming the thing to be proved that Christ is
just one among many religious founders, human
teachers. - Self giving love was more than his message, it
was his mission, it the person gift of himself
19Objections...
- 6.Hypocrisy. Christians often do not act like
Christians are supposed to act. - The best and worst arguments for Christianity are
Christians - Many bad things have been done in the name of
Christianity - There is wheat and chaff, wolves amongst the
sheep, traitors amongst the apostles. - Even if there were more sinners than saints in
the visible Church that would not mean that
Christianity is false. C.S. Lewis said as much
in Mere Christianity, that churches are more
hospitals for sinners than hotels for saints. - Hypocrites at least have high standards
20Objections...
- 7.Do you want to revive the inquisition?
Absolute truth is dangerous. - The inquisition failed to distinguish the heresy
from the heretic and tried to eliminate it both
by force or fire. The objector makes the same
mistake in reverse. He refuses to condemn
either. The state has no business condemning
heresy but the believer must do it, at least
within himself. - It is not truth that is dangerous but an absolute
belief that what is false is true ex there are
no morals but what man defines. Übermensch. The
Hutus new ten commandments. Survival of the
fittest race. - 8. Im surprised at the intolerance. I thought
Christianity was the religion of love - It is. It is also the religion of truth. The
objector tries to separate the two divine
attributes. We are not. We are speaking of
truth and love.
21Objections...
- 9. But all God expects of us is sincerity.
- How do you know what God expects? The objectors
implicit assumption is that there is no objective
truth in religion, only subjective sincerity, so
that no one can ever be sincere and wrong. - Following ones conscience is important but a
person has to form their conscience correctly. - 10. Are all Non-Christians doomed then?
- No. Father Feeny was excommunicated for teaching
that outside the Church, no salvation meant
outside the visible Church. You can be saved on
earth by someone without realizing who it was
that saved you. Wouldnt you expect the same of a
merciful and loving Father? - Paul in Romans 2 Gentiles judged by their own
conscience - Jesus in Matthew 25 The brotherhood of man and
the Fatherhood of God.
22Matthew 2531-40
- Son of man judging the nations
- "When the Son of man comes in his glory, and all
the angels with him, then he will sit on his
glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all
the nations, - and he will separate them one from another as a
shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and
he will place the sheep at his right hand, but
the goats at the left. Then the King will say to
those at his right hand,
23Matthew 2531-40
- A Father who cares
- Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the
kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of
the world for I was hungry and you gave me food,
I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a
stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you
clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was
in prison and you came to me. Then the righteous
will answer him, Lord, when did we see thee
hungry and feed thee, or thirsty and give thee
drink? And when did we see thee a stranger and
welcome thee, or naked and clothe thee? And when
did we see thee sick or in prison and visit
thee?' And the King will answer them, - A shared humanity based on being part of a family
- Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the
least of these my brethren, you did it to me.'
24Our Shared Basis for Humanity
- Equal not what we can do
- (how FIT we are)
- Brain power, intelligence
- Ability to suffer
- Are the disabled children of a lesser God or are
they not children at all?
Another Christian concept, no less crazy the
concept of equality of souls before God. This
concept furnishes the prototype of all theories
of equal rights. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will
to Power
- Equal because of who we are.
- A child of God. Our fellow men and women and
brothers and sisters. - Made in His image and likeness. Equal in value.
Equal in dignity regardless of our capabilities.
25Roots of injustice
- Love or Lust.
- Give or Take.
- 1 John 215-17
- Do not love the world or the things in the
world. If any one loves the world, love for the
Father is not in him. - For all that is in the world, the lust of the
flesh (FREUD) and the lust of the eyes (MARX) and
the pride of life (NIETZCHE), is not of the
Father but is of the world. - And the world passes away, and the lust of it
but he who does the will of God abides for ever.
26Reasons for SELFISHNESS(Violence, AKA sin etc.)
Lust of the Flesh Lust of property Lust for power
(pride)
- Religion is not the cause of lust
- Religion is an attempt at a remedy that doesnt
always succeed in the conversion of lust into
love - The problem is human selfishness and a failure of
love - Atheism is not the cause of lust either
- But it is an effect of it
27Violence in the name of religion
- Religion can be a source of self- righteousness,
and this tendency can lead to persecution and
violence. In the past, this is true (the
Crusades, the Inquisition and the European Witch
hunts) - In the Muslim world, violence in the name of
religion is still a serious and unanswered
problem. - But for Christians the tragedy of violence in the
name of religion is thankfully in the remote
past.
Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
28(No Transcript)
29Does the belief in God causes violence?
- If only atheism would take hold as the majority
view throughout the globe, humans would lose
their propensity for violence, lion would nestle
beside the lamb, children would regain their
long-lost happiness, swords would magically turn
into plowshares, churches would empty and the
resultant collapse in the market-price for
incense would alone reverse global warming. - Edward Oakes First Things, Jan 2008
- Richard Dawkins, for example, opens his recent
book The God Delusion with a hilariously naïve
depiction of the Eschaton that awaits us if only
we would cast off the security blanket of
religion -
30Just Imagine
- Imagine, with John Lennon, a world with no
religion. Imagine no suicide bombers, no 9/11, no
7/7, no Crusades, no witch-hunts, no Gunpowder
Plot, no Indian partition, no Israeli/Palestinian
wars, no Serb/Croat/Muslim massacres, no
persecution of Jews as Christ-killers, no
Northern Ireland troubles, no honor killings,
no shiny-suited bouffant-haired televangelists
fleecing gullible people of their money (God
wants you to give till it hurts). Imagine no
Taliban to blow up ancient statues, no public
beheadings of blasphemers, no flogging of female
skin for the crime of showing an inch of it. - Richard Dawkins the God Delusion
31Dishonesty
- Prominent atheists have been very successful in
convincing millions of peopleeven religious
peoplethat religion has been the bane of
history. In The End of Faith, Sam Harris calls it
"the most potent source of human conflict, past
and present. - Daniel Dennett fears "a toxic religious mania
could end human civilization overnight." - As one reads Richard Dawkins one almost gets the
sense he is descending into self parody without
realizing it.
32A comparison
- Philosopher Daniel Dennett supplies a standard of
judging religion in his book Breaking the Spell.
He proposes that religion be judged by its
consequences. Dennett is not especially
interested in separating the true teachings of
religion from its distortions. - Let's use Dennett's standard. We will first
explore violence that has been attributed to
Christianity including the crusades, the
inquisition, witch hunts, and the 30 years war . - By this very same criterion we will look at the
history of Stalin, Hitler, and Maonot to mention
those of a range of lesser tyrantsare all
atheism's responsibility, most of which have
happened during peace time on its own civilians.
Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
33Dawkins uneven handedness
- Stalin was an atheist and Hitler probably
wasnt, but even if he was, the bottom line of
the Stalin/Hitler debating point is very simple.
Individual atheists may do evil things but they
dont do evil things in the name of atheism. - So its not atheism thats the problem, only
atheists! - COMMUNISM HAS ATHEISM EMBEDDED IN ITS ROOTS
- And Christianity? Is it then not individual
Christians rather than Christianity that is at
fault?
34Too simplistic
- "The Crusades slaughtered millions in the name of
Jesus. The Inquisition brought the torture and
murder of millions more. After Martin Luther,
Christians did bloody battle with other
Christians for another three centuries." Richard
Dawkins surveys the Middle East, the Balkans,
Northern Ireland, India, and Sri Lanka and
contends that "most, if not all, of the violent
enmities in the world today" are due to the
"divisive force of religion." - The problem with this critique is that it greatly
exaggerates the crimes that have been committed
by religious fanatics while neglecting or
rationalizing the vastly greater crimes committed
by secular and atheist fanatics. - They also forget that Christianity was the basis
for Western Culture
Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
35The Crusades(1096-1270)
- Without the Crusades Western civilization might
have been completely overrun by the forces of
Islam. - The Seven Crusades can be seen as a belated,
clumsy, and unsuccessful effort to defeat Islamic
imperialism. Yet the Crusades were important
because they represented a fight for the survival
of Europe. - There were expeditions of rape and murder
committed during the Crusades that no one can
justify. Even so, these rampages do not define
the Crusades as a whole. - In the context of the history of warfare, there
is no warrant for considering the Crusades a
world historical crime of any sort. The
Christians fought to defend themselves from
foreign conquest, while the Muslims fought to
continue conquering Christian lands.
Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
36The Inquisitions
- Formed, mostly in France, Italy, Spain, and
Germany. - 5 distinct forms Episcopal (1184-France),
Legatine (1198-Cisterians), Monastic
(1231-Gregory IX-Dominicans), Roman (1542),
Spanish (1478). The Spanish had the worst record.
- Entrusted mainly to Dominicans and Franciscans,
these tribunals investigated charges of heresy,
subject those accused of heresy to a legal trial,
pass judgment on them, and then, if the
defendants were found guilty and were
unrepentant, turn them over to a secular power. - The latter would inflict on the heretics those
penalties approved by law. In serious
situations, such penalties ranged from
imprisonment to tortue, and, in extreme cases,
death.
37The Spanish Inquisition
- Henry Kamen's book The Spanish Inquisition is
subtitled "A Historical Revision." - The Inquisition, Kamen points out, "only had
authority over Christians." The idea that the
Inquisition targeted Jews is a fantasy. The only
Jews who came under the purview of the
Inquisition were Jews who had converted to
Christianity. - There were quite a few of these, as King
Ferdinand and Queen Isabella had issued an
ordinance in 1492 expelling Jews from Spain. The
only way to stay was to convert. - Of course, many Christians suspected that some of
these conversos or "new Christians" were not
Christians at all. They were Jews pretending to
be Christians.
Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
38Dinesh DSouza the Inquisition
- Inquisition trials, according to Kamen, were
fairer and more lenient than their secular
counterparts, not only in Spain but also across
Europe. - Frequently the only penalty given was some form
of penance, such as fasting or what we would
today call "community service." - How many people were executed for heresy by the
Inquisition? Kamen estimates that it was around
2,000. Other contemporary historians make
estimates of between 1,500 and 4,000. These
deaths are all tragic, but we must remember that
they occurred over a period of 350 years.
Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
39Witch hunts
- The classical period of witchhunts in Europe
falls into the Early Modern period or about 1480
to 1700, spanning the upheavals of the
Reformation and the Thirty Years' War. - Current scholarly estimates of the number of
people executed for witchcraft vary between about
40,000 and 100,000.1 - The total number of witch trials in Europe which
are known for certain to have ended in executions
is around 12,0002
40Dinesh DSouza 30 years war
- How about the Thirty Years' War? This conflict
involving the Holy Roman Empire and the
Protestant states in Germany lasted from 1618 to
1648. - We can see how political motives overrode
religious ones in the role played by Catholic
France in the latter phases of the war concerned
about the strength of the greatest Catholic power
in the world, the Holy Roman Empire, French
statesman Cardinal Richelieu organized a force
made up of Swedes and Frenchmen to help the
Protestant side.
Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
41Ethnic rivalry
- Dawkins complains about the media's insistence on
describing the conflicts in Northern Ireland, the
Balkans, and Iraq as "ethnic" rather than
religious. But the media is right and. Dawkins is
wrong. These are ethnic rivalries. - Israel Palestine
- Balkans
- North Ireland
- The problem is a failure of love (of our being
human, of failing to see that at our most
fundamental level we are brothers and sisters)
not of religion per se.
Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
42Israel and Palestine
- The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not, at its
core, a religious one. Rather, it arises from
disputes over self-determination and land. Hamas
and the extreme orthodox parties in Israel may
advance theological claims"God gave us this
land" and so forthbut even without these
religious motives the conflict would remain
essentially the same. - But aren't the Jews fighting for this land
because it is holy? - No, they are fighting because this is their
ancestral land and, after the Holocaust, many
Jews have become convinced that they can feel
secure only in a country of their own. - Together with the secular UN, the people who
founded the state of Israel were secular, not
religious, Jews. The Palestinian Liberation
Organization was from its origin a secular
nationalist group.
Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
43Ethnic Differences
- Ethnic rivalry, not religion, is the source of
the tension in the Balkans. - Christopher Hitchens gratuitously proposes that
the "ethnic cleansing" of the Balkans be called
"religious cleansing" even though he admits that
"xenophobic nationalism" and territorial
aggrandizement rather than religion are the
primary motivations for the violence. - Moving on to Northern Ireland,
- Hitchens tells a joke without realizing that it
undermines his own argument. A man is walking
down a street in Belfast when a gunman leaps out
of a doorway, points a gun, and says, "Protestant
or Catholic?" The man exclaims, "Neither. I'm an
atheist." To which the gunman replies, "Catholic
atheist or Protestant atheist?" The real point of
the joke is that it doesn't matter because
religion is not really the issue. - In the same vein, the Protestants and Catholics
in Northern Ireland aren't fighting about
transubstantiation or some point of religious
doctrine. They are fighting over issues of
autonomy and over which group gets to rule the
country.
Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
44Effects of Atheism overlooked
- While faulting religion for its role in promoting
conflict and violence, secular writers rarely
examine the role of atheism in producing wars and
killing. - Five hundred years after the Inquisition, we are
still talking about it, but less than two decades
after the collapse of "godless Communism" there
is an eerie silence about the mass graves of the
Soviet Gulag. Why the absence of accountability?
Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
45By the numbers
- In the past hundred years or so, the most
powerful atheist regimesCommunist Russia,
Communist China, and Nazi Germanyhave wiped out
people in astronomical numbers. - Stalin was responsible for around twenty million
deaths, produced through mass slayings, forced
labor camps, show trials followed by firing
squads, population relocation and starvation, and
so on. - Jung Chang and Jon Halliday's authoritative
recent study Mao The Unknown Story attributes to
Mao Zedong's regime a staggering seventy million
deaths. Some China scholars think Chang and
Halliday's numbers are a bit high, but the
authors present convincing evidence that Mao's
atheist regime was the most murderous in world
history. - Stalin's and Mao's killingsunlike those of, say,
the Crusades or the Thirty Years' Warwere done
in peacetime and were performed on their fellow
countrymen. Hitler comes in a distant third with
around ten million murders, six million of them
Jews.
Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
46More numbers
- Lesser Atheistic Tyrants
- Let us not forget other Soviet dictators like
Lenin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and so on. - There have been a host of "lesser" atheist
tyrants Pol Pot, Enver Hoxha, Nicolae Ceausescu,
Fidel Castro, Kim Jong-il. - Even these "minor league" despots killed a lot of
people. Consider Pol Pot, who was the leader of
the Khmer Rouge, the Communist Party faction that
ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. - Within this four-year period Pol Pot and his
revolutionary ideologues engaged in systematic
mass relocations and killings that eliminated
approximately one-fifth of the Cambodian
population, an estimated 1.5 million to 2 million
people. - In fact, Pol Pot killed a larger percentage of
his countrymen than Stalin and Mao killed of
theirs. Even so, focusing only on the big
threeStalin, Hitler, and Maowe have to
recognize that atheist regimes have in a single
century murdered more than one hundred million
people.
Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
47In comparison
- Even taking higher population levels into
account, atheist violence surpasses religious
violence by staggering proportions. Although it
is easier to kill people today, large proportion
were just starved to death (that is not high tech
weaponry). - Here is a rough calculation. The world's
population rose from around 500 million in 1450
AD to 2.5 billion in 1950, a fivefold increase. - Taken together, the Crusades, the Inquisition,
and the witch burnings killed approximately
200,000 people. Adjusting for the increase in
population, that's the equivalent of one million
deaths today. Even so, these deaths caused by
Christian rulers over a five-hundred-year period
amount to only 1 percent of the deaths caused by
Stalin, Hitler and Mao in the space of a few
decades.
Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
48In Comparison
1-3 million over 500 years
Crusades Inquisition Witch hunts
49In Comparison
Crusades Inquisition Witch hunts
1-3 million over 500 years
Hitler Stalin Mao Tze Tung Pol Pot Ceausescu,
Kim Jong-il.
100 million over a few decades
50Atheism intrinsic to Communism
- Dawkins seems to have deluded himself into
thinking that these horrors were not produced on
atheism's behalf. But can anyone seriously deny
that Communism was an atheist ideology? - Communism calls for the elimination of the
exploiting class, it extols violence as a way to
social progress, and it calls for using any means
necessary to achieve the atheist utopia. - Not only was Marx an atheist, but atheism was
also a central part of the Marxist doctrine.
Atheism became a central component of the Soviet
Union's official ideology, it is still the
official doctrine of China, and Stalin and Mao
enforced atheist policies by systematically
closing churches and murdering priests and
religious believers. - All Communist regimes have been strongly
anti-religious, suggesting that their atheism is
intrinsic rather than incidental to their
ideology.
Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
51Were the communists Atheists?
- Karl Marx said Religion is the sigh of the
oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless
world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is
the opium of the people. - from the introduction of his 1843 work
Contribution to Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of
Right. - Putting Atheism into practice
- Vladimir Lenin similarly wrote regarding atheism
and communism "A Marxist must be a materialist,
i. e., an enemy of religion, but a dialectical
materialist, i. e., one who treats the struggle
against religion not in an abstract way, not on
the basis of remote, purely theoretical, never
varying preaching, but in a concrete way, on the
basis of the class struggle which is going on in
practice and is educating the masses more and
better than anything else could. - Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844
52Pope Benedict XVI in Spe Salvi of Karl Marx
- What said here can be extended to most other
atheists - He forgot that man always remains man. He forgot
man and he forgot mans freedom. He forgot that
freedom always remains also freedom for evil. . .
. His real error is materialism man, in fact, is
not merely the product of economic conditions,
and it is not possible to redeem him purely from
the outside by creating a favorable economic
environment.
53Pope Benedict XVI in Spe Salvi of Karl Marx
- Since there is no God to create justice, it
seems man himself is now called to establish
justice. If in the face of this worlds
suffering, protest against God is understandable,
nonetheless the claim that humanity can and
must do what no God actually does or is able to
do is both presumptuous and intrinsically false. - It is no accident that this idea has led to the
greatest forms of cruelty and violations of
justice rather, it is grounded in the intrinsic
falsity of the claim. A world which has to create
its own justice is a world without hope. - Social order may be possible, but despite our
efforts, justice on earth is ultimately an
unreachable goal.
54When an secular ideology becomes a religion
- Along the same lines, Sam Harris attempts to
exonerate atheism by alleging that Stalinism and
Maoism were each "little more than a political
religion' - Christopher Hitchens advances a similar line of
argument, suggesting that as the Stalinists and
Maoists sought to replace religion those
ideologies should be considered substitute
religions. - Should religion now be responsible not only for
its crimes but also for the crimes committed by
atheists on behalf of atheist ideologies?
Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
55Nazism and Communism freed from the shackles of
Christianity
- EMPOWERMENT
- Nazism was a secular, anti-religious philosophy
that, strangely enough, had a lot in common with
Communism. While the Communists wanted to empower
the proletariat, the Nazis wanted to empower a
master race. - WHO IS THE ENEMY
- For the Communists the enemy was the capitalist
class for the Nazis the enemy was the Jews and
other races deemed inferior. The Communists and
the Nazis treated the Christian churches as
obstacles and enemies. - CREATING A NEW ORDER
- Both groups proclaimed that they were engaging in
revolutionary action in order to create a new
type of human being and a new social order freed
from the shackles of traditional religion and
traditional morality.
Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
56Was Hitler a Christian?
- Atheist Web sites routinely claim that Hitler was
a Christian because he was born Catholic, never
publicly renounced his Catholicism, and wrote in
Mein Kampf, "By defending myself against the Jew,
I am fighting for the work of the Lord." - How persuasive are these claims? Hitler was born
Catholic just as Stalin was born into the Russian
Orthodox Church and Mao was raised as a Buddhist.
These facts prove nothing, as many people reject
their religious upbringing as these three men
did. - From an early age, historian Allan Bullock
writes, Hitler "had no time at all for Catholic
teaching, regarding it as a religion fit only for
slaves and detesting its ethics.
Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
57Propaganda
- The Lords work?
- How then do we account for Hitler's claim that in
carrying out his anti-Semitic program he was an
instrument of divine providence? During his
ascent to power, Hitler needed the support of the
German peopleboth the Bavarian Catholics and the
Prussian Lutheransand to secure this he
occasionally used rhetoric such as "I am doing
the Lord's work." - Sway the masses
- To claim that this rhetoric makes Hitler a
Christian is to confuse political opportunism
with personal conviction. Hitler himself says in
Mein Kampf that his public statements should be
understood as propaganda that bear no relation to
the truth but are designed to sway the masses."
Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
58Secular Anti-Semitism
- Hitler's anti-Semitism was not religious, it was
racial. - Jews were targeted not because of their
religionindeed many German Jews were completely
secular in their way of lifebut because of their
racial identity. This was an ethnic and not a
religious designation. - Conversion
- In fifteenth-century Spain, a Jew could escape
Christian persecution simply by converting to
Christianity. - Religious beliefs didnt matter
- Hitler's objection to Jews, on the other hand,
was not religious. A Jew could not escape
Auschwitz by pleading, "I no longer practice
Judaism," "I am an atheist," or "I have converted
to Christianity." This mattered nothing to Hitler
because he believed the Jews were inferior racial
stock. His anti-Semitism was secular.
Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
59Hitlers anti-Christian view
- Hitler's Table Talk, a revealing collection of
the Furher's private opinions assembled by a
close aide during the war years, shows Hitler to
be rabidly anti-religious. - He called Christianity one of the great
"scourges" of history, and said of the Germans,
"Let's be the only people who are immunized
against this disease." He promised that "through
the peasantry we shall be able to destroy
Christianity." - He also condemned Christianity for its opposition
to evolution. Hitler reserved special scorn for
the Christian values of equality and compassion,
which he identified with weakness. - Hitler and his leading advisers Goebbels,
Himmler, Heydrich and Bormannwere atheists who
hated religion and sought to eradicate its
influence in Germany.
Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
60Hitler quasi-pagan?
- Some atheist writers like Christopher Hitchens
have sought to push Hitler into the religious
camp by pointing to Nazism as a "quasi-pagan
phenomenon." - It's true that Hitler and the Nazis drew heavily
on ancient archetypesmainly Nordic and Teutonic
legendsto give their vision a mystical aura. But
this was secular mysticism, not religious
mysticism. - The ancient Germanic peoples truly believed in
their pagan gods. Hitler and the Nazis, however,
relied on ancient myths in the modern form given
to them by Nietzsche and Wagner. - For Nietzsche and Wagner, there was no question
of the ancient myths being true. Wagner no more
believed in the Norse god Wotan than Nietzsche
believed in Apollo. - For Hitler and the Nazis, the ancient myths were
valuable because they could give depth and
significance to a secular racial conception of
the world.
Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
61Culmination of Christianity?
- Increasingly anti-Christian
- Once Hitler and the Nazis came to power, they
launched a ruthless drive to subdue and weaken
Christian churches in Germany. Historian Richard
Evans points out that after 1937 the policies of
Hitler's government became increasingly
anti-religious. - The Nazis stopped celebrating Christmas, and the
Hitler Youth recited a prayer thanking the Fuhrer
rather than God for their blessings. Clergy
regarded as "troublemakers" were ordered not to
preach, hundreds of them were imprisoned, and
many were simply murdered. Churches were under
constant Gestapo surveillance. The Nazis closed
religious schools, forced Christian organizations
to disband, dismissed civil servants who were
practicing Christians, confiscated church
property, and censored religious newspapers. - Sam Harris cannot explain how an ideology that
Hitler and his associates perceived as a
repudiation of Christianity can be portrayed as a
"culmination" of Christianity.
Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
62Culmination of Evolutionary Ideology
- If Nazism represented the culmination of
anything, it was that of the nineteenth-century
and early twentieth-century ideology of social
Darwinism. - As historian Richard Weikart documents, both
Hitler and Himmler were admirers of Darwin and
often spoke of their role as enacting a "law of
nature" that guaranteed the "elimination of the
unfit." - Weikart argues that Hitler himself "drew upon a
bountiful fund of social Darwinist thought to
construct his own racist philosophy" and
concludes that while Darwinism is not a
"sufficient" intellectual explanation for Nazism,
it is a "necessary" one.
Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
63Beyond Good and Evil
- The Nazis also drew on philosopher Friedrich
Nietzsche, adapting his atheist philosophy to
their crude purposes. Nietzsche's vision of the
Übermensch and his elevation of a new ethic
"beyond good and evil" were avidly embraced by
Nazi propagandists. - Nietzsche's "will to power" almost became a Nazi
recruitment slogan. Hitler and his henchmen
approved of Darwin's and Nietzsche's ideas. - Sam Harris simply ignores the evidence of the
Nazis' sympathies for Darwin, Nietzsche, and
atheism. So what sense can we make of his claim
that the leading Nazis were "knowingly or
unknow-ingly" agents of religion? Clearly, it is
nonsense. It is much more accurate to say they
were agents, or victims, of carrying Darwinism to
its logical conclusion
Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
64Big bad bloodbaths
- Ideologies
- Some people have expressed bafflement that
atheist regimes have produced bloodbaths that no
other force in history has matched. Dawkins
himself raises the question of how an absence of
belief can possibly cause social harm. Little
does Dawkins realize that his own deepest beliefs
provide a clue to the "final solution." The
atheist killers regarded their cause as so grand
and noble that nothing should be allowed to stand
in its way. They viewed themselves as acting on
behalf of inexorable and incontrovertible forces
like science, reason, and progress. - Science?
- Yes, the Nazis saw themselves promoting the
survival of the fittest, in precisely the way
evolution has always done. - Reason?
- he Communists saw their project as an
institutionalization of the age of reason. Marx
was in the Enlightenment tradition of the French
Jacobins, who enthroned a goddess of reason in
the Cathedral of Notre Dame and then unleashed
the Reign of Terror, in which "unreasonable"
peoplenoblemen, priests, and other
representatives of the old orderwere sent to the
guillotine.
Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
65The forward march of society
- And progress? As the Communists and the Nazis
always stressed, history was on their side, and
therefore their opponents were religious or
bourgeois reactionaries who should be eliminated
because they were retarding the forward march of
society. - This secular apotheosis of science, reason, and
progressa doctrine that is very much with us
todayis precisely what licensed men to do things
to other people in a manner and on a scale that
were previously unthinkable. - A second reason for the horrors of atheist
regimes is that they operated without any of the
moral restraints that are the product of religion
and that, however slightly, held back the
bloodthirsty tyrants of the past. Nietzsche saw
this coming.
Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
66Predictions
- Writing in the nineteenth century, he predicted
that the next two centuries would be cataclysmic,
with wars and violence beyond all imagining.'' - The death of God, Nietzsche wrote, would result
in the total eclipse of all values. Since values
no longer came from God, they would now be made
up by man. - And since man is descended from the animal
kingdoman idea Nietzsche adopted from Darwinman
was likely to embrace the value of the libido
dominandi (the lust to dominate) that we see
everywhere in nature. Superior humans would
eliminate inferior ones for the same reason that
lions eat antelopes. "Master morality" prevails
over "slave morality." It becomes useless to
appeal to pity and compassion and decency any
more. That would be like telling lions that they
should stop being lions.
Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
67Mankind liberated
- In other words, the atheist bloodbath is the
product of a hubristic modern ideology that sees
man, not God, as the creator of values. In
rejecting God, man becomes scornful of the
doctrine of human sinfulness and convinced of the
perfectibility of his nature. - Man now seeks to displace God and create a
secular utopia here on earth. In order to achieve
this, the atheist rulers establish total control
of society. They invent a form of totalitarianism
far more comprehensive than anything that
previous rulers attempted every aspect of life
comes under political supervision.
Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
68Mankind liberated
- Of course if some peoplethe Jews, the
landowners, the unfit, the handicapped, the
religious dissidents, and so onhave to be
relocated, incarcerated, or liquidated in order
to achieve this utopia, this is a price the
atheist tyrants have shown themselves quite
willing to pay. - The old moral codes do not apply, and ordinary
atheist functionaries carry out behavior that
would make a church inquisitor quake. The atheist
regimes, by their actions, confirm the truth of
Dostoevsky's dictum if God is not, everything is
permitted.
Dinesh DSouza Whats so Great About Christianity
69Atheism is not the solutionto mans fallen nature
- It's time to abandon the mindlessly repeated
mantra that religious belief has been the main
source of human conflict and violence. - Atheism, not religion, is responsible for the
worst mass murders of history. - The conviction that one group (or idea or race)
was superior to a different one coupled with a
lust for power, control, and real estate that
mankind so often goes to war. The problem isnt
the idea that we are different, unless than
difference is one of human value, but the lust (I
do not GIVE, I TAKE).
70The problem with Richard Dawkins
- Richard Dawkins is a good biologist but a not a
good - Philosopher
- Historian
- Theologian
- Christian
- Monkey
- None of the above
- All of the above
71The God Delusion, a book that never squarely
faces its opponents.
- You will find no serious examination of Christian
or Jewish perspective in Dawkins book - Does he know Augustine cautioned biblical
literalism in the early fifth century? - No attempt to follow philosophical debates about
the nature of religious propositions (How they
make claims about everyday matters), - No effort to appreciate the relationship between
Church and science (does he know the Church had
an important part in the rise of non-Aristotelian
science and the scientific method not to mention
Universities etc.) - And no attempt to understand even the simplest of
religious attitudes (Does Dawkins really believe,
as he says, that Christians should be thrilled to
learn they're terminally ill?). As Christians we
are called to be detached from things in this
world but only so that we can love. We love and
are attached to persons, family etc.
72A summary Dawkins Objections to Christianity in
Particular
- Original Sin
- Sex
- Atonement
- Sadomasochism
- Who is your neighbour?
- After looking at this you will realize that
Dawkins doesnt have the first clue of what it
means to be Christian
73Richard Dawkins on Family Values
- Jesus' family values, it has to be admitted,
were not such as one might wish to focus on. He
was short, to the point of brusqueness, with his
own mother, and he encouraged his disciples to
abandon their families to follow him. - 'If any man come to me and hate not his father,
and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren,
and sisters, yea and his own life also, he cannot
be my disciple. - Jesus also made comments about if your eyes cause
you to sin etc.. The message of Jesus is that we
have to first embrace God, the foundation and
perfection of Truth Goodness and Beauty, for us
to accomplish anything good. You have love the
good to be good. - We have to be able to let go of worldly things
that may separate us from the ultimate source and
strength of the family bonds we cherish.
74Richard Dawkins on Original Sin
- What kind of ethical philosophy is it that
condemns every child, even before it is born, to
inherit the sin of a remote ancestor? - The Old Testament was an illustration of Gods
relationship with his chosen people. He wanted
them to see that they were dependent on him and
that everything they had was a gift from him. - If our lives, including our time, our families,
our abilities are gifts, why is it so hard to
accept that we do not deserve what we have? Did
we deserve to be born? Do you deserve an
inheritance if your parents threw away their
gifts?
75Richard Dawkins on Sex
- Sam Harris is magnificently scathing in his
Letter to a Christian Nation 'Your principal
concern appears to be that the Creator of the
universe will take offence at something people do
while naked. This prudery of yours contributes
daily to the surplus of human misery
Christianity does NOT devalue sexuality, if
anything it OVER values it. Sex and marriage is
a sacrament (sacred). Our sexuality is, within
us, both the choice and the call to life giving
communion. Our bodies do not make sense on our
own (complimentarity).
76Richard Dawkins on Sex
- Malcolm Muggeridge, the noted commentator and
convert to Catholicism, pointed out that
eroticism is the mysticism of materialism. - Oddly enough, this doctrine is set forth most
clearly in the work of that apostle of sexual
deviancy, the atheist Marquis de Sade. - Knowledge of evil
- In Philosophy in the Bedroom, de Sade features a
fifteen-year-old nun who has shed her faith in
God and discovered in its place the delights of
incest, sodomy, and sexual flagellation. The
descent of man below animalsduring sex
urinating, deficating, choking, snuff etc..
77Richard Dawkins on Atonement
- I refer especially to the central doctrine of
Christianity that of 'atonement' for 'original
sin'. This teaching, which lies at the heart of
New Testament theology, is almost as morally
obnoxious as the story of Abraham setting out to
barbecue Isaac, which it resembles - and that is
no accident, as Geza Vermes makes clear in The
Changing Faces of Jesus. - Original sin itself comes straight from the Old
Testament myth of Adam and Eve. Their sin -
eating the fruit of a forbidden tree - seems mild
enough to merit a mere reprimand. - But the symbolic nature of the fruit (knowledge
of good and evil, which in practice turned out to
be knowledge that they were naked) was enough to
turn their scrumping escapade into the mother and
father of all sins. They and all their
descendants were banished forever from the Garden
of Eden, deprived of the gift of eternal life,
and condemned to generations of painful labour,
in the field and in childbirth respectively.
78Richard Dawkins on Original Sin
- So far, so vindictive par for the Old Testament
course. New Testament theology adds a new
injustice, topped off by a new sadomasochism
whose viciousness even the Old Testament barely
exceeds. - It is, when you think about it, remarkable that a
religion should adopt an instrument of torture
and execution as its sacred symbol, often worn
around the neck.
79Sadomasochism
- But now, the Sadomasochism. God incarnated
himself as a man, Jesus, in order that he should
be tortured and executed in atonement for the
hereditary sin of Adam. - Ever since Paul expounded this repellent
doctrine, Jesus has been worshipped as the
redeemer of all our sins. Not just the past sin
of Adam future sins as well, whether future
people decided to commit them or not! - I have described atonement, the central doctrine
of Christianity, as vicious, sado-masochistic and
repellent. We should also dismiss it as barking
mad, but for its ubiquitous familiarity which has
dulled our objectivity. - Richard Dawkins the God Delusion.
80Sadomasochism
- If God wanted to forgive our sins, why not just
forgive them, without having himself tortured and
executed in payment Richard Dawkins - This criticism makes sense only if you presume
that the Christians made the whole thing up,
which would be horrible of them to do to their
God. - Christians view the atonement of Christ as a
beautiful sacrifice. Somehow God not only became
man but took on all his sins and burdens. - BY UNITING HIMSELF WITH US HE KNOWS US ALL
INTIMATELY AND TRANSFORMS US. - Humanity is elevated and transformed.
81God becomes man
- An infinite God becomes man.
- No other religion can even conceive this. The
Greek and Roman gods of antiquity often disguised
themselves as mortals, but they would not
actually become mortal, although they would have
super strength they had our super weaknesses
(vice). - In this new story, the author of everything (the
Creator) enters his story (his creation) - Power made perfect in weakness
- Mexican author Carlos Fuentes writes that when
the Christian missionaries first presented their
doctrines to the Aztecs, the Aztecs were totally
uncomprehending. Fuentes writes, "In a universe
accustomed to seeing men sacrificed to the gods,
nothing amazed the Indians more than the sight of
a god who had sacrificed himself to men. Yet what
other religions hold to be absurd and scandalous,
Christianity holds to be true.
82In our fallen world, love is connected to
suffering
- "Christ paid a debt he didn't owe because we owe
a debt we cannot pay." - "Christ offers us something for nothing," C. S.
Lewis writes. "He even offers everything for
nothing. - In a sense, the whole Christian life consists in
accepting that very remarkable offer." So what is
the difficulty? The difficulty is in realizing
that we are sinful and that there is nothing we
can do to solve this problem.
83In our fallen world, love is connected to
suffering
- THE TIE THAT BINDS
- Two trees, two gardens, two choices. The first
Adam chose to TAKE lust