jcmmanuel

PS. I LIke Atheists;-D [if they're just not too scared of being a tad honest in stead of posing as personified objectivity, that is]

Index Of Blogs

All my blogs are listed here. I'm not a continuous blogger, I rather try to compile some thoughts in a limited number of articles.

New Atheism (is not atheism)

My first blogs were about 'new atheism'. They may not have been my best blogs, but I am still of the opinion that no decent atheist deserves it to be associated with the 'new atheism' brand. I mention new atheism in other blogs as well. To me this is fundamentalism of the worst kind, not just atheism.

1. New Atheism's 4 Horsemen
2. Fishing the big lake of religion
3. The new atheist misconception of religion
Trivia: Imagine No Religion?
PS. A good friends blog: The intolerant side of myspace

The Secular State

I accept, generally speaking, the principles of political secularism. What I would refuse, however, is to work hard for a public domain not dominated by a religious kind of language, just to find out in the end that it is then being dominated by the requirements of an atheist kind of language. I wrote just one blog about this topic so far.

1. What is a Secular State?

Christians and The Book

Doctrines, dogmas, interpretations,... Is the Bible "inspired"? Sure - but that doesn't exclude 'human inspiration'. The ancient Jews never claimed they were God's typewriters.

1. Religion with distorted message?
2. We don’t need Bible Inerrancy
3. On Infallibility of the Scriptures
4. Early Jurisprudence in the Critic's Den
5. Rating Liberal theology - Does Bart Ehrman mattter? 

Evolution and Creation

My position in this topic is quite simple: I take science serious, I don't start from a position of suspicion. Besides that, of course, I see the difference between evolution theory and atheism (it is a pity that many Christians did not understand the mix that some atheists have been creating for about 150 long years now). If God is great, then there's nothing to fear from whatever science may discover about nature, about how the world has been made. Relax folks!

1. Evolution Is Fun
2. Homo Sapiens: origin Africa or Eden?
3. The Genesis 1 Galaxy is Cool!
4. The Genesis 1 Hominid is Cool!
5. The Real Big Heart of God

Religion and our state of mind

There's all kinds of issues people have with either religion or science or both. Many Christians are still suspicious of science because they perceive it as an attack on their faith - which is not the reality, but their perception.

1. Making some Sense of Mortality
2. How Human is Transhumanism?
3. Reinventing the Sacredness of Life

Trivia: Myspace technical

Just one technical blog I wrote about using myspace:

MySpace tips and policies

MySpaceLab

Let me share some more short thoughts here in an attempt to create some common space to live and breathe. We all often think we "know" something, but then, later on, we see things differently. Some people say it is always 'religion' claiming to know stuff that no one else knows. But in my observation, when I see how (some!) atheists are clearly the biggest abusers of science - using it to support an atheist agenda, it is clear enough that while 'Christian fundies' may be a real plague (in a couple of places in the U.S.), it's (certain!) atheists who outperform pretty much everyone else in claiming 'science to be on their side', and whining loudly if you don't agree. After all, "atheism is just ..." (fill in your excuse). What the heck... A common underlying problem here seems to be: we 'know too much' - I mean, we claim to know too much. The new atheists claimed an understanding of 'religion', leading them to conclusions like all religion is violence, and we should get rid of it. In reality, it looks much more like they did not even make it to week 4 in Sunday school, and besides, compiling only someone's errors in a book, as Christopher Hitchens did (the Mother Teresa basher) is hardly contributing a lot to true understanding and knowledge either of course. Sure, Christians should grow up. And so should atheists.

On many occasions we just cannot know something for certain. In some cases however we may know something pretty sure. The difference is that I "believe" things mostly on behalf of myself, but I tend to "know" something when the wisest people out there think of it in much the same way. There's a community aspect to 'knowing something'. You cannot 'know' something against the most wise minds out there. Obviously wisdom as exposed in public figures is collective wisdom, in a way. Christians might be very surprised to discover how much an old hat like John Wesley would be horrified by some of today's exploits of Christianity. Atheists might be equally surprised to discover how non-atheistic many of their figure heads really were - including such icons like Einstein, Max Planck, Maxwell and so on.

Much of our human knowledge is certainly relative - quantum physics has made an end to determinism and arrogance, including scientific arrogance - although many scientists may still ignore the implications. I certainly understand why a scientist would defend science when faced with people who think science is evil - but that is a big leap from claiming that science can solve all our problems. Science is just a tool - a sophisticated tool but still a tool. It does not beling to atheism or to religion, it is a tool that humans use to improve the way we discover things about nature, in the universe, in the quanta.

There are certainly also things I do not know. For instance I do not know a lot about God, even while I'm a Christian. I have a good deal of knowledge about some domains of science, about philosophy, about religions, more specific monotheism - and I feel much inspired by the figure of Jesus, but still, I would often call myself an agnostic Christian. What I say may depends on what you want to hear: my beliefs and hopes, or rather what I really consider knowable. For fundamentalists however I've already said too much then. Saying 'believer' makes a fundamentalist atheists put a check in the box 'irrationalist'. Saying 'agnostic Christian' makes some 'Christians' check the box next to "does not understand the truth!!!"...

My opinion on atheism in general (not 'new atheism') is not positive - but I appreciate reasonable atheists, there's quite some of them on my friends list. Atheists speak far too often from a negative viewpoint if you ask me. And at the same time they often want you to have us register that as just being sceptic, rational, and objective. But let me remind you that it was atheists in the first place who opposed the idea that the universe could have a beginning in time - because that sounded so much like Genesis 1. It isn't just religion who 'has an agenda', anti-religion has one too. Remember how, in most cases, it was atheists who have been selling evolution theory as as simple process - until we discovered, just some decades ago that it is a far more complex thing. It is atheists who have sold evolution as imposing an atheist worldview upon us, and still today, after 15 decades. This is bullshit of course, yet it came at a high price - it's called 'creationism' (not creation, but creationism - a mix of faith and science), invented by Christians who basically opposed the mix of atheism and science. I'm not blaming it all on atheism, but atheist should also realize their role in this silly game. Let's be real, let's try to come closer together - even while we may never fully accept each others position.

Whatever atheism in itself represents, to me it does not represent the naturally 'open minded' and 'rational' and 'logic' world view, as the claim often goes. Atheism is a state of mind, and no state of mind can safely be considered 'naturally' better or more 'logic' etc. than opposite thought. Presenting it like that is like excluding the human factor altogether - cutting off the branch you're sitting on and believe you won't make a steep fall. Of course, the same is true for 'religious beliefs' if there's no open mind behind it. But I want the ceiling of my reality-room to be unlimited, open.

Michael Novak wrote: "Civilization is constituted by reasoned conversation. Civilized humans converse with one another, argue with one another, offer evidence to one another." New atheism is a clear example where basic principles were simply teared apart for the sake of a dangerous simplistic world view, a 'quick solution' to a problem. Religious beliefs have so often been described as fairy tales even while no adult believes in fairy tales, but hundreds of millions of adults believe there's a God of some kind out there. Saying 'fairy tale' to everything you don't grasp does not solve anything, and it certainly is not 'reasoned conversation'. Even Stephen Hawking at some point wrote that there could be something called the 'Mind of God', and whatever he meant by that, it wasn't a fairy tale.

If you want to understand a strict minimum about monotheism, you got to understand its basic axiomatic presuppositions. First and foremost the 'axiom' that The origin of all things is God. Long before quantum physics educated us on the complexity of the laws of the universe, millions of people (including many of the ancient Greeks) KNEW that the God idea in itself is by no means illogical. It isn't just 'biblical' or so - it is not illogical. That is to say: it is plausible enough to leave open that option. From that point of view, it is no surprise that atheism is often seen as something very arrogant - but of course that much depends on the atheist person behind the atheist views. Theology, for all its mistakes, has always believed that all reality is permeated by a transcendent spirituality - and today, only since about the 20th century, science finally shows that there is no such thing like solid bodies, they are all manifestations of energy - and below this energy there's information, or 'mind'. And the God idea, is that really about 'proving' God? I would say, it has never been about proving God, but about 'probing' God. Read St. Augustine, read Aquinas... It is not about proof, it is just pointing out that the God idea it certainly no more illogical than any other idea - like the Big Bang concept - could be illogical.

Further, One God was in a way more logic than many gods (how would mankind have survived all those little wars of the capricious gods of the Pantheon, for thousands of years?) And the real Magna Charta of monotheism is probably this: that humans have their own individual identity as conscient beings, and that this identity is probably best understood in a relationship with the Creator. And mankind should not regard themselves as gods or at the same level of God. All of that constitutes the grand basis for monotheism. To me this makes rational sense. Of course, you can 'rationally disagree' with me - but, as with all strong axioms, one needs a good reason to reject it.

There's also a lot of fuss against a concept like "sin", but people who argue against, often forget that we nevertheless never solved the problem of evil. You can disagree with the concept of sin but you cannot attribute evil to religion for that reason. After all, also the ancient Greeks had this deep sense of our hybris (excessive pride, egotism, arrogance) being a major problem of mankind - in this, they were clearly in line with the old Hebrews and with the thoughts expressed by Jesus. The tendency to deny evil unless it can be attributed to religion (most contemptuously expressed through new atheism lately) contradicts with the best of human wisdom, collected over centuries and centuries. This is going back to ground zero.

The Christian viewpoint is not really restrictive towards others: all are "sons of Adam", created in imagio dei (in the image of God). Question is how you treat people, once you realize what that means. I think Einstein knew what he said, when he suggested: "There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle". Who said Einstein was an atheist? LOL - let's be real. No labels will do the trick for us.

Peace.