~ The God Debate with Rev. Al Sharpton & Christopher Hitchens

The God Debate, June 28, 2007: Chris Matthews moderated a special debate on the existence of God between Christopher Hitchens, author of God Is Not Great, and the Rev. Al Sharpton.

Transcript

~ On This Day, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, June 28, 1712 - July 2, 1778

“Whoever dares to say: 'Outside the Church is no salvation,' ought to be driven from the State.

But I am mistaken in speaking of a Christian republic; the terms are mutually exclusive. Christianity preaches only servitude and dependence. Its spirit is so favorable to tyranny that it always profits by such a regime. True Christians are made to be slaves, and they know it and do not much mind: this short life counts for too little in their eyes.”
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, 1762

(June 28, 1712 – July 2, 1778) Rousseau was a Genevan philosopher of the Enlightenment whose political ideas influenced the French Revolution, the development of socialist theory, and the growth of nationalism. Rousseau also made important contributions to music both as a theorist and as a composer.

Of Rousseau, Joseph McCabe, freethought biographer, wrote: "His character was far inferior to that of the 'irreligious' Deists of Paris. He was, in fact, the most religious and least virtuous of 'the philosophers'; far inferior in nobility of character to the Agnostics Diderot and D'Alembert, and more faulty than Voltaire. We must, however, not forget his unhappy circumstances and temperament. He rendered monumental service to his fellows." (A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Rationalists) D. 1778.

On Religion:
Rousseau was most controversial in his own time for his views on religion. His view that man is good by nature conflicts with the doctrine of original sin and his theology of nature expounded by the Savoyard Vicar in Émile led to the condemnation of the book in both Calvinist Geneva and Catholic Paris. In the Social Contract he claims that true followers of Jesus would not make good citizens. This was one of the reasons for the book's condemnation in Geneva. Rousseau attempted to defend himself against critics of his religious views in his Letter to Christophe de Beaumont, the Archbishop of Paris.

Rousseau was anti-organized religion, a secularist who spoke out against the idea of a personal god.

~ Hope for America After All?

New Poll Finds That Young Americans Are Leaning Left

by ADAM NAGOURNEY and MEGAN THEE
Published: June 27, 2007

Today's youth "have continued a long-term drift away from the Republican Party. And although they are just as worried as the general population about the outlook for the country and think their generation is likely to be worse off than that of their parents, they retain a belief that their votes can make a difference, the poll found.

"More than half of Americans ages 17 to 29 — 54 percent — say they intend to vote for a Democrat for president in 2008. They share with the public at large a negative view of President Bush, who has a 28 percent approval rating with this group, and of the Republican Party. They hold a markedly more positive view of Democrats than they do of Republicans."

Full Article for specifics, e.g., stance on gay marriage, abortion, etc. ...

If this current trend continues a more stable America could emerge for the future.

~ The Master: Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein
1879 - 1955

"I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religion then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."

"I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotism."

"I do not believe in the immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it."

"If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for a reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed."

~ Albert Einstein, German-born American physicist

Register now for the AAI 2007 convention in Washington DC! Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, Hitchens and more!

=> Richard Dawkins reads the new preface to The God Delusion (paperback)



Q & A Video

Thanks for reading,
Josh Timonen
RichardDawkins.net

---

The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science | www.richarddawkins.net

* Baby Jump ~ Religious Ritual in Spain

"El Colacho" is supposed to be the devil - which is why he gets the stylish outfit I guess - and his jump is supposed to rid the babies of original sin. It all takes place at the El Salto Del Colacho festival in Castrillo de Murcia, Spain. The traditional ceremony, celebrating the season of Corpus Christi, goes back to medieval times.

Since 1620 Castrillo de Murcia has celebrated Corpus Christi with a bizarre event that sees grown men leap over helpless babies, an act that is known as El Colacho. Dressed as the devil, carrying whips and sometimes truncheons, it is believed that as the incarnate devils jump they take all their evil with them and the children are cleansed.

The Catholic festival of Corpus Christi is celebrated all over Spain with processions, mystery plays and a wide variety of popular celebrations, but this one has to be the strangest. The shadowy brotherhood of Santísimo Sacramento de Minerva - the people responsible for organising the celebrations - also chase and terrorise anybody and everybody in the town at regular intervals throughout the day. Colacho Festival

Ain't religion grand? I'm glad I missed it. And I hope "El Colacho" missed the babies.

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* Florence Nightingale, Humanitarian Heretic

“The Church is now more like the Scribes and Pharisees than like Christ . . . . What are now called the 'essential doctrines' of the Christian religion he does not even mention.”

* Eyes on Darfur via Satellite Images ~ Breaking News, Reuters/Amnesty International

Amnesty International: Eyes on Darfur
Reuters: A screenshot of EyesOnDarfur.org, taken on June 6, 2007. Amnesty International started posting satellite images on the Internet of villages in Sudan's conflict-ravaged Darfur on Wednesday in a bid to pressure Khartoum to allow U.N. peacekeepers into the region...

"We expect the Sudanese government to protect these and all villages throughout Darfur," said Ariela Blatter, director of Amnesty USA's Crisis Prevention and Response Center, who led the development of the Eyes on Darfur project. "We expect these villages to be intact today, tomorrow and well, well into the future."

Read Report on 2006

gapingvoid.com

The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma.
~ Abraham Lincoln, American president (1809-1865)

* Descent or Ascent?

The Descent of the Modernists," by E. J. Pace, first appearing in his book Christian Cartoons, published in 1922.

Modernism--beginning around 1890--is a trend of thought that affirms the power of human beings to create, improve, and reshape their environment, with the aid of scientific knowledge, technology and practical experimentation, and is thus in its essence both progressive and optimistic. The term covers many political, cultural and artistic movements rooted in the changes in Western society at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century.

Modernism encouraged the re-examination of every aspect of existence, from commerce to philosophy, with the goal of finding that which was "holding back" progress, and replacing it with new, progressive and therefore better, ways of reaching the same end. In essence, the modernist movement argued that the new realities of the industrial and mechanized age were permanent and imminent, and that people should adapt their world view to accept that the new equaled the good, the true and the beautiful.

Articles
The Modernist Journal Project

* Let's build an international secular movement! ~ by Azar Majedi

Azar Majedi is a veteran women’s rights activist from Iran. Victim of political Islam and president of the Organisation for Women's Liberation, Azar Majedi calls for international support and solidarity in the battle for freedom and equality.

Majedi writes: Religion is not only an oppressive institution, suppressing freedom of thought, speech and criticism and oppressing women. It is also the machinery for terrorizing societies. In the history of mankind, more people have died under the name of the God, than any other ideology or cause. In fact religion is a mafia-liken institution.

And the Lord your God said ...

* Americans and Faith: Four Gods

Four Visions of God

• The Authoritarian God (31.4% of Americans overall, 43.3% in the South) is angry at humanity's sins and engaged in every creature's life and world affairs. He is ready to throw the thunderbolt of judgment down on "the unfaithful or ungodly," [Baylor's Christopher] Bader says. Those who envision God this way "are religiously and politically conservative people, more often black Protestants and white evangelicals," Bader says. They're also the most inclined to say God favors the USA in world affairs (32.1% vs. 18.6% overall).

•The Benevolent God (23% overall, 28.7% in the Midwest) still sets absolute standards for mankind in the Bible. But this group, which draws more from mainline Protestants, Catholics and Jews, sees primarily a forgiving God, more like the father who embraces his repentant prodigal son in the Bible, [Sociologist Paul] Froese says.

•The Critical God (16% overall, 21.3% in the East) has his judgmental eye on the world, but he's not going to intervene, either to punish or to comfort. Those who picture a critical God are significantly less likely to draw absolute moral lines on hot-button issues such as abortion, gay marriage or embryonic stem cell research.

•The Distant God (24.4% overall, 30.3% in the West) is "no bearded old man in the sky raining down his opinions on us," Bader says. Followers of this God see a cosmic force that launched the world, then left it spinning on its own.

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* God on Trial: Dispatches from America's Religious Battlefields ~ by Peter Irons

The never-ending march of court cases about church and state sometimes seems so rapid that they blur together. But Peter Irons, a longtime professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego, and a member of the Supreme Court bar, has slowed down time to take in-depth looks at several highly symbolic disputes in his new book God on Trial: Dispatches from America's Religious Battlefields. He talked to TIME's David Van Biema about swing votes, death threats, and the rule of law.

TIME: Your book treats six First Amendment religion cases, several of which went to the Supreme Court. Briefly, what were they?

IRONS: "There was the San Diego case against a 43-foot Latin Cross erected in a veterans cemetery in San Diego; the football-game prayer case from Santa Fe, Texas, two Ten Commandments cases, the attempt to remove "under God " from the Pledge of Allegiance and the Intelligent Design case in Dover, Pa."

(snip)

"We've reached a pretty general accommodation in this country between different religious denominations and sects, such as Protestants and Catholics, between whom conflicts like the Bible Riots arose. I do see more bifurcation, a shrinking of mainstream Christian religion and a separation between conservative Christian groups and more secular groups on the left. Both use the terminology of "culture war, " which I appropriated. But thankfully, these wars are by and large rhetorical or legal, which distinguishes us from other cultures where violence seems to be the inevitable outcome of religio-political divisions."

Full interview at TIME

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