This is a fascinating discussion about how religion is surviving alongside modernism, and where it is, good things happen! Imagine that. A taste:
"European secularists assume that the church is on the side of the ancien régime, of the establishment, that it's against reason and democracy and liberal emancipation, and there is a lot of evidence for that in Europe. But in America the evangelical movement advanced alongside democracy and liberal enlightened values. They were not oppositional forces but comrades in arms. If you give people more freedom and more democracy they will talk about what they want to talk about and obviously for many people that is God. Religion itself has also been important for advancing democracy - it's an example of the little platoons of civil society. Churches nurture certain civic values, that's why the Chinese government, and all totalitarian governments, have been very suspicious of them and have tried to crush them."
Good article, read it here.
2 comments:
advancing democracy and civic values like gay hating? or like ignoring science, and persecuting those who don't think magic is a solution to problems? if an individual actually thinks that there is a flying spaghetti monster in the sky who is watching and intervening in life... I think the best quote is from Charles Lyell: "Never was there a dogma more calculated to foster indolence, and to blunt the keen edge of curiosity". It is that mindset of "I don't need to ask why something is... because the answer is god".
come now. religion is nothing more than a fund-raising means of controlling the masses. from geocentricity to the value of pi, from the crusades to stem cell research, religion deliberately stands in the way of the forward progress of mankind. always has, always will. and the vehemence with which people cling to the (demonstrably nonsensical) fables and fairy tales makes civilized discourse over things like gay marriage impossible. "god says it is bad". uh... nope. but there's no talking to those people.
although... modern religions like scientology are even more transparent in their evil than the archaic ones. is that what you mean by a good thing happening when religion mixes w/ modernism? a strange thesis, to be sure...
This particular poster has made a number of unfounded, ignorant assaults on religion, so it is no surprise that he/she took the bait on the article I posted. A very nice attempt at smearing main stream religion with such pap as "gay hating," "flying spaghetti" and "Scientology, (which by the way only the Scientologists think is a religion). Again the canards about the Crusades and how religion prevents progress; it is sad that this poster cannot take a moment of deeper thought and understand the value of religion. If he/she could get past the causes of his vitriolic hatred of all things holy, perhaps he/she could appreciate the simple truths of what religion HAS done for society starting with the concepts of justice and individual worth. But, someone with as diseased an imagination as this is beyond being taught - these are the types, the little robots that run around and spout hatred and actually believe that their "religion," the state with its wonderful godhead, the Obamaster, can solve all their worldly cares.
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