Posted by Sigismund on June 5, 2008, at 3:27:09
In reply to Re: Jesus is Savior, posted by rayww on June 4, 2008, at 17:53:20
>I'm sorry, it makes no sense whatsoever
I hope you are interested because there is a bit to type.
"Contemporary atheism is a Christian heresy that differs from earlier heresies chiefly in its intellectual crudity. This is nowhere clearer than in its view of religion itself. Marx held to a reductive view in which religion was a by-product of repression; but he was clear that it expressed the deepest human aspirations - it was not only the opiate of the masses, but also 'the heart of a heartless world'. The French Positivists wanted to replace Christianity with a ridiculous Reigion of Humanity; but they understood that religion answered to universal human ends. Only a very creduluos philosopher could believe that showing religion to be an illusion could make it disappear. That assumes that the human mind is an organ attuned to truth - a quasi-Platonic conception that is closer to religion than science and inconsistent with Darwinism. Yet such seems to be the view of contemporary unbelievers.
The chief significance of evangelical atheism is in demonstrating the unreality of secularisation. Talk of secularism is meaningful when it refers to the weakness of traditional religious beliefor the lack of powers of churches and other religios bodies. That is what is meant when we say Britain is a more secular country than the United States, and in this sense secularism is an achievable condition. But if it means a type of society from which religion is absent, secularism is a kind of contradiction, for it is defines by what it excludes. Post-Christian secular societies are formed by the beliefs they reject, whereas a society that had truly left Christianity behind would lack the concepts that shaped secular thought.
Like other ideas secularism has a history. Pre-Christian Europe lacked the distinction between the secular and the sacred in much the same way as poytheistic cultures do. The world itself was sacred, and there could be no question of confining religion to a private sphere - the very idea of religion as a set of practices distinct from the rest of life was lacking. A domain seperate from the sacred was recognised only when Augustine distinguished between the City of Man and the City of God. In this sense secular thinking is a legacy of Christianity and has no meaning except in a context of monotheism. In East Asia, polytheism has lived side by side with mystical philosophies in much the same way that the two coexisted in pre-Christian Europe, and the clash between science and religion that has polarized western societies has not taken place. It is no accident that Darwinism has not triggered culture-war in China or Japan."
poster:Sigismund
thread:832600
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/faith/20080404/msgs/833027.html