Zone1 Decline of Christianity a good or a bad thing?

[Blues Man]

I didn't blame anyone for anything. I was merely relaying what he said about communism being naturalized humanism. A statement I believe he was correct in stating. But to say his work wasn't responsible for implementing Socialism or Communism is a bit misleading. He certainly was an advocate of such.

Human Requirements and Division of Labour, Marx, 1844

So what.

The idea of communism was actually practiced in humans when they lived as hunter gatherers and it worked out pretty well in that respect.

The problem is it can't be scaled up past a certain population size. You seem to be erroneously thinking that ALL communism is reflected by the Soviet and Chinese governmental systems and their poor records on human rights.

And secular humanism has little to do with such disregard for human rights.

In fact societies based in secular humanism are actually doing better than societies based in religious dogma.

All you have to do is look at Iran to see that

 

[Frankenstein]

Secular societies have no problem with morality.

Humanism is the source of morals but religion has claimed the idea of morality as its own but the reality is morals are a product of reason not some deity.

False!

 

[Blues Man]

False!

Says you.

Secular Societies Fare Better Than Religious Societies

If religion withers, does society rot? Clearly not.

www.psychologytoday.com

 

[Frankenstein]

Says you.

Secular Societies Fare Better Than Religious Societies

If religion withers, does society rot? Clearly not.

www.psychologytoday.com

He is a human secularist what did you think he would say, this is the first statement!
It is said over and over again by religious conservatives: without faith in God, society will fall apart. If we don't worship God, pray to God, and place God at the central heart of our culture, things will get ugly.

Look at this world and society and tell me that is wrong, as people get further from God and less believe look at how bad it is getting!

 

[Blues Man]

He is a human secularist what did you think he would say, this is the first statement!
It is said over and over again by religious conservatives: without faith in God, society will fall apart. If we don't worship God, pray to God, and place God at the central heart of our culture, things will get ugly.

Look at this world and society and tell me that is wrong, as people get further from God and less believe look at how bad it is getting!

And you're a religious wacko what do i think you're going to say?

And by your logic Iran must be the best place in the world to live so why aren't you living there ?

 

[ding]

So what.

I just explained so what. I didn't blame anyone for anything. I was merely relaying what he said about communism being naturalized humanism. A statement I believe he was correct in stating. But to say his work wasn't responsible for implementing Socialism or Communism is a bit misleading. He certainly was an advocate of such.

Human Requirements and Division of Labour, Marx, 1844

That's so what.

 

[Frankenstein]

And you're a religious wacko what do i think you're going to say?

And by your logic Iran must be the best place in the world to live so why aren't you living there ?

Because I worship God not Allah!
I can't change your mind so why do you post on this subject, we get that you do not believe however, it's like I said earlier about another poster, deep down you know God is there but must disqualify that knowledge, and bash anyone who does believe, to soothe your aching soul

 

[ding]

And secular humanism has little to do with such disregard for human rights.

Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin disagree with you.

"Communism is naturalized humanism." ~ Karl Marx

"The propaganda of atheism is necessary for our programs." ~ Vladimir Lenin

 

[ding]

Look at this world and society and tell me that is wrong, as people get further from God and less believe look at how bad it is getting!

To your point...

However, in early democracies, as in the American democracy at the time of its birth, all individual human rights were granted because man is God's creature. That is, freedom was given to the individual conditionally, in the assumption of his constant religious responsibility. Such was the heritage of the preceding thousand years. Two hundred or even fifty years ago, it would have seemed quite impossible, in America, that an individual could be granted boundless freedom simply for the satisfaction of his instincts or whims. Subsequently, however, all such limitations were discarded everywhere in the West; a total liberation occurred from the moral heritage of Christian centuries with their great reserves of mercy and sacrifice. State systems were -- State systems were becoming increasingly and totally materialistic. The West ended up by truly enforcing human rights, sometimes even excessively, but man's sense of responsibility to God and society grew dimmer and dimmer. In the past decades, the legalistically selfish aspect of Western approach and thinking has reached its final dimension and the world wound up in a harsh spiritual crisis and a political impasse. All the glorified technological achievements of Progress, including the conquest of outer space, do not redeem the 20th century's moral poverty which no one could imagine even as late as in the 19th Century.

"...As humanism in its development became more and more materialistic, it made itself increasingly accessible to speculation and manipulation by socialism and then by communism. So that Karl Marx was able to say that "communism is naturalized humanism."

This statement turned out not to be entirely senseless. One does see the same stones in the foundations of a despiritualized humanism and of any type of socialism: endless materialism; freedom from religion and religious responsibility, which under communist regimes reach the stage of anti-religious dictatorships; concentration on social structures with a seemingly scientific approach. This is typical of the Enlightenment in the 18th Century and of Marxism. Not by coincidence all of communism's meaningless pledges and oaths are about Man, with a capital M, and his earthly happiness. At first glance it seems an ugly parallel: common traits in the thinking and way of life of today's West and today's East? But such is the logic of materialistic development.

The interrelationship is such, too, that the current of materialism which is most to the left always ends up by being stronger, more attractive, and victorious, because it is more consistent. Humanism without its Christian heritage cannot resist such competition. We watch this process in the past centuries and especially in the past decades, on a world scale as the situation becomes increasingly dramatic. Liberalism was inevitably displaced by radicalism; radicalism had to surrender to socialism; and socialism could never resist communism.1 The communist regime in the East could stand and grow due to the enthusiastic support from an enormous number of Western intellectuals who felt a kinship and refused to see communism's crimes. And when they no longer could do so, they tried to justify them. In our Eastern countries, communism has suffered a complete ideological defeat; it is zero and less than zero. But Western intellectuals still look at it with interest and with empathy, and this is precisely what makes it so immensely difficult for the West to withstand the East.

I am not examining here the case of a world war disaster and the changes which it would produce in society. As long as we wake up every morning under a peaceful sun, we have to lead an everyday life. There is a disaster, however, which has already been under way for quite some time. I am referring to the calamity of a despiritualized and irreligious humanistic consciousness.

To such consciousness, man is the touchstone in judging everything on earth -- imperfect man, who is never free of pride, self-interest, envy, vanity, and dozens of other defects. We are now experiencing the consequences of mistakes which had not been noticed at the beginning of the journey. On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility. We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life. In the East, it is destroyed by the dealings and machinations of the ruling party. In the West, commercial interests suffocate it. This is the real crisis. The split in the world is less terrible -- The split in the world is less terrible than the similarity of the disease plaguing its main sections.

If humanism were right in declaring that man is born only to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot be unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one's life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it. It is imperative to review the table of widespread human values. Its present incorrectness is astounding. It is not possible that assessment of the President's performance be reduced to the question how much money one makes or of unlimited availability of gasoline. Only voluntary, inspired self-restraint can raise man above the world stream of materialism.

It would be retrogression to attach oneself today to the ossified formulas of the Enlightenment. Social dogmatism leaves us completely helpless in front of the trials of our times. Even if we are spared destruction by war, our lives will have to change if we want to save life from self-destruction. We cannot avoid revising the fundamental definitions of human life and human society. Is it true that man is above everything? Is there no Superior Spirit above him? Is it right that man's life and society's activities have to be determined by material expansion in the first place? Is it permissible to promote such expansion to the detriment of our spiritual integrity?

If the world has not come to its end, it has approached a major turn in history, equal in importance to the turn from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. It will exact from us a spiritual upsurge: We shall have to rise to a new height of vision, to a new level of life where our physical nature will not be cursed as in the Middle Ages, but, even more importantly, our spiritual being will not be trampled upon as in the Modern era.

This ascension will be similar to climbing onto the next anthropologic stage. No one on earth has any other way left but -- upward."

Alexandr Solzhenitsyn: Harvard Commencement Address (A World Split Apart)

Complete text audio and video of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Harvard Commencement Address

www.americanrhetoric.com

 

[Woodznutz]

Secular societies have no problem with morality.

Humanism is the source of morals but religion has claimed the idea of morality as its own but the reality is morals are a product of reason not some deity.

How's that secular morality working fer ya?

 

[Blues Man]

How's that secular morality working fer ya?

Just fine thanks for asking.

 

[ding]

How's that secular morality working fer ya?

Clearly it is a source of great peace for him as he is here looking for fights.

 

[C_Clayton_Jones]

Obviously Christianity declined alot since the middle ages, a good or a bad thing?

My opinion is:

A little bit good (because introduction of religious freedom, yes religious freedom was not always taken for granted, for example only in the 18th or 17th century with the englightened absolute monarchs, the jews got religious freedom, then you wont probably want to have witch hunts, or something)

but it gone too far with extreme blasphemy, and satanistic values, yes we live in the age of satan, it is already more and more open, maybe there will be a openly satanic dictatorship in the future

The decline of religion in general is a good thing – religion is the bane of humankind.

 

[Meriweather]

religion is the bane of humankind.

Give a specific example of how it is been a bane to you.

 

[Woodznutz]

The decline of religion in general is a good thing – religion is the bane of humankind.

I agree that if Islam declined that would be a good thing.

 

[BreezeWood]

I agree that if Islam declined that would be a good thing.

were / when the three bibles of the desert religions cease to exist, so will their religions ... not so the spoken religion of antiquity or golden rules - as who's religion is truly heavenly or not.

 

[Woodznutz]

were / when the three bibles of the desert religions cease to exist, so will their religions ... not so the spoken religion of antiquity or golden rules - as who's religion is truly heavenly or not.

Religion begins on the earth. Heaven comes later.

 

[BreezeWood]

Religion begins on the earth. Heaven comes later.

you are joking ... physiology is not native to planet earth - as for their only, came from the heavens and intend to return.

 

[Woodznutz]

you are joking ... physiology is not native to planet earth - as for their only, came from the heavens and intend to return.

It's a 'chicken/egg' thing.

1John 4:20
"If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?"

 

[BreezeWood]

It's a 'chicken/egg' thing.

1John 4:20
"If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?"

where one comes from is not planet earth, your speculation is ill founded - the return trip surly is as likely as the trip for arrival - for some.