The Battle Between Faith And Reason

[PoliticalChic]

Just kiddin’….there is no such battle. The two, working in concert, have produced the greatest civilization mankind has ever seen. But, I will provide an illustration of what happens when only one of the two is in force.


Let’s start from this conclusion: God created man with forethought and purpose, and invested his major creation with a thinking ability and with the free will to use that ability as man chooses.




1. We’ve built western civilization on two pillars: God created every human in His image and human beings are able to investigate and make rational conclusions about the world. These two ideas were born in Jerusalem and Athens, respectively. Those who put those two ideas to judicious use, that life is more than materialism, pleasure and avoiding pain, then you are a product of Jerusalem and Athens.




2. Thomas Aquinas saw that faith and reason need be melded. “They hold a plainly false opinion who say that in regard to the truth of religion it does not matter what a person thinks about creation so long as he has a correct opinion concerning God. An error concerning the creation ends as false thinking about God.” "Reconciling Faith and Reason: Apologists, Evangelists, and Theologians,” Thomas P. Rausch, p.12

Aquinas, Maimonides, or Al-Farabi…..men of faith used reason to prove God’s existence.

Jerusalem and Athens.




3. Now, here comes that fork in the road, the wrong choice which has led us to current conditions. In the 18th century, possibly to end the abuses of an aristocracy, or to follow decrees of a very different entity from God, individuals in France authored a revolution far different from that which took place in America.

In France, the revolution abolished religion and faith, and made reason and science the only basis for society. America had a revolution, too, but didn’t make that mistake, which is why the former produced a slaughter house, and ours didn’t.


“If the French revolution was the end of monarchy and aristocratic privilege and the emergence of the common man and democratic rights, it was also the beginnings of modern totalitarian government and large-scale executions of "enemies of the People" by impersonal government entities (Robespierre's "Committee of Public Safety"). This legacy would not reach its fullest bloom until the tragic arrival of the German Nazis and Soviet and Chinese communists of the 20th century.

In fact, Rousseau has been called the precursor of the modern pseudo-democrats such as Stalin and Hitler and the "people's democracies." French Revolution - Robespierre, and the Legacy of the Reign of Terror





4. Certainly it is self-congratulatory to claim one’s society is based on science and reason alone, and not that silly superstition, religion. But the result is fearful: In the course of France's short revolution, 600,000 French citizens were killed, and another 145,000 fled the country.
Schom, "Napoleon Bonaparte," p. 253.

"That's in a country with between 24 and 26 million people, about the current population of Texas. In terms of population loss, that would be the equivalent of the United States having a 9/11 attack every day for seven years." Coulter, "Demonic," p. 266.


6. And, it went further: over 100 million men, women and children slaughtered as Bolsheviks claimed descent: “Historians of the French Revolution, which the Russians saw as a model for their own…” Bolshevik Festivals, 1917–1920





Bet they didn’t teach you that in secular government schools.

 

[PoliticalChic]

7. Thomas Aquinas, syncing faith and reason, said: “They hold a plainly false opinion who say that in regard to the truth of religion it does not matter what a person thinks about creation so long as he has a correct opinion concerning God. An error concerning the creation ends as false thinking about God.”


Could science and religion have a nexus????



Have you noticed that the current scientific view of evolution mirrors what was written in the Bible, in Genesis?

If it is not evidence for the God, then the author of Genesis 1, or Moses, perhaps, must have understood that the universe formed first, then the seas appeared on earth, and that life forms were photosynthetic. Following that, he had to have realized that an eye evolved in an early animal in the geological past, which triggered the evolution of all the major groups of animals that exist today. Still further, he must have felt that all of this occurred in the seas, before animals moved onto land, and only when they did move out of the water did mammals and birds evolve.



The Old Testament was written, although not compiled, almost three millennia ago. It is extraordinary that the writer of the creation account in Genesis, chapter one, got it right in his exposition of the series of events: his sequence turns out to be scientifically accurate in terms of contemporary knowledge.



Wow! What an incredibly lucky guess! What a considerable stroke of good fortune!

Or....possibly something else altogether.

 

[ding]

Alexis de Tocqueville was the famous 19th century French statesman, historian and social philosopher. He traveled to America in the 1830s to discover the reasons for the incredible success of this new nation. He published his observations in his classic two-volume work, Democracy in America. He was especially impressed by America's religious character. Here are some startling excerpts from Tocqueville's great work:

Upon my arrival in the United States the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention; and the longer I stayed there, the more I perceived the great political consequences resulting from this new state of things.

In France I had almost always seen the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom marching in opposite directions. But in America I found they were intimately united and that they reigned in common over the same country.

Religion in America...must be regarded as the foremost of the political institutions of that country; for if it does not impart a taste for freedom, it facilitates the use of it. Indeed, it is in this same point of view that the inhabitants of the United States themselves look upon religious belief.

I do not know whether all Americans have a sincere faith in their religion -- for who can search the human heart? But I am certain that they hold it to be indispensable to the maintenance of republican institutions. This opinion is not peculiar to a class of citizens or a party, but it belongs to the whole nation and to every rank of society.

In the United States, the sovereign authority is religious...there is no country in the world where the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America, and there can be no greater proof of its utility and of its conformity to human nature than that its influence is powerfully felt over the most enlightened and free nation of the earth.

In the United States, the influence of religion is not confined to the manners, but it extends to the intelligence of the people...

Christianity, therefore, reigns without obstacle, by universal consent...

I sought for the key to the greatness and genius of America in her harbors...; in her fertile fields and boundless forests; in her rich mines and vast world commerce; in her public school system and institutions of learning. I sought for it in her democratic Congress and in her matchless Constitution.

Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power.

America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.

The safeguard of morality is religion, and morality is the best security of law as well as the surest pledge of freedom.

The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other

Christianity is the companion of liberty in all its conflicts -- the cradle of its infancy, and the divine source of its claims.

One Nation Under God: Alexis de Tocqueville

 

[PoliticalChic]

Alexis de Tocqueville was the famous 19th century French statesman, historian and social philosopher. He traveled to America in the 1830s to discover the reasons for the incredible success of this new nation. He published his observations in his classic two-volume work, Democracy in America. He was especially impressed by America's religious character. Here are some startling excerpts from Tocqueville's great work:

Upon my arrival in the United States the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention; and the longer I stayed there, the more I perceived the great political consequences resulting from this new state of things.

In France I had almost always seen the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom marching in opposite directions. But in America I found they were intimately united and that they reigned in common over the same country.

Religion in America...must be regarded as the foremost of the political institutions of that country; for if it does not impart a taste for freedom, it facilitates the use of it. Indeed, it is in this same point of view that the inhabitants of the United States themselves look upon religious belief.

I do not know whether all Americans have a sincere faith in their religion -- for who can search the human heart? But I am certain that they hold it to be indispensable to the maintenance of republican institutions. This opinion is not peculiar to a class of citizens or a party, but it belongs to the whole nation and to every rank of society.

In the United States, the sovereign authority is religious...there is no country in the world where the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America, and there can be no greater proof of its utility and of its conformity to human nature than that its influence is powerfully felt over the most enlightened and free nation of the earth.

In the United States, the influence of religion is not confined to the manners, but it extends to the intelligence of the people...

Christianity, therefore, reigns without obstacle, by universal consent...

I sought for the key to the greatness and genius of America in her harbors...; in her fertile fields and boundless forests; in her rich mines and vast world commerce; in her public school system and institutions of learning. I sought for it in her democratic Congress and in her matchless Constitution.

Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power.

America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.

The safeguard of morality is religion, and morality is the best security of law as well as the surest pledge of freedom.

The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other

Christianity is the companion of liberty in all its conflicts -- the cradle of its infancy, and the divine source of its claims.

One Nation Under God: Alexis de Tocqueville

And this....


Although Christianity in its many varieties was the religion of the original colonies, Christianity does not preach operational dominance over the body politic in America.
Tocqueville compared this aspect to Islam: “Mohammed professed to derive from Heaven, and has inserted in the Koran, not only religious doctrines, but political maxims, civil and criminal laws, and theories of science.

The Gospel, on the contrary, speaks only of the general relations of men to God and to each other, beyond which it inculcates and imposes no point of faith. This alone, besides a thousand other reasons, would suffice to prove that the former of these religions will never long predominate in a cultivated and democratic age, while the latter is destined to retain its sway at these as at all other periods.”
Tocqueville, “Democracy in America,” vol.2, p. 23.

 

[ding]

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

“More than half a century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: ‘Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened.’”

“Since then I have spent well-nigh fifty years working on the history of our Revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval...But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous Revolution that swallowed up some sixty million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: "Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened.’”

“Templeton Lecture, May 10, 1983,” in The Solzhenitsyn Reader: New and Essential Writings, 1947-2005, eds. Edward E. Ericson, Jr. and Daniel J. Mahoney (Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2006), 577

 

[PoliticalChic]

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

“More than half a century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: ‘Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened.’”

“Since then I have spent well-nigh fifty years working on the history of our Revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval...But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous Revolution that swallowed up some sixty million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: "Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened.’”

“Templeton Lecture, May 10, 1983,” in The Solzhenitsyn Reader: New and Essential Writings, 1947-2005, eds. Edward E. Ericson, Jr. and Daniel J. Mahoney (Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2006), 577

Dostoyevsky predicted it.

The Enlightenment shattered the congruence of the two aspects, science and reason replacing religion and morality. There could only be one outcome, and Dostoyevsky recognized it. He saw that reason and science were being touted as the only guides that mankind needed….and he didn’t accept same.
“Human beings are creatures that seek more than which reason and science purport to give them- and they are more than the self-interested animals reason and science seek to make them. ….freed from moral responsibility….[they] would burst forth in a conflagration that will set the whole world on fire, Dostoyevsky predicted.

God’s death, Dostoyevsky thought, was man’s death as well.”
Shapiro, The Right Side of History, p.117


Between WWII and the ascendancy of socialism/communism, nearly 200 million men, women, and children perished.

 

[PoliticalChic]

8. Let’s take a look at how the other side sees things, the anti-science secularists.




As to the sanctity of human life? Nope….

"We must rid ourselves once and for all of the Quaker-Papist babble about the sanctity of human life."
Leon Trotsky

"A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic."
Joseph Stalin




9. Look beyond the title ‘scientist,’ and note that many are atheistic Marxists, who will say any nonsense to slander faith. Get this, a prominent scientist, Lawrence Krauss, "... an American theoretical physicist and cosmologist...known as an advocate of the public understanding of science, ...and works to reduce the impact of superstition and religious dogma in pop culture. He is also the author of several bestselling books, includingThe Physics of Star Trek and A Universe from Nothing."
Lawrence M. Krauss - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia


Krauss has said "we all, literally, emerged from quantum nothingness..."
Clearly an attempt to avoid the central question of where did the universe come from. Where are the quantum rules that imply a universe that must appear out of the void? Can any come up with a few examples where something has come from nothing?




And, from reviews of Krauss' book, "A Universe From Nothing,"...

"....at the end of the book he he has given up trying to explain his hypothesis. Throughout the book he admits that Something can come from Nothing only if there is Something inherent in the Nothingness.

...Krauss claims that "in quantum gravity, universes can, and indeed always will, spontaneously appear from nothing" This is yet again another fabrication,....

Krauss mixes opinion with pseudo-science to fool his cult that the universe popped into existence from nowhere with no cause (the epitome pseudo-science, anti-science and religious belief)."



Of course, the ancient Greek, Parmenides, was correct: nihil fit ex nihilo... "out of nothing, nothing [be]comes."




Soooo.....how could the universe, and all we see, have come into existence.

There is a book that explains it.......


The fake science dunces are willing to accept anything...even things that obviate all of real science.

 

[ding]

8. Let’s take a look at how the other side sees things, the anti-science secularists.




As to the sanctity of human life? Nope….

"We must rid ourselves once and for all of the Quaker-Papist babble about the sanctity of human life."
Leon Trotsky

"A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic."
Joseph Stalin




9. Look beyond the title ‘scientist,’ and note that many are atheistic Marxists, who will say any nonsense to slander faith. Get this, a prominent scientist, Lawrence Krauss, "... an American theoretical physicist and cosmologist...known as an advocate of the public understanding of science, ...and works to reduce the impact of superstition and religious dogma in pop culture. He is also the author of several bestselling books, includingThe Physics of Star Trek and A Universe from Nothing."
Lawrence M. Krauss - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia


Krauss has said "we all, literally, emerged from quantum nothingness..."
Clearly an attempt to avoid the central question of where did the universe come from. Where are the quantum rules that imply a universe that must appear out of the void? Can any come up with a few examples where something has come from nothing?




And, from reviews of Krauss' book, "A Universe From Nothing,"...

"....at the end of the book he he has given up trying to explain his hypothesis. Throughout the book he admits that Something can come from Nothing only if there is Something inherent in the Nothingness.

...Krauss claims that "in quantum gravity, universes can, and indeed always will, spontaneously appear from nothing" This is yet again another fabrication,....

Krauss mixes opinion with pseudo-science to fool his cult that the universe popped into existence from nowhere with no cause (the epitome pseudo-science, anti-science and religious belief)."



Of course, the ancient Greek, Parmenides, was correct: nihil fit ex nihilo... "out of nothing, nothing [be]comes."




Soooo.....how could the universe, and all we see, have come into existence.

There is a book that explains it.......


The fake science dunces are willing to accept anything...even things that obviate all of real science.

He ignores the fact that a universe created from nothing follows the laws of quantum mechanics and conservation. Which means the laws of nature were in place before space and time were created.

 

[Hollie]

Just kiddin’….there is no such battle. The two, working in concert, have produced the greatest civilization mankind has ever seen. But, I will provide an illustration of what happens when only one of the two is in force.


Let’s start from this conclusion: God created man with forethought and purpose, and invested his major creation with a thinking ability and with the free will to use that ability as man chooses.




1. We’ve built western civilization on two pillars: God created every human in His image and human beings are able to investigate and make rational conclusions about the world. These two ideas were born in Jerusalem and Athens, respectively. Those who put those two ideas to judicious use, that life is more than materialism, pleasure and avoiding pain, then you are a product of Jerusalem and Athens.




2. Thomas Aquinas saw that faith and reason need be melded. “They hold a plainly false opinion who say that in regard to the truth of religion it does not matter what a person thinks about creation so long as he has a correct opinion concerning God. An error concerning the creation ends as false thinking about God.” "Reconciling Faith and Reason: Apologists, Evangelists, and Theologians,” Thomas P. Rausch, p.12

Aquinas, Maimonides, or Al-Farabi…..men of faith used reason to prove God’s existence.

Jerusalem and Athens.




3. Now, here comes that fork in the road, the wrong choice which has led us to current conditions. In the 18th century, possibly to end the abuses of an aristocracy, or to follow decrees of a very different entity from God, individuals in France authored a revolution far different from that which took place in America.

In France, the revolution abolished religion and faith, and made reason and science the only basis for society. America had a revolution, too, but didn’t make that mistake, which is why the former produced a slaughter house, and ours didn’t.


“If the French revolution was the end of monarchy and aristocratic privilege and the emergence of the common man and democratic rights, it was also the beginnings of modern totalitarian government and large-scale executions of "enemies of the People" by impersonal government entities (Robespierre's "Committee of Public Safety"). This legacy would not reach its fullest bloom until the tragic arrival of the German Nazis and Soviet and Chinese communists of the 20th century.

In fact, Rousseau has been called the precursor of the modern pseudo-democrats such as Stalin and Hitler and the "people's democracies." French Revolution - Robespierre, and the Legacy of the Reign of Terror





4. Certainly it is self-congratulatory to claim one’s society is based on science and reason alone, and not that silly superstition, religion. But the result is fearful: In the course of France's short revolution, 600,000 French citizens were killed, and another 145,000 fled the country.
Schom, "Napoleon Bonaparte," p. 253.

"That's in a country with between 24 and 26 million people, about the current population of Texas. In terms of population loss, that would be the equivalent of the United States having a 9/11 attack every day for seven years." Coulter, "Demonic," p. 266.


6. And, it went further: over 100 million men, women and children slaughtered as Bolsheviks claimed descent: “Historians of the French Revolution, which the Russians saw as a model for their own…” Bolshevik Festivals, 1917–1920





Bet they didn’t teach you that in secular government schools.

“Let’s start from this conclusion: God created man with forethought and purpose, and invested his major creation with a thinking ability and with the free will to use that ability as man chooses.”

Why start with a predefined conclusion? You’re simply making an assumption, completely unsupported, and blithely proceeding on as though you have an entitlement to unsubstantiated claims.

There are many conceptions of gods, ranging from incorporeal entities to long haired hippies walking around in sandals (the western version of Jesus who is the tall, light-skinned, light-haired, Caucasian looking guy westerners created in their image), I do have to ask why you believe your perception of the gods is more supported than various other suppositions and assertions of the gods. I’ll task you with a challenge. You need to explain first why a book stands as acceptable communication of the gods to humanity. That's your first task.

 

[PoliticalChic]

10. " The Left says of the Right, “You fools, it is demonstrable that dinosaurs lived one hundred million years ago, I can prove it to you, how can you say the earth was created in 4000BCE?” But this supposed intransigence on the part of the Religious Right is far less detrimental to the health of the body politic than the Left’s love affair with Marxism, Socialism, Racialism, the Command Economy, all of which have been proven via one hundred years of evidence shows only shortages, despotism and murder. "
David Mamet




On page 221 in David Mamet’s book “The Secret Knowledge” he quotes Christopher Hollis who wrote in 1936:

“The left is atheist, and simply because it is atheist, its religious fanaticism is worse than the other fanaticisms of history. For the romantic of the past has sometimes, if all too rarely, has been restrained by the reality that God is truth. But the atheist fanatic has no reason for such restraint. There is no reason in principle why the revolutionary atheist should regard truth, and it does not seem he does so in practice.”
Sixty five years later it continues to be a brilliant observation. This is why fanatical atheism which seeks to stamp out all mention of God in the public square is to be a concern to all.
Wacko Atheists Sue Over WTC Cross

 

[PoliticalChic]

11. Perhaps the original impetus was a kind of human self-aggrandizement. With the Enlightenment, the explosion of science, there was a kind of ‘we don’t need God to be the explanation for the universe,’ It’s Athens without Jerusalem.



We, mankind, can be god!



The view became entwined with political science: “A half-century before Karl Marx published the Communist Manifesto, there was Gracchus Babeuf’s Plebeian Manifesto, which was later renamed the Manifesto of the Equals. Babeuf’s early (1796) work has been described as socialist, anarchist, and communist, and has had an enormous impact.

He wrote: “The French Revolution was nothing but a precursor of another revolution, on which will be bigger, more solemn, and which will be the last…We reach for something more sublime and more just: the common good or the community of goods!”
Rev. Robert A. Sirico



Science is blind without the guidance of faith: science tells us what we can do…..not what we should do.


Even in the 19th century, as religious conviction waned, the warnings were there. Ivan Karamazov, in “The Brothers Karamazov,” exclaimed ‘if God does not exist, then everything is permitted.’

Genocide, eugenics, infanticide, gulags, concentration camps, mass murder included.



From that point, the attacks were more anti-faith than pro-science.

 

[Hollie]

7. Thomas Aquinas, syncing faith and reason, said: “They hold a plainly false opinion who say that in regard to the truth of religion it does not matter what a person thinks about creation so long as he has a correct opinion concerning God. An error concerning the creation ends as false thinking about God.”


Could science and religion have a nexus????



Have you noticed that the current scientific view of evolution mirrors what was written in the Bible, in Genesis?

If it is not evidence for the God, then the author of Genesis 1, or Moses, perhaps, must have understood that the universe formed first, then the seas appeared on earth, and that life forms were photosynthetic. Following that, he had to have realized that an eye evolved in an early animal in the geological past, which triggered the evolution of all the major groups of animals that exist today. Still further, he must have felt that all of this occurred in the seas, before animals moved onto land, and only when they did move out of the water did mammals and birds evolve.



The Old Testament was written, although not compiled, almost three millennia ago. It is extraordinary that the writer of the creation account in Genesis, chapter one, got it right in his exposition of the series of events: his sequence turns out to be scientifically accurate in terms of contemporary knowledge.



Wow! What an incredibly lucky guess! What a considerable stroke of good fortune!

Or....possibly something else altogether.

7. Thomas Aquinas, syncing faith and reason, said: “They hold a plainly false opinion who say that in regard to the truth of religion it does not matter what a person thinks about creation so long as he has a correct opinion concerning God. An error concerning the creation ends as false thinking about God.”


Could science and religion have a nexus????



Have you noticed that the current scientific view of evolution mirrors what was written in the Bible, in Genesis?

If it is not evidence for the God, then the author of Genesis 1, or Moses, perhaps, must have understood that the universe formed first, then the seas appeared on earth, and that life forms were photosynthetic. Following that, he had to have realized that an eye evolved in an early animal in the geological past, which triggered the evolution of all the major groups of animals that exist today. Still further, he must have felt that all of this occurred in the seas, before animals moved onto land, and only when they did move out of the water did mammals and birds evolve.



The Old Testament was written, although not compiled, almost three millennia ago. It is extraordinary that the writer of the creation account in Genesis, chapter one, got it right in his exposition of the series of events: his sequence turns out to be scientifically accurate in terms of contemporary knowledge.



Wow! What an incredibly lucky guess! What a considerable stroke of good fortune!

Or....possibly something else altogether.

“Have you noticed that the current scientific view of evolution mirrors what was written in the Bible, in Genesis?”

I haven’t noticed that the current scientific view of evolution mirrors what was written in the Bible, in Genesis.

I’m not aware that the current scientific view of evolution supports a 6,000 year old planet, talking reptiles, supernatural intervention or humans living for 950 years.

Link, please?

 

[PoliticalChic]

12. Today, there are scientists who shout from the rooftops, ‘Scientific and religious belief are in conflict. They cannot both be right. Let us get rid of the one that is wrong!’ And, not just tolerated, today they are admired.

It is a veritable orgy of competitive skepticism- but a skepticism supposedly built of science.

Physicist Victor Stengler and Taner Edis have both published books championing atheism. Both men exhibit the salient characteristic of physicists endeavoring to draw general lessons about the cosmos from mathematical physics: They are willing to believe anything.




Professor Richard Lewontin, a geneticist (and self-proclaimed Marxist), is certainly one of the world’s leaders in evolutionary biology. He wrote this very revealing comment:

“‘We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism.” Lewontin explains why one must accept absurdities: “…we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”



Must be a reason for such palpable fear.

 

[ding]

“In 1929, the Thinker’s Library, a series established by the Rationalist Press Association to advance secular thinking and counter the influence of religion in Britain, published an English translation of the German biologist Ernst Haeckel’s 1899 book The Riddle of the Universe. Celebrated as “the German Darwin”, Haeckel was one of the most influential public intellectuals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century; The Riddle of the Universe sold half a million copies in Germany alone, and was translated into dozens of other languages. Hostile to Jewish and Christian traditions, Haeckel devised his own “religion of science” called Monism, which incorporated an anthropology that divided the human species into a hierarchy of racial groups. Though he died in 1919, before the Nazi Party had been founded, his ideas, and widespread influence in Germany, unquestionably helped to create an intellectual climate in which policies of racial slavery and genocide were able to claim a basis in science...”

What scares the new atheists | John Gray

 

[Hollie]

12. Today, there are scientists who shout from the rooftops, ‘Scientific and religious belief are in conflict. They cannot both be right. Let us get rid of the one that is wrong!’ And, not just tolerated, today they are admired.

It is a veritable orgy of competitive skepticism- but a skepticism supposedly built of science.

Physicist Victor Stengler and Taner Edis have both published books championing atheism. Both men exhibit the salient characteristic of physicists endeavoring to draw general lessons about the cosmos from mathematical physics: They are willing to believe anything.




Professor Richard Lewontin, a geneticist (and self-proclaimed Marxist), is certainly one of the world’s leaders in evolutionary biology. He wrote this very revealing comment:

“‘We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism.” Lewontin explains why one must accept absurdities: “…we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”



Must be a reason for such palpable fear.

Your habit of selectively editing the material you cut and paste is displayed here again.

You edited out the last paragraph of the "quote"

"The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen."

 

[Tax Man]

Belief in any deity and the associated fairy tales of scripture preclude rational thought and factual conclusion.

 

[PoliticalChic]

“In 1929, the Thinker’s Library, a series established by the Rationalist Press Association to advance secular thinking and counter the influence of religion in Britain, published an English translation of the German biologist Ernst Haeckel’s 1899 book The Riddle of the Universe. Celebrated as “the German Darwin”, Haeckel was one of the most influential public intellectuals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century; The Riddle of the Universe sold half a million copies in Germany alone, and was translated into dozens of other languages. Hostile to Jewish and Christian traditions, Haeckel devised his own “religion of science” called Monism, which incorporated an anthropology that divided the human species into a hierarchy of racial groups. Though he died in 1919, before the Nazi Party had been founded, his ideas, and widespread influence in Germany, unquestionably helped to create an intellectual climate in which policies of racial slavery and genocide were able to claim a basis in science...”

What scares the new atheists | John Gray

Thank you.


And this about Haeckel....he was one of the 'founders' of environmentalism, the spin-off of Fascism.


1. One spin-off of the Enlightenment was the desire to find new myths that would transcend daily existence and take one to a higher level of purification. Proto-fascist, and founder of ecology, Ernst Haeckel, invested nature-worship with the belief that all matter was alive and possessed mental attributes. In ‘monism,’ he brought together hostility to Christianity and propaganda for Darwinism, a nature cult and theories of hygiene and selective breeding. J.W. Burrow, “The Crisis of Reason: European Thought, 1848-1914,” p. 218-19


“In 1867 the German zoologist Ernst Haeckel coined the term 'ecology' and began to establish it as a scientific discipline dedicated to studying
the interactions between organism and environment. Haeckel believed in nordic racial superiority,
strenuously opposed race mixing and enthusiastically supported racial
eugenics. Haeckel contributed to that special variety of German
thought which served as the seed bed for National Socialism. He
became one of Germany's major ideologists for racism, nationalism
and imperialism…he fulminated in antisemitic tones…played a
key role in the establishment of the Nazi movement.” Eco Fascism / Fascist Ideology : the Green Wing of the Nazi Party and Its Historical Antecedents by Peter Staudenmaier | Nazism (1.8K views)



Quite a nexus of hate, secularism, atheism, Marxism, Fascism.....and Liberalism.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Belief in any deity and the associated fairy tales of scripture preclude rational thought and factual conclusion.

Spoken like a true anti-American.


You Leftists seem to absorb it with your mother's milk.


America was founded based on the Bible and the Judeo-Christian faith.


There are references to same in both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.


The reason our revolution was so different from the violent, homicidal chaos of the French version was the dominant American culture was Anglo-Saxon and Christian. “52 of the 56 signers of the declaration and 50 to 52 of the 55 signers of the Constitution were orthodox Trinitarian Christians.” http://www.davidlimbaugh.com/mt/archives/2010/02/new_column_libe_4.html

 

[alang1216]

Just kiddin’….there is no such battle. The two, working in concert, have produced the greatest civilization mankind has ever seen. But, I will provide an illustration of what happens when only one of the two is in force.


Let’s start from this conclusion: God created man with forethought and purpose, and invested his major creation with a thinking ability and with the free will to use that ability as man chooses.




1. We’ve built western civilization on two pillars: God created every human in His image and human beings are able to investigate and make rational conclusions about the world. These two ideas were born in Jerusalem and Athens, respectively. Those who put those two ideas to judicious use, that life is more than materialism, pleasure and avoiding pain, then you are a product of Jerusalem and Athens.




2. Thomas Aquinas saw that faith and reason need be melded. “They hold a plainly false opinion who say that in regard to the truth of religion it does not matter what a person thinks about creation so long as he has a correct opinion concerning God. An error concerning the creation ends as false thinking about God.” "Reconciling Faith and Reason: Apologists, Evangelists, and Theologians,” Thomas P. Rausch, p.12

Aquinas, Maimonides, or Al-Farabi…..men of faith used reason to prove God’s existence.

Jerusalem and Athens.




3. Now, here comes that fork in the road, the wrong choice which has led us to current conditions. In the 18th century, possibly to end the abuses of an aristocracy, or to follow decrees of a very different entity from God, individuals in France authored a revolution far different from that which took place in America.

In France, the revolution abolished religion and faith, and made reason and science the only basis for society. America had a revolution, too, but didn’t make that mistake, which is why the former produced a slaughter house, and ours didn’t.


“If the French revolution was the end of monarchy and aristocratic privilege and the emergence of the common man and democratic rights, it was also the beginnings of modern totalitarian government and large-scale executions of "enemies of the People" by impersonal government entities (Robespierre's "Committee of Public Safety"). This legacy would not reach its fullest bloom until the tragic arrival of the German Nazis and Soviet and Chinese communists of the 20th century.

In fact, Rousseau has been called the precursor of the modern pseudo-democrats such as Stalin and Hitler and the "people's democracies." French Revolution - Robespierre, and the Legacy of the Reign of Terror





4. Certainly it is self-congratulatory to claim one’s society is based on science and reason alone, and not that silly superstition, religion. But the result is fearful: In the course of France's short revolution, 600,000 French citizens were killed, and another 145,000 fled the country.
Schom, "Napoleon Bonaparte," p. 253.

"That's in a country with between 24 and 26 million people, about the current population of Texas. In terms of population loss, that would be the equivalent of the United States having a 9/11 attack every day for seven years." Coulter, "Demonic," p. 266.


6. And, it went further: over 100 million men, women and children slaughtered as Bolsheviks claimed descent: “Historians of the French Revolution, which the Russians saw as a model for their own…” Bolshevik Festivals, 1917–1920





Bet they didn’t teach you that in secular government schools.

You're comparing apples and oranges. Religions are many things, one being a moral code and rules for living. Science is the study of the universe. It is amoral and should be. It can tell if a fertilized egg is human but it can't tell you if it is moral or immoral to kill it. When Darwinism became the basis for eugenics, that was a misuse of science, not science condoning eugenics. Many horrors have been done in the name of science just as many horrors have been done in the name of religion.

 

[Hollie]

Belief in any deity and the associated fairy tales of scripture preclude rational thought and factual conclusion.

Spoken like a true anti-American.


You Leftists seem to absorb it with your mother's milk.


America was founded based on the Bible and the Judeo-Christian faith.


There are references to same in both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.


The reason our revolution was so different from the violent, homicidal chaos of the French version was the dominant American culture was Anglo-Saxon and Christian. “52 of the 56 signers of the declaration and 50 to 52 of the 55 signers of the Constitution were orthodox Trinitarian Christians.” http://www.davidlimbaugh.com/mt/archives/2010/02/new_column_libe_4.html

Sorry, but your attempts at fraud are poorly crafted.

The Declaration of Independence is not a legal document. It is in fact a treasonous document from the perspective of the British. It is understood that the concept of men's religious beliefs were part and parcel of the founding of the country. However, the wording of the Constitution is clearly meant to encompass numerous beliefs, extant at the time, to cover the general consensus of beliefs. Hence, deistic terms like "Creator" and "Nature's God", "divine Providence" and the quite evident lack of reference to Jesus and Yahweh (despite robust debate to include them). The closest reference is to a "Supreme Judge", but of course that could be Amon Ra, couldn't it?

It's a given that some things people do spring from their beliefs, which may be varied and complex, but what is asserted by angry, fundamentalist Christians is that the Nation was founded exclusively under Judeo-Christian beliefs, and that is a patent lie. At the outset, neither liberty, pursuit of happiness, democracy, or republicanism has anything to do with Judeo-Christianity, both of which would instill theocracies (and as such are by definition dictatorships), but instead these were the hallmarks of the "pagan" belief systems of the Greeks and the Romans.

The DoI is a stirring document, its importance is acknowledged, but it is not the legal basis for the nation nor how the nation functions or what its limits are. That is, has been, and always will be the Constitution, and all arguments regarding what the nation is permitted to do is contained within that document (with a nod to expansion vis a vis constitutional amendments).