Re: Negativity defines me
 

I'm not Christian, but it has always seemed to me there are two dimensions of Christianity, and probably most other religions. There's a person's inner spiritual life which is not so easy to pin down. And then there's the public face composed of many individuals, the churches and associations, which mirror most other human groupings like this regardless of their beliefs.

While it's definitely prone to the same corruption and ideological abuses as any other idea, I don't quite understand the reason for zeroing in on Christianity. It hasn't been responsible in the really horrid atrocities our race has seen for centuries now. And even then, I think the Christians faced fierce competition from others like the Aztecs and Islam.

In my opinion, it seems the worst damage to befall us at the hands of an idea in the last century was not any religion at all. Rather, it was the atheistic and self-worshiping Communists, who continue to carry on their kingdoms of death in a few isolated spots today like North Korea. I expect that they'll hold the record for highest body count and most tortures for quite awhile. Seems to me historians who zero in on bad ideas run amok would do better to turn more attention to the Stalins, Maos, and Kim Jong Ils rather than languishing on the Popes. These gargoyles aren't even out of living memory yet, and still hard at work in the few corpse factories they have left.

Re: Negativity defines me
 

There is a book I would like to recommend "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor E. Frankl.

I found a paperback edition of this book in a box outside a decrepit house. The box had the following sign: "take one, free". Inside I found several books.

Viktor E. Frankl, professor of psychiatry and neurology, was 3 years at Auschwitz. He developed a theory called "logotherapy". He states that when one finds a purpose or meaning to one's life then it is possible to get over the existential vacuum.

Innocently, I think he is right. Basically I don't think it is a fight between religion and atheism , but a fight against a meaningless life. If someone finds meaning in religion, be happy. However, the mere existence of religion creates more problems than it really solves.

Re: Negativity defines me
 

He is helpless in the sense that whatever technology he employs to make his life better creates more problems. For example, it was the discovery of oil for commercial purposes in the nineteenth century that led to incredible advancements in food processing and the production of medicine, which in turn led to longer lifespans and lower infant mortality rates. But the latter led to a population boom of significant proportions that we now face as a major threat today. For more details, view


The same goes for the use of money, antibiotics, "mutually assured destruction," and many other artifacts of human civilizations. It is as if Laurie Garrett was right in arguing that scientists are now beginning to realize that it is not man but the lowly virus that rules the world.

I say this not to argue that religion will save us from such ills; rather, nothing will. Not surprisingly, this may have been one grim conclusion raised by Sartre and Camus, but not by "new atheists" for which if there is "probably" no God, then we should celebrate. Celebrate what?

Indeed, Christianity is business, but so is everything else.

The collapse of global capitalism is not a dream; rather, global capitalism is a dream. Take a look at what is happening right now. It is all casino capitalism, with over $1.6 quadrillion in derivatives, money made up of numbers in accounts created by private banks through private credit. All that is solid melts into air....

Living like Memmonites is not a solution: it is what we will be forced to do in time. Don't believe me? Two years ago, I warned others of a severe credit crunch that would take place by the middle of '08, and no one believed me (I ascertained that from warnings by Roubini, the IMF, and the EIU). They are not making fun of me now.

What's next? Once the prime lending rates start resetting and '06 and '07 loans start maturing.... We have "recovery" because the Dow components were modified and mark-to-market accounting has been employed, making it appear that many losses are now gains. Thirty years of cooking the books now bearing fruition....

Yes, there is more than enough oil, it's just that we'll need more than a barrel of oil to draw out a barrel of oil. Much of the "sweet" juice is probably now gone, as seen in two-thirds of oil-producing countries peaking. The Saudis give the same numbers every year and refuse any external audits, but some of the did talk to Businessweek a year ago and it turns out they estimate a 30 percent drop in "sweet" production from Ghawar by next year. And this doesn't count increasing demand per capita as seen in growing middle classes in India, China, and in other parts of the world.

As for buying an extra bottle of water, well, I don't mind others making fun of my warnings, as I'm used to it. In any event, the more most are unprepared, the greater the chances that I will survive.

When you say "we survive" this or that age, I suppose you mean a few surviving, right?

Yes, we may find a cure for AIDS. Then again, that dream's been around for twenty years, right? And then viruses start mutating once more....

Of course, reason will prevail! We just call it "realpolitik." And we saw the effects of that in fifty years of "cold war." For more details, read Chalmers Johnson's Blowback. For an teaser, read

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20011015/johnson

Perhaps a better thing to do is not to compare our world with that of the Middle Ages but to what we expected throughout the twentieth century: isn't this supposed to be a space age? And yet two-thirds of the human race live on barely two dollars a day. If more do enter the middle class, then that will take a serious hit on resources. Just go back to what I said about the U.S. and oil consumption and think about it a second time: we'll need two to five years for that. China alone will within a decade require at least half of the world's resources just to maintain its growth rate.

I definitely agree with the view that religion is linked to poverty. I am writing to you from a Third World country where there is more than enough poverty and suffering. The problem is that affluence is built on technology and incredible consumption rates of resources, and this cannot be sustained. I'm sorry if I cannot give you all of the details as it is a very long story, but you might want to visit the Bartlett link above and this:

http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashc...r-17a-peak-oil

There are more, like www.dieoff.org , but I'll stop here. In any event, my point is that we are free to celebrate the demise of religion and the rise of atheism and cornucopianism, but I think the celebration will be short-lived.

Finally, to answer your question, I've no idea. All I know is that I agree with Father Barron: Sartre and Camus said the same thing about God as your did, but it gave them very little cause to celebrate. That was Father's point: what we usually assume to be realistic and sobering (i.e., the atheists' ad) was no different from that of a theist celebrating God's love and joyful times for all. And what we assume to be "delusional" and positive (i.e., Christianity) turns out to be the opposite, as seen in examples from the Old Testament and even your examples concerning Mother Teresa. In any event, I prefer Sartre and Camus' ad: Life is absurd.

This ties up readily with Roger Scruton's that human beings are both rational and irrational, and Bartlett's views, that we live in a no-win situation consisting of increasing demand from more people facing limited resources.

Re: Negativity defines me
 

I agree with Frankl's views, but regarding your last point, Niall Ferguson revealed in War of the World that much of the conflict throughout the twentienth century involved not religion but ethnicity and realpolitik. In fact, religion may have been only one of many tools employed in such conflict.

You might also want to look at Ferguson's other book Ascent of Money, which shows the ethereal global capitalist world that we live in. If you want a short version of it, take a look at the reverse pyramid chart at the bottom of this page:

http://www.runtogold.com/

Notice that most of our wealth consists not of physical assets or even precious metals or even paper bills and coins but numbers in accounts created by corporations in an endless show of side bets called "derivatives". If we consider Marxism and capitalism as secular religions then this may be our greatest religion yet: one built on a dream of prosperity fashion by the reason of salvific technology.

Re: Negativity defines me
 

It's possible that while some ruled over their kingdoms of death, others exported them:

www.nsarchive.org

My view is that we had fifty years of realpolitik driven by political and economic advantages from military powers worldwide using weaker nations as pawns. And the current economic crisis which some believe will have a very severe and long term impact on most coupled with problems concerning commodity supplies (as seen in peak oil production in two-thirds of oil-producing countries) and demand destruction may make things worse. Such conclusions were made recently not only by the IMF but also by the UN.

In any event, I hope you don't mind if I share such negative views as the thread calls for it, and I completely agree with what you said about Christianity. For me, religion has not been a dominant force during the twentieth century, except if I consider Marxism and capitalism as secular religions (which I do).

Re: Negativity defines me
 

There is something about calling something The Most IMPORTANT Video You'll Ever See that makes me NOT want to watch it. :mad:

Re: Negativity defines me
 

I am tempted to celebrate the death of god indeed (since the day I burned my bible when I was 15). Now, I am 41, and I wonder why someone would celebrate the death of something (which is god) that never existed. Why? I ask myself. Would I celebrate the death of the Unicorns (that also never existed) later?

Re: Negativity defines me
 

The last 50 centuries, not merely the 20th century, have been dominated by realpolitics. It was only in the 20th century that technology allowed the forces of nations and ideologies to become effective enough to be applied globally. I have long thought that our ideas of "problems" and "solutions" is fundamentally wrong since every so-called solution always brings its own set ofnew problems. In much of the world religion stopped being a political factor after WWI. The horrors ruined the credibility of religion in our political lives. The two domineering forces that took the place of religion were Fascism and Communism. Much of the century was torn by conflicts against these to ploitical religions and the aftermath left the survivors (there are never any winners in warfare) became morally bankrupt. In this century the Islamic world is starting to face the problems of balkanization that the rest of us have been struggling with for decades now. Every little ethnic group, nation, political niche and faction, religious pull-away group, etc. is trying to get what they think of their rights. In the United States there is no longer any country. There are only special interest groups competing for resources. The rest of the world appears to be in the same situation.

Re: Negativity defines me
 

I've several versions of the Bible, but I read and use events from it for several reasons, much like Nietzsche, Camus, and others. Nietzsche, for example, had a wonderful contradictory view of God. In some cases, he would imply that God is dead because we killed Him and in others he would refer to Christianity as an incredible burden. And then there's his "Zarathustra" poem, which reminds me of Strauss, Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals, and the incredible opening scene of Kubrick's 2001. It is as if religion is deeply ingrained in us the same way as Poe's nocturnal nightmares and unicorns. That, by the way, was part of Scruton's point.

Perhaps one interesting reason why I read the Bible, and the King James version in particular, is the brilliant use of English in the translation. Clearly, Shakespeare, a giant himself, lived among giants.

There are more reasons, of course, including my interest in medieval studies, archetypes, and mythology, the fact that the Bible is a formidable record of works from different genres (from lamentations to narratives to letters to military histories to erotic poems) from a timespan ranging hundreds of years and involving various cultures (Hebrew, Roman, Greek, Babylonian, Egyptian, etc.), and that, whether we like it or not, has had a significant impact on Western intellectual thought and art, whether it's Dante's magnificent Commedia or Bergman's Seventh Seal. Those who agree will be pleased to note, for example, that this is a triumvirate year for classical music listeners: it is the 250th death anniversary of Handel, the 200th death anniversary of Haydn, and the 200th birth anniversary of Mendelssohn. Messiah + The Creation + Elijah?! Bring it on, oratorio homeboys!

Finally, if there's one reason why I still read the Bible, it would be because of the topic of this thread: it is a very "negative" set of books. True, there are events where one can fly as if he is reading passages from Blake or Milton's Paradise Lost, but Father Barron is right: there are many events that modern readers used to Camus and Sartre will immediately recognize, from the story of Job to the Lamentations. And that creates a problem, for we usually assume that Christians are happy and optimistic because God will save them. But if we follow Nietzsche's lead and Father Barron's argument, then we realize that much of Christianity is based on despair, bleakness, and sadness. As much as we want to think that religion is typified by the wealthy in industrialized countries, we have to accept the fact that most people are poor and live in developing countries. Jesus in these countries is a little child with his mother Mary or the man on the Cross, and Christianity is not Easter but Good Friday and Black Saturday.

Should we be surprised that in such a world we are forced to look at what is beyond, whether it's the Bible or folk belief or contemporary short stories or Dante or Bergman? And if we assume that the very industrialization that has kept us afloat in a ambiotic fluid of secular humanism, one that was in some ways initiated by the mighty Petrarch and has lasted so long amidst growing prosperity and capitalization, will not last, then what happens next?

Re: Negativity defines me
 

I don't own a copy of the Bible, and haven't done so for more than twenty years. Quite a few versions passed through my hands, but failed to remain with me. At one stage, I had a feeling that the book didn't wish me to own it. The last copy I had was one I picked up in a junk shop in Leicester. It was the same edition as the one we'd had at school (with numerous line drawings, some which had fascinated me as a child). When I got it home, I found to my astonishment that it bore the stamp of the church my mother attended in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex. I felt that I couldn't retain it, and passed it on to my parents for return to its rightful owner. One odd aspect is that I knew the edition from school, rather than the church, and had no idea that the latter owned copies of this edition. Moreover, both church and school are about 130 miles from the junk shop in which I found the Bible. I suspect that Americans will think that 130 miles is no great distance. But, from an English perspective, it's a very long way. And that particular 130 miles has a very large population. Moreover, Leicester is not a town to much attract visitors. My reaction was to think "I'm not meant to keep a copy of the Bible", and I haven't messed with the book since. I'm very happy without a Bible, and am now pleased to have no copy.