Christianity has failed

[71 dB]

What you miss in this post and your newer one, is the sense of grandeur, majesty, glory and transcendence that human beings have striven to emulate in art, architecture and music. Think of the great cathedrals, the frescos of Michelangelo, the B minor Mass of Bach, the deeply religious Requiems of various composers and so much more. Only materialists would fail to understand the informing spirit that permeates these works and in turn positively affecting the rest of Western culture. Really too bad, I'd say.

You are completely mistaken if you think you need religion to have sense of grandeur. Sorry, you religious people are not special, only delusional. Art is art. Sometimes inspired by religious feelings, sometimes be something else. As an atheist I get a lot of "kicks" of Bach's church music without any religious delusions, because art is art.

CERN's Large Hadron Collider is a cathedral of the 21st century.

[zamyrabyrd]

CERN's Large Hadron Collider is a cathedral of the 21st century.

A particle accelerator? You got to be kidding! I was talking about spirit that doesn't have to be religious in the conventional sense, can be awe of nature, space, the universe...

[drogulus]

A particle accelerator? You got to be kidding! I was talking about spirit that doesn't have to be religious in the conventional sense, can be awe of nature, space, the universe...

     Richard Dawkins talks about that. It would be truly incongruous to think that scientists and phiosophers would be blind to the significance of their explorations, as though we needed to tell them. Dawkins wrote a book about it, Unweaving The Rainbow. I quote:

"The fact that we slowly apprehend our world, rather than suddenly discover it, should not subtract from its wonder."

"In very different ways, the possibility that the universe is teeming with life, and the opposite possibility that we are totally alone, are equally exciting. Either way, the urge to know more about the universe seems to me irresistible, and I cannot imagine that anybody of truly poetic sensibility could disagree."

     The myth of materialists "not getting it" is too useful to be abandoned. It should not be given a scintilla of respect.

[Karl Henning]

     Richard Dawkins talks about that. It would be truly incongruous to think that scientists and phiosophers would be blind to the significance of their explorations, as though we needed to tell them. Dawkins wrote a book about it, Unweaving The Rainbow. I quote:

"The fact that we slowly apprehend our world, rather than suddenly discover it, should not subtract from its wonder."

"In very different ways, the possibility that the universe is teeming with life, and the opposite possibility that we are totally alone, are equally exciting. Either way, the urge to know more about the universe seems to me irresistible, and I cannot imagine that anybody of truly poetic sensibility could disagree."

That's beautiful.

[drogulus]

     

     Early religion didn't make much of a god as something that exists. An existence concept is a bit like zero, an abstraction that has use. I'm not 69 years old and a guitar player and exist, at least not quite. David Hume thought entities were the discoverable properties bundled and existing was nothing above that. Gods were what they were taken to do, no language was there for them to also exist. In philosophy it's said by somebody important that naming a thing doesn't instantiate it. Confusion on that score could instantiate all kinds of abstractions that now have to be real, too. Now we can have a devil, lucky us!

    "In a world" where a thing is something being done there are no tools to separate out what's real like we do now. That hadn't happened yet. When we get to the Greeks and Protagoras we finally reach the concept that the systematically unknowable doesn't exist, meaning as I take it that nothing isn't a kind of something, and that what is unknowable can't have an existence claim attached to it. Even a hypothetical has to have discoverable properties or it's senseless.

[Karl Henning]

Also:

Hundreds of accused priests are listed in Pennsylvania report on Catholic Church sex abuse

[Holden]

Boris Yellnikoff: I didn't jump on you. It's not the idea behind Christianity I'm faulting, or Judaism, or any religion. It's the professionals who've made it into corporate business. There's big money in the god racket, big money.

Which is the point I was making by mentioning televangelism. But then again, there has always been big, big money in the god racket.

[zamyrabyrd]

The myth of materialists "not getting it" is too useful to be abandoned. It should not be given a scintilla of respect.

I was talking about the emotionally flattened, of which materialism is usually a big factor.

[Marc]

This thread made me remember of this quote from "Whatever Works" (Woody Allen film, 2009)

Boris Yellnikoff: I didn't jump on you. It's not the idea behind Christianity I'm faulting, or Judaism, or any religion. It's the professionals who've made it into corporate business. There's big money in the god racket, big money.

Boris Yellnikoff is played by Larry David.

Most, if not all, religions contain some pretty good wisdom.  However, the involvement of imperfect men and hierarchical institutions leads inevitably to corruption. Anyone who tries can be spiritual without joining an institutionalized religion.

Thanks.
I needed that.

[vandermolen]

This thread made me remember of this quote from "Whatever Works" (Woody Allen film, 2009)

Boris Yellnikoff: I didn't jump on you. It's not the idea behind Christianity I'm faulting, or Judaism, or any religion. It's the professionals who've made it into corporate business. There's big money in the god racket, big money.

Boris Yellnikoff is played by Larry David.

Most, if not all, religions contain some pretty good wisdom.  However, the involvement of imperfect men and hierarchical institutions leads inevitably to corruption.  Anyone who tries can be spiritual without joining an institutionalized religion.

I agree with this too.

[Karl Henning]

This thread made me remember of this quote from "Whatever Works" (Woody Allen film, 2009)

Boris Yellnikoff: I didn't jump on you. It's not the idea behind Christianity I'm faulting, or Judaism, or any religion. It's the professionals who've made it into corporate business. There's big money in the god racket, big money.

Boris Yellnikoff is played by Larry David.

Most, if not all, religions contain some pretty good wisdom.  However, the involvement of imperfect men and hierarchical institutions leads inevitably to corruption.  Anyone who tries can be spiritual without joining an institutionalized religion.

Aye.  Wisdom!

[71 dB]

I was talking about the emotionally flattened, of which materialism is usually a big factor.

One could say prosperity preachers are the most materialistic of them all...

[MN Dave]

Religion is a failure, but I don't know how you'd control the people without it.

(Humanity has failed.)

[Karl Henning]

Religion is a failure, but I don't know how you'd control the people without it.

As discussed here, part of the problem is the scoundrels who control the people with it.

[MN Dave]

As discussed here, part of the problem is the scoundrels who control the people with it.

See my modified post. Another part of the problem is belief in supernatural beings.

[drogulus]

I was talking about the emotionally flattened, of which materialism is usually a big factor.

     You are using the word in the mundane sense that doesn't apply to this discussion. Materialism is about a single explanatory path that gets you from physics to me saying this. It meets the maximum standards of coherence and correspondence ever devised. That's all you can get, and you have to get all you can.

[71 dB]

Religion is a failure, but I don't know how you'd control the people without it.

How about secular laws?

[relm1]

Also:

Hundreds of accused priests are listed in Pennsylvania report on Catholic Church sex abuse

Ouch..some of the cruelest acts ever performed on another innocent person.  Very sad.

[Karl Henning]

Ouch..some of the cruelest acts ever performed on another innocent person.  Very sad.

It's almost as if — as a class — the priests themselves do not understand the concepts of sin and disgrace.

[relm1]

Also:

Hundreds of accused priests are listed in Pennsylvania report on Catholic Church sex abuse

The true depth of the evil there is staggering and shameful.

In Erie, a 7-year-old boy was sexually abused by a priest who then told him he should go to confession and confess his "sins" to that same priest.

Another boy was repeatedly raped from ages 13 to 15 by a priest who bore down so hard on the boy's back that it caused severe spine injuries. He became addicted to painkillers and later died of an overdose.

One victim in Pittsburgh was forced to pose naked as Christ on the cross while priests photographed him with a Polaroid camera. Priests gave the boy and others gold cross necklaces to mark them as being "groomed" for abuse.