Ronald Beiner and his book "Dangerous Minds"

[Immanuel Can]

God's existence cannot be known within the system of knowledge in which you desire to place it (to force it really). It is not comparable to many other different epistemological tenets that could be amenable to your proof.

What's your basis for saying so?

You are mixing categories. The very solid idea of 'positive knowledge' runs through all science. Our world can be know and described through 'positive knowledge claims'. There, proof can be said to exist.

This is a common error, so I can't be terribly surprised to see it here.

No, science does not "prove." People sometimes talk that way, but they are being imprecise in their language, or possibly epistemologically and scientifically naive. It's only colloquially that anybody can ever say, "Science proves X." What they can say is "Science suggests or indicates that probably X." That isn't really a controversial view among philosophers of science.

Science is empirical, which means it deals with the real world, through tests that lead to probability calculations. It does not have any "proofs." Proofs are for mathematics and other such closed symbol systems. Science is great for reducing improbabilities -- for turning from guesses and mere traditions to high-percentage estimates: but it does not issue in conclusive proof. When speaking precisely, we should say that real science doesn't even pretend to do that.

But this does not apply in the same way to the being of God, nor even of God and His effects.

This is where we perhaps have the real divergence of opinions: you're suggesting God cannot be in the real (empirical) world. I'm saying He can. He will never be only in the empirical world, because He's always transcendent too; but he's not incapable of being in the empirical world. In fact, by definition as a Christian, I believe God did just that.

To illustrate, the claim "A man named Jesus lived" is an empirical and historical claim: that means it is amenable to tests of evidence. (And, of course, no credible historian today doubts it is at least true, based on the preponderance of evidence.) But equally, and likewise, "He rose from the dead" is an empirical claim positing the happening of a miraculous event: and the right way to evaluate it is likewise empirical and historical -- if He did, He did; if not, then not.

That's very straightforward, and as a method, differs not at all from what you do when you ask yourself, "Did I remember to brush my teeth this morning?" You're not absolutely sure, but you reassure yourself by means of the evidence: "My teeth are white, my breath is slightly minty, and my toothbrush is still damp..." But you just can't be 100% sure...

It is another -- and a radically different -- epistemological domain.

Those claims aren't. They are in the same domain.

This seems to me so simple. Yet I gather that you will not be able to agree.

That puzzles me.

Well, honestly, I would be "able" if I thought it were true. I happen to think that it's far from "simple,"(if it were, everyone would already know it) and actually, in the final analysis, not true.

Your other declarations about the majesty and genius of the world (as proof of a designer) move me to understand such. But at the same time (and this is important) if I based my comprehension of God on the material, physical and biological world I would define a very different sort of God!

That's possible. But "different" in what way?

...the contrast between a god-of-nature and the Christian God.

Yes, this is what I'm asking about.

Are you suggesting that I would be arguing that we "read" nature, and deduce from it the nature of God? I'm not.

But are you suggesting that I'm arguing that we can look at the evidence that nature had an original Designer, and deduce from it that a Designer plausibly exists? I certainly am.

[Alizia]

"Science proves X." What they can say is "Science suggests or indicates that probably X." That isn't really a controversial view among philosophers of science.

Science is empirical, which means it deals with the real world, through tests that lead to probability calculations. It does not have any "proofs." Proofs are for mathematics and other such closed symbol systems. Science is great for reducing improbabilities -- for turning from guesses and mere traditions to high-percentage estimates: but it does not issue in conclusive proof. When speaking precisely, we should say that real science doesn't even pretend to do that.

I understand your point. I used 'proof' in a convenient, popular sense.

In any case the essence is here. You 'suggest' that God exists. You present it as improbable that God does not exist. You refer to the wonders of the natural world. And you refer to your own experience. You might also refer to 'God's word (scripture).

You suggest it as possible, or even probable, that God exists and you further offer specific characteristics and descriptions of God as you presume Him to operate in the world. But you cannot, as far as I know, bring an unbeliever to belief.

Yet you could offer a demonstration of some scientific principle that would certainly convince. Thus, multitudes of people are convinced by such. And multitudes remain skeptical about all manner of different claims about spiritual or theological truths. They say: you have not convinced me.

You are on a different ground as a believer. If science can only suggest some things that we would consider to be definite (proven shall I say), you can only make appeals to a person's faith-self and hope that they arrive at a conclusion such as yours.

Theology is not empirical. It mirrors the sort of Aristotelian thinking in its presentations, this is true, but it can only suggest that God exists and cannot demonstrate that God exists. The person who comes into belief, arrives there because of a will to believe or a convincing event of some sort or other, or some inner motion.

[Alizia]

So, are you a Nietzschean yet?

[Alizia]

...you're suggesting God cannot be in the real (empirical) world. I'm saying He can. He will never be only in the empirical world, because He's always transcendent too; but he's not incapable of being in the empirical world. In fact, by definition as a Christian, I believe God did just that.

No, I am not saying that. God is real for believers, that much I grant. He is not real, and is imperceptible, to those who don't or who can't 'believe'. This is simply stating a fact!

And there are various levels: those who believe because they were born in such belief, or more or less decided on it. Sometimes this level of belief is very shallow. They may not even be 'spiritual' people or live in and out of their faith-commitment (they may have very little comprehension of what this is or should be). Yet they declare themselves believers.

Others, at another extreme, seem to have come to their faith through some profound inner experience, or perhaps an outer experience combined with an inner one.

Those who develop intuitive or sensitive qualities tend to be the ones who are capable of -- should you permit this phrasing -- understanding what transcendental being means. It is an interior affair.

While I cannot say that only intelligent persons are capable of understanding God and the transcendent at this level, I can say that certain 'brutish' persons often cannot seem to. Yet brutish persons have become (historically speaking) saintly. The inner commitment though, according to my understanding, is crucial. Indispensable. And it is when the 'relationship' is established, on an inner place, that one then refers to 'discipleship'.

[Immanuel Can]

In any case the essence is here. You 'suggest' that God exists. You present it as improbable that God does not exist. You refer to the wonders of the natural world. And you refer to your own experience. You might also refer to 'God's word (scripture).

You missed the most important one. Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

But you cannot, as far as I know, bring an unbeliever to belief.

Nobody human can.

Yet many come all the time. Did you not already mention that Christianity is the fastest growing religion in the world, and primarily not by culture or by reproduction, but by conversion. If an unbeliever could not come to belief, then I wonder how that would be happening, don't you?

But as it is, my own experience tells me it's untrue. Once, I did not believe. Now I do.

Yet you could offer a demonstration of some scientific principle that would certainly convince.

I don't think it would. I think people have an amazing ability to avoid the conclusions to which they are reluctant to arrive. Jesus Himself said that the grandest of miracles would not make an unwilling person believe: as he put it, "they will not believe even if a man rises from the dead." That's pretty extreme.

You see, it's not the head that needs the convincing: it's the heart that has to be desiring to know. And full-headedness has never been a cure for hard-heartedness.

You are on a different ground as a believer. If science can only suggest some things that we would consider to be definite (proven shall I say), you can only make appeals to a person's faith-self and hope that they arrive at a conclusion such as yours.

No, that's not so. I can make reference to the evidence, to the arguments and to the reasons. But what I can't do is make somebody who's decided not to see to change his mind. That's beyond my personal power. For that, it takes nothing less than an act of God.

Theology is not empirical. It mirrors the sort of Aristotelian thinking in its presentations,

Do you mean in regard to Aristotle's logical fundamentals? Then yes, that's true. But if you mean other aspects of Aristotle, such as ethics, those are not held by all theologies. In theology, the whole Aristotelian package would only really be supported by the disciples of Aquinas.

Reason is a very good thing, in theology. In fact, it's basic. But reason can take a person to the point at which they ought to believe. But it cannot make them believe. Human will is stronger than that.

The person who comes into belief, arrives there because of a will to believe or a convincing event of some sort or other, or some inner motion.

The Bible says, by a rebirth that comes from God...by nothing less. Even in the inner mind of men and women, there are not sufficient resources to make that kind of change. People can refuse anything...unless the heart is changed.

That's why, if a person wants to know God, I don't just try to 'bat down' all their intellectual objections, and then assume they'll be convinced. I try to encourage the person to open his or her mind to the possibility of God, and then to investigate personally. That fusion of principled searching, theological seeking with openness, plus personal existential experience of God, is a very powerful combination.

And if that is not a sufficient appeal to the individual, then there really is no more to say. Such a person has made his mind up. I wish him well, though I know he will not be happy in the end. But what can one do?

[Alizia]

Why, may I ask, are you arguing against me when I am trying to explain 'what is going on' in the sense of 'what happened'?

[Dubious]

What you're saying is N is guilty simply by virtue of how he was used.

No. I'm saying he's guilty of counselling amorality, which opens the door to evil. And I'm suggesting that his philosophy of the Superman, his hatred of Jews, and his removal of moral restraints proved very useful to the Nazi cause. That's all.

You and your kind remain as vestiges, leftovers from one of the most hypocritical periods the West has ever known. There would have been far more advancement if this Jewish preacher once crucified and likely left to rot on the cross before being thrown into the local landfill had been proclaimed dead once and for all; instead another Jewish preacher, a far better one, was pounded into enlightenment by some kind of seizure, probably epileptic, consequently resurrecting a has-been into a universal messiah for all to acknowledge.

And so Christianity was born as false as its beginning, poisoning anything it touched including its anathematization of the Jews as being of that tribe who murdered Jesus. They suffered the consequences Christianity had wrought upon them throughout its entire long period reaching its crescendo in the Holocaust. Is there a more disgusting story ever told! It's intensely ironic that the Jews who literally created Christianity also created the vehicle for their near annihilation! It puts a completely new spin on "what goes around, comes around"!

Your statement regarding N's supposed hatred of Jews simply revolves around this...
Hitler and the Nazis hated Jews but loved Nietzsche (which is debatable), ergo, Nietzsche must have hated Jews as well, period! Who needs more proof than that in spite of all the counter-proof available! If there are more chapters following this conclusion, simply remove them!

So simple! All you need do is avoid any kind of critique - of which there's an abundance - which proclaims the exact opposite. It's actually a very "Christian" thing to do. For Christians, as for Muslims, truth is forever subservient to doctrine but hypocritically proclaimed as Truth. What in fact was true but unfavorable could be easily subrogated and camouflaged under a heap of doctrinal infallibilities.

So who really hated the Jews? Nietzsche was a critic on just about everything. His entire century was one for rethinking and reevaluating. He was one who could figuratively stand in the middle of a very large crowd surrounded by various denominations and nationalities and yell from the top of his lungs, "is there anyone here I haven't yet insulted?" There were very few he had complete respect for; one of the exceptions was Ralph Waldo Emerson; though not exactly overlapping, they had a lot in common.

Had N lived during the 1930's, no doubt he would have been among the first of many Germans to grace a concentration camp based on his outspoken anti-antisemitism and his vituperations against the Germans which really amounted to hyperbole it was so over-the-top! There was nothing in Nietzsche that could be helpful to the Nazis except their deliberate distortions of his Ubermensch conception which you clearly have in common with them. The more intelligent among the Nazis understood this completely.

You keep repeating the same lies year after year that Nietzsche hated Jews, etc., when, in truth, it was Christianity who did the hating and furthermore did everything they could to prove it. Yet it was N who despised Christianity and NOT the Jews! What an inversion!

Your hatred of Nietzsche is so excessive you can't stop lying about him! WHY?? Could it be he understood Christianity all too well and its incarnate Will to Power - which few institutions could rival - during its long reign of duplicitous morals he was so intent on exposing?

It seems your belief system disallows you to be honest even on this single point that Nietzsche, as confirmed in his own words and overtly stated by many others, never hated the Jews. He criticized with occasional severity and even vulgarity, as he did with everyone, especially Germans, while making absolutely clear how much he despised both anti-Semites and antisemitism, his sister included...and yet you keep lying? I imagine it could only be for a good cause. It must be fulfilling to know there are still those like yourself upholding the Christian ethic.

The following tells the opposite to your tale of perennial prejudice toward Nietzsche. It's not even necessary to read, just listen and know that N's description of Jews in Europe is completely opposite to your description of him.

http://www.renegadetribune.com/nietzsch ... -the-jews/

Would it be unfair to ask who the hateful bastard really is?

[Alizia]

There are different directions this conversation can go. For example:

Did you not already mention that Christianity is the fastest growing religion in the world, and primarily not by culture or by reproduction, but by conversion. If an unbeliever could not come to belief, then I wonder how that would be happening, don't you?

I do not think I said that it is the fastest growing -- it is not impossible that Islam is growing as fast or faster -- but one important aspect of this is that it is Pentecostalism which is the high-growth Christian form. The second aspect is that the major growth areas are Africa and Latin America (South America), and then Asia. I have walked by Pentecostal churches -- never entered one -- and if I were asked to be honest I would say that the religious expression is disconcerting.

I read most of The Next Christendom : The Coming of Global Christianity and, yes, I think it could be a 'good thing'. I hope it is a good thing. But I must confess that I am not a big fan of enthusiastic religion. It seems to me to mimic the use of drugs. I am neither a fan of Hollywood-style emotionalism. It seems to have a correspondence to different popular and (so-called) escapist entertainments. I do not know how to express it so I may say it in imperfect terms. At the same time I am not particularly comfortable or 'happy' (not sure how to state it) that Islamic fundamentalist forms are gaining ground. I am not sure what I think about 'fundamentalism' in general. So, Christian fundamentalism and Islamic fundamentalism are growing at fantastic rates. Not sure if it is completely and absolutely a 'good'. (But, I have read sort of ethnographic studies of the progress of Protestant forms (likely Charismatic) among impoverished people in Brazil who were practitioners of the 'voodoo-type' African religions. Turning to Christianity was a tremendous improvement in the quality of their lives.)

I have wondered: What is in it for these people? (Those that I observed in their Pentecostal church: yelling, sometimes screaming, in high agitation, jumping and dancing, not to mention the unpleasant and jarring music and that they don't sing in tune!) I did make an effort to visit another sort of Church that I believe was 'Charismatic'. If you asked me to be honest I would say that in some ways it looked to me like a kind of shared ritualistic madness. Well, madness is a bit strong. I honestly do not know what to make of it.

Therefore, the fact that something 'grows' or 'grows wildly' is not, I don't think, an indication that it is good or desired (not necessarily). So, the question could be: Why are such strange forms of Christian observation -- pseudo-Christianity? -- developing.

And this is again why I started this thread: to ask questions about the appropriate and proper (and 'good') direction for civilization to take. That is, European civilization in crisis. In a crisis of nihilism if we believe Nietzsche. I do not know if you would be a very cooperative participant in a somewhat speculative conversation on this theme: you have quite fixed ideas it seems to me. (I am not complaining however, you have your reasons).

You see, it's not the head that needs the convincing: it's the heart that has to be desiring to know. And full-headedness has never been a cure for hard-heartedness.

While I understand what you are getting at, I find this too reductive. It depends in my view how you define 'heart'. I do not see the 'heart' as being essentially different from the mind: they are part of consciousness and intelligence (in the Catholic sense of the word). Surely the mind can deceive. But so can the heart. The real essence of the question has to do with alignment between all the different parts of the human being. But, as we have seen, I tend to conceive of religion, in the best possible expression of it, as something that ennobles life. I am not sure if ennobling life is high on your list.

That's why, if a person wants to know God, I don't just try to 'bat down' all their intellectual objections, and then assume they'll be convinced. I try to encourage the person to open his or her mind to the possibility of God, and then to investigate personally. That fusion of principled searching, theological seeking with openness, plus personal existential experience of God, is a very powerful combination.

I think I would agree with this, largely.

The Bible says, by a rebirth that comes from God... by nothing less. Even in the inner mind of men and women, there are not sufficient resources to make that kind of change. People can refuse anything... unless the heart is changed.

That is why I chose the term 'inner motion'.

I might have to resist this locution if, for example, it was expressed by an enthusiastic charismatic who was attempting to pull me into some sort of worship that would not seem proper to me. Do you see what I mean? They might use the same or similar language. There is such a thing as 'Christian fanaticism', don't you think? So, I would express what you have said in slightly modified form. But the essence of it is sound, I think.

[-1-]

Did you not already mention that Christianity is the fastest growing religion in the world, and primarily not by culture or by reproduction, but by conversion. If an unbeliever could not come to belief, then I wonder how that would be happening, don't you?

Well, Islam is the fastest-growing religion. But even Islam's spread is dwarfed by the enlightenment of the peoples, who turn to atheism.

God is for those who need -- literally need, not just a figure of speech -- guidance for those things that they can't understand or can't control. Therefore religions had their hay day until such time that most things that the everyman wonders about are known how they work and are under control.

There are two vestiges of strong faith: those lands where the main occupation and the main source of wealth is agriculture; they depend on the weather, which can't be controlled, so obviously they need god.

The other vestige is the United States, which doggonely sticks to out-dated, backwards, and immoral Christian values. This has several reasons why it is so; one is the dumbing of the masses by restricting educational curricula, and not demanding individual thought or inquiring mind. The other is the devastating effect of no public free medicare. A person gets sick and bang the entire family goes down the tube, they will live in cardboard boxes and eat out of trashcans, whereas before they drove Fords, lived in big houses, and went on family vacations.

So the unprotected damage which is not under control of the individual, that is, his or her health, is the "uncertainty" factor that makes people go to church and fervently pray to god.

No, the connection is not trivial or anywhere apparent. People love god because they need to be loved back. Eventually the line of (subconscious) reasoning by the followers of the American gods is "god loves me, he won't let any harm come to me."

A bit like in communist Russia, during the Stalin-era. They came at night to take the neighbour away... you thought well, maybe the neighbour was not as pure and not as guilt-free a communist as you had thought. But two months later they came for you; and you had to realize that the drummed up charges were untrue and likely so for all your neighbours who had been taken before you were.

Same with sickness and religion-worship in the USA. The sickness comes and takes the neighbour away... he loses his home, or she loses all she has ever had, and dies in the gutter miserably, forgotten, starving and hurting. But it's not YOU. So you figure that your god loves you, but your god did not love your neighbour who died sick, because god abandoned his care for the neighbour.

This goes on until YOU need major medical help to survive, let alone live a normal life. Then you realize that your lifetime's worth of prayers did diddly squat. You may even turn atheist in your sudden hatred for your god.

[-1-]

So, Christian fundamentalism and Islamic fundamentalism are growing at fantastic rates.

That's right. Both camps are known to buy guns, and shoot people who do not subscribe to their faiths, or certain tenets of their faiths (such as abortion clinic doctors).

Mark my words: 100% of mass murders and serial murders in the United States for which the murderer has been brought to justice, have been committed by fundamentalist Christians.

Granted, fewer murders have been committed by these Christians than by Stalin. That is true. Except people tend to forget, very conveniently, the fact that Stalin was a Christian, too... I read on the pages of these forums that he was the head of several Russian Orthodox churches, and he was the dignitary of many a religious org.

So basically you were right. The fanatic religious are increasing their numbers, and they are the most vicious killers mankind got right now.

"Every Christian Lion-Hearted Man Will Show You."

[Immanuel Can]

Why, may I ask, are you arguing against me when I am trying to explain 'what is going on' in the sense of 'what happened'?

It's not what happened. That's why. It's what Nietzsche wrongly thought was destined to happen. But it didn't.

Note that in The Madman's Tale, the madman throws down his lamp, and complains, "I have come too early..." The things he predicts haven't happened yet. He just expected them to. It was a prophecy, not an observation of fact.

But as it turns out, the situation of faith was much more complex than Nietzsche ever understood. Moreover, he was susceptible to the modernistic hubris of thinking modernity was some kind of "last phase" of how things were going to turn out to be, or some irreversible direction. So his answer turned out to be simplistic, and wrong -- Atheists are still no more than 4% of the population, and many postmodern people have turned to a wide variety of religious experiences. Meanwhile, religion continues to grow internationally, and faith in modernity is collapsing under the weight of the horrors it has produced in the 20th Century, and under the heels of postmodern criticism.

Nietzsche foresaw none of that.

He was wrong all kinds of ways. What he prophesied would be just isn't "what happened." It's not something one has to argue: one just has to know what happened.

[Immanuel Can]

There are different directions this conversation can go. For example:

Did you not already mention that Christianity is the fastest growing religion in the world, and primarily not by culture or by reproduction, but by conversion. If an unbeliever could not come to belief, then I wonder how that would be happening, don't you?

I do not think I said that it is the fastest growing -- it is not impossible that Islam is growing as fast or faster.

Islam is not attractive to most of the world. Where it has cultural history, and among people who share that, it has some expansive power. But it's not a winning option for conversion, if you've got just about any other alternative.

I read most of The Next Christendom : The Coming of Global Christianity

I read it all, and took a course on the subject. The book's on my shelf.

But I must confess that I am not a big fan of enthusiastic religion.

If by "enthusiastic," you mean "too emotional," I agree with you. But enthusiasts are not the last stage of development. Congregations tend to become more settled and cerebral as societies develop.

One good thing you can say about the Pentecostals is that they are mostly kind-hearted enthusiasts. They aren't out blowing people up or even closeting themselves in some imperious religious bubble and letting the world go to Hell in a handcart. They're pretty nice folks: quite generous, welcoming, honest and thoughtful. And though I don't share their practices or their Pentecostal theology, I give them respect for that. And I don't look down on them, even if I don't roll their way.

Christian fundamentalism and Islamic fundamentalism are growing at fantastic rates.

You're better to make the necessary distinction there. There are different kinds of "fundamental" practices. As I say, the Pentecostals have no jihads, no bombs, no shooters, no children marched into minefields, no female circumcision, no anti-semitism, no Sharia or any particular forced "laws" at all, and no rape gangs. That, I would say, argues for quite a distinction.

Not sure if it is completely and absolutely a 'good'. (But, I have read sort of ethnographic studies of the progress of Protestant forms (likely Charismatic) among impoverished people in Brazil who were practitioners of the 'voodoo-type' African religions. Turning to Christianity was a tremendous improvement in the quality of their lives.)

Have you read this? https://www.hopeinview.org/files/As_an_ ... Parris.pdf

Why are such strange forms of Christian observation -- pseudo-Christianity? -- developing.

An excellent question. There's "pseudo-" forms of all kinds of things developing right now. Look at Western "Buddhism," for example -- it is mostly an odd hybrid of Western self-indulgence with meditation practices for yuppies. Is that real Buddhism? It sure doesn't look like the stuff in Thailand. Or consider the "New Age" thing. What an odd one that is: crystals, spirit guides, "mindfulness," and all that stuff, but all for privileged Western tastes. Or the revival of Wicca, of pseudo-Celtic religious practices. Or technological Gnosticism and Extropianism...weird, weird stuff, all of it.

What's safe to say, I suppose, is there's a lot of interest in "spirituality" if we use that term to refer to an undifferentiated variety of things. People are certainly not all becoming indifferent to religiosity; they're just doing it differently. And yes, some of it is terribly odd.

...you have quite fixed ideas it seems to me. (I am not complaining however, you have your reasons).

Well, the old saying is "Universal tolerance is the virtue of a man without convictions." If you know anything at all, you're going to seem "closed minded" to somebody. But it might just mean you actually do know something.

You see, it's not the head that needs the convincing: it's the heart that has to be desiring to know. And full-headedness has never been a cure for hard-heartedness.

While I understand what you are getting at, I find this too reductive. It depends in my view how you define 'heart'. I do not see the 'heart' as being essentially different from the mind: they are part of consciousness and intelligence (in the Catholic sense of the word).

Well, I'm pointing to the kind of distinction Jonathan Haidt makes in his research. He doesn't use quite the same terms, but he argues that the rational faculties are not, for most people in most situations, decisive of what they believe. Most times, their emotional disposition leads the way, and their rational faculties look for reasons to back up the emotions' direction.

His book on that is a good read.

But, as we have seen, I tend to conceive of religion, in the best possible expression of it, as something that ennobles life. I am not sure if ennobling life is high on your list.

It would be, if I knew what you meant by "ennobling." You'd have to define what you think is "noble."

But what you say is certainly not what Nietzsche believed. He said the opposite: that religion, and Judaism and Christianity specifically, were things the weak illegitimately used to suppress the "will to power" of the strong, and to keep the übermensch from being über.

He had no place for religion. It didn't "ennoble" anyone, in his view.

The Bible says, by a rebirth that comes from God... by nothing less. Even in the inner mind of men and women, there are not sufficient resources to make that kind of change. People can refuse anything... unless the heart is changed.

That is why I chose the term 'inner motion'.

I might have to resist this locution if, for example, it was expressed by an enthusiastic charismatic who was attempting to pull me into some sort of worship that would not seem proper to me.

Well, you're safe on that score.

Do you see what I mean? They might use the same or similar language.

They might. There are legitimate and illegitimate uses of practically everything.

There is such a thing as 'Christian fanaticism', don't you think?

Yes. Maybe "snake handling," "charismatic healings" or "seeing visions." But such things are fairly rare, not political, and mostly harmless. Most Christians are quite sane, and really very nice.

Meanwhile, there are nutty forms of everything. And it's pretty obvious there are forms of Atheism that are worse than nutty or fanatical -- they're downright homicidal...and not a few of them. But we need not say more on that: the 20th Century already said all we could possibly say.

[surreptitious57]

even Islams spread is dwarfed by the enlightenment of the peoples who turn to atheism

God is for those who need - literally need not just a figure of speech - guidance for those things that they cant understand or cant control
religions had their hay day until such time that most things that the everyman wonders about are known how they work and are under control

This is completely false and demonstrably so too

Half the worlds population are either Muslim or Christian and there are almost a billion Hindus and a billion Buddhists
Religion has always been dominant in human civilisation and shows absolutely no sign of disappearing not even today
Atheism might be more popular than it has ever been but it is still insignificant compared to the great belief systems

[Alizia]

Half the worlds population are either Muslim or Christian and there are almost a billion Hindus and a billion Buddhists. Religion has always been dominant in human civilisation and shows absolutely no sign of disappearing not even today. Atheism might be more popular than it has ever been but it is still insignificant compared to the great belief systems.

A few things can be said about this. I have thought that the essential question here revolves around the need to 'define the world'. This obviously implies metaphysics and a great deal more. Let's take for example 'the Christian metaphysic'. And let us focus on the traditional Catholic metaphysics because some modern Christians have, to one degree or another, chosen not to focus on the traditional understanding.

Catholic/Christian metaphysics defines 'the world'. It defines what the world is, and what it is not and cannot be, and it defines how man came to this world and what he is to do, and not to do, here. The more the definition of this 'world' is worked out, and the more the believer internalizes it, the more able that person is to understand what 'savior' means, what 'redemption' is. This is why, earlier in this thread, I referred to the 'opportunity' offered by the advent of Jesus Christ as understood through traditional metaphysics. If the world is defined, as indeed it was in traditional Catholic metaphysics, as a dangerous region (dangerous because Earth was understood to be the cesspool of the Kosmos and plagued by dark forces -- spirits, entities, 'fallen angels') -- and if the soul is defined as a) existing and b) vulnerable, then the possibility of Grace as offered by the literal Son of God gathers its meaning.

Now, if we were to attempt to define what 'modernity' and the modernistic metaphysic offers to a person as a 'story', as a vision, as understanding of our existence here, what are its elements? To whom will one turn to get one's structure of definition? To Darwin? To scientific biologists? Modernity is, in this sense, anti-metaphysical or it proposes a strange non-metaphysics that it describes as 'reality'. Within that 'reality' there is, I suggest, neither meaning nor the possibility of meaning. What seems to happen is that while we come into a system: that of the human mind, consciousness and the 'library of definitions and understandings that man had developed', and these are the understructure of all of our higher notions -- of love, about beauty, even about 'goodness', and really about all different categories where 'meaning' resides -- we now face a 'scientistic materialistic' re-description of the world that does away (in fact) with the structures on which those values were built.

It seems to me that people cannot -- perhaps they simply will not -- live in such a world. Or, to describe it in Nietzschean terms, that 'world' is in essence the world of nihilism: a cold world that causes the spirit of man to grow cold.

I understand the condition of nihilism to be a condition of 'desperation'. Desperation implies lack of 'hope' but it also tends to indicate the sort of desperate acts that a person without hope is led to. In desperation, and in order to 'recover meaning' and also 'value', people will tend to grab anything. Of course one could quote Chesterton:

“When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.”

[Immanuel Can]

I understand the condition of nihilism to be a condition of 'desperation'. Desperation implies lack of 'hope' but it also tends to indicate the sort of desperate acts that a person without hope is led to. In desperation, and in order to 'recover meaning' and also 'value', people will tend to grab anything. Of course one could quote Chesterton:

“When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.”

Well, quite. Good old Chesterton.

And maybe that explains the present day flowering of many and weird "spiritualities." People will "believe in anything." But it also explains why many are leaning to Nihilism, perhaps more out of emptiness and despair than of will.

Not that nobody sees hope in Nihilism, ironically. Nietzsche thought that his preferred form of Nihilism was harsh, but not for everybody. In some ways, it was actually a doorway...a doorway to a kind of unrestricted freedom of action. It wasn't going to create a "nice" place, it was going to be a hostile world of raw power. The weak would hate it. Judeo-Christians would condemn it, though without any real power: God is dead, he said, and morality was a game for weaklings (He would call Judeo-Christianity "the real Nihilism," because he said it required us to suppress the will to power, the essential life force, as he saw it). Women also would not do well -- Nietzsche had no "überfraus." He said, "You go to women? Take the whip." And minorities and the underprivileged would not like it, because their power of moral persuasion, their only real strength, which really depends on appeals to Judeo-Christian ethics of mercy and pity, would be gone. But the weak, he thought, are condemned purely by being the weak; and strength justifies itself.

On balance, the übermensch were going to get the best deal out of it, because of their moving "beyond good and evil": so not everybody was going to be a loser in that game.

What a wonderful world.