I agree wholeheartedly. Although I am not a Christian, I am a theist who is quite aghast at the arrogance of many public atheists and their haughty dismissals of Christianity as a benighted, outworn superstition. It is though they have achieved a kind of secularist orthodoxy. Their own “faith” in their soulless materialism is, at bottom, nothing more than the assertion of their obstinate and concupiscent wills. There is nothing in Thomas’s Catholicism that is offensive to reason, and there is nothing in reason that demands atheism. Agnosticism is the most honest position that anyone who relies upon reason alone and cannot in conscience submit his intelligence to the apparently supernatural claims of religious belief can uphold.

It is the sign of his complacent arrogance and neo-orthodoxy that the modern atheist will no longer intelligently dispute a theist but insists upon merely dismissing him. The poignant irony is that for many years materialist atheist and other leftists have bewailed as repression the bald dismissal of their dissents; but now that they are in the saddle, they ride quite roughly over those of us who do not believe that Marx, Darwin, and Freud have overturned 3000 years of the wisdom bequeathed by Athens and Jerusalem. Their demigod Nietsche, like the devil, can speak a certain portion of truth when it serves his purpose: so many of the actions of men *are* driven by the will to dominate and by the exercise raw, self-aggrandizing power. The modern clerisy of atheists gesticulate premierely among them.

“Believe in God” vs. “believe in a god” as options for a non-theist to use in referring to the belief under consideration (regarding god/God).

The former assumes more than respect for religion and theism. It assumes that the object — “God” — exists. To phrase it so this is more clear: “[Christians] believe in God[, that created the universe and mankind.]”

Where, the latter simply refrains from that assumption, while also not showing disrespect. So: “[Christians] believe in a god[, that may have created the universe and mankind].”

Just an observation.

Thrasymachus put me on to some of Robert L. Kocher’s work. He is an atheist, but I think he makes a lot of sense and is right on point with the following:

“To some extent the Founders may have privately drifted away from the necessity for absolute formal religion and seen the value of prudent self discipline for its own sake. But they saw religion, as it was then constituted, as a useful guide to leading a rational disciplined life. Over many years I have come to the conclusion rational religion and competent psychotherapy, even atheistic psychotherapy, converge into fundamental agreement on personal and social behavioral standards. Conversely, corrupt religion and incompetent psychotherapy agree in advocating destructive standards.”
http://freedom.orlingrabbe.com/lfetimes/psycho_axis.htm

“There are people who believe rejection of God or rejection of religion confers unlimited license for them to do whatever it is they want to do that religion prohibits or makes inconvenient. Hence, atheism has come to have a dishonest appeal. It is believed that if we do away with God, we can do away with responsibility or morality. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Religion is not the sole reason or method for conducting a sane existence. Those who follow the road of serious agnosticism or atheism (that means serious, not just some rebellious jackass trying to synthesize personality for himself as a professional provocateur or trying to pursue irresponsibility) are required to carry a heavy intellectual load and a level of serious introspection regarding personal responsibility.
http://freedom.orlingrabbe.com/lfetimes/religion.htm

See also, http://thrasymachus.typepad.com/thras/2004/05/robert_l_kocher.html
http://freedom.orlingrabbe.com/lfetimes/rlkocher_index.htm

The key word to remember in these discussions is comity. Though I am a freethinker, I respect people who are sincere in their religious beliefs. Capitalizing the word “God” is not so difficult.

Just as an aside, I note that the Sloan Digital Sky Survey has announced the discovery of the most distant quasar yet found. Dubbed the redshift 6.4 quasar, it is 13 billion light years from earth. Is there a Judeo-Christian viewpoint on this amazing discovery?

Is Timegrid suggesting that there is such a thing as Judeo-Christian astrophysics as distinct from regular astrophysics? :-)

This discovery has theological significance. It is the closest that human science has come to the beginning of time and space. In the doctrine of immanentism, it must also be the closest that man has come to the spirit of God.

I am puzzled by Timegrid’s last two posts. Timegrid, as a self-described free-thinker, are you suggesting that the scientific likelihood of there being a finite spatio-temporal extension for the cosmos is somehow inconsistent with the existence of the theistic God???? Also, while it is undoubtedly due to my own ignorance, I just don’t know what the doctrine of immanentism is supposed to be. Is it ontological materialism? Pantheism? Please clarify.

I imagine that immanentism is the idea that only what is immanent is real, i.e., there is no transcendent. If God exists, he is immanent. So the closer we get in time and space to the Big Bang, goes this thinking, the closer we are to God. Timegrid seems to have the notion that the discovery of a quasar that existed only two billion years after the Big Bang somehow alters the Christian concept of God. But of course, since Christians believe that God is spiritual, not material, even if scientists saw the Big Bang itself it still wouldn’t affect the Christian idea of God.

I think that religion represents the different methods that people have for coming to terms with the world. Jews prioritize, Buddihists deny, and Christians reconcile.

There is an excellent book entitled People of Plenty, by David M. Potter. I quote:

The characteristic causes of neurosis in the American personality stem from three dillemas:

1. Aggression in the pursuit of wealth and status that flies in the face of Christian brotherhood.

2. The desire for material goods that can never be fully satisfied.

3. Expectations of freedom that can never be met.

When trying to explain why the gulf between Christians and non-Christians seems to be so large, I think it is helpful to look at these dillemas.

Non Christians tend to refute not only the existance of God, but also of the moral dillemas that Potter describes. To the non-Christian, it’s a dog eat dog world, nothing more.

To the Christian however, all men exist in moral brotherhood, and it is within that brotherhood that those opposing forces must ultimately be reconciled.

To VolundXYZ: For a full discussion of the term “immanentism,” I suggest that you go to the Catholic Encyclopedia and use the search feature.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/.

For a skeptic like me, I can only accept the material. If God is real, S’he is manifest only in nature.

To Mr. Auster:

Wasn’t there a Catholic theologian who took the biblical passage, COL 1:17: “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together,” and thus equated Jesus Christ to bosons that carry the force that holds together the nucleus of atoms? Can this be a convergence of the spiritual and material?