Cathedral Notre Dame
That post on "Open Letter" has been so well received, I have decided to follow through with fleshing out a few of the themes that were mentioned or implied in that post. The umbrella for the serious I'm going to do is the role Christianity as the foundation of Western civilization. For a Background Understanding of my views on Christianity and Civilization see my article Albert Schweitzer and the Death of Civilization. I have also done other things on Christianity and Western Civilization. see also Part 2 and part 3
This time I will trace the themes that I mention or imply in the "Open Letter to John Loftus and the DC Crowd." The themes that I will trace out are these:
Meaning and Truth
Freedom and Dignity
Ethics and Morality
Art and Culture
Progress in History
The Postmodern Kiss off: no meaning, truth, freedom, dignity, ethics, morality or progress in history?
One point I want to be clear about. The major issue that erupted over the Open Letter was weather or not I was saying atheists are more dangerous than Christians. I maintained that I was not saying that. I was saying both or either can be the danger at any given time. That is talking about human behavior. Obviously I believe my beliefs or true. It's not fair to expect someone to take tolerance to the point of saying "O I know my beliefs are totally false." But I do believe that Christianity offers the best foundation for Western civ, that is the heart of Western civ. The reason sour society today doesn't make sense is because we ripped the heart out of the civilization when it was secularized.
That does not mean that atheists are bad guys or that they are going to kill more people than Christians will. Everyone has the potential to fail and to sell out, to not live up to her/his ideals. This is just talking about theory, the ideas offered by the Christian belief system are a better foundation for Western civ because they are the foundation that it was built upon. I for see comments claiming that I'm back peddling, because if the foundation is better then its less of a danger so I'm really saying Christianity is less of a danger. We can get into a real slippery sloap and say that anytime you think something you are automatically excluding everything else, so it would be the only fair thing to never think thoughts. I am merely trying to show people why I see things as I do. I do see that if you have a "better" foundation then you have more to work with. I know that assessing "better" is somewhat subjective and very complex. Again, I'm just trying to bring the way I look at things.
The first of these themes I will unveil this coming week.
Should be interesting. :-)
ReplyDelete