Atheism

[rynner2]

Philip Pullman writes off Christ ‘the scoundrel’
Richard Brooks, Arts Editor

AFTER angering the Vatican with the fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman, the children’s author, is to launch an assault on Christianity in a story that denies Jesus was the son of God.

Pullman will claim that Christ emerged from the “fervid imagination” of St Paul, the apostle, and spawned a religion that has inspired some to “fanatical bigotry”.

Although full details of the plot are being kept under wraps, the book’s title, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, gives a strong indication of Pullman’s views.

“For every man or woman who has been led to goodness by a church, and I know there have been many, there has been another who has been inspired by the same church to a rancid and fanatical bigotry for which the only fitting word is evil,” Pullman said.

“The more [power the church] has, the worse it behaves — without exception.”

The book, which will be published by Canongate next spring, is a retelling of the story of Jesus, drawing on the Bible for characters, locations and events.

Pullman accepts the existence of a holy man called Jesus, but argues that Christ, or the son of God, was “an invention” of St Paul.

“By the time the Gospels were written down, Paul had already begun to transform the story of Jesus into something altogether different and extraordinary,” he said.

“Paul was a literary and imaginative genius, who has had more influence on the world than anybody else, including Jesus. He had this great ability to persuade others and his rhetorical skills have been convincing people for 2,000 years.”

Pullman first raised the ire of both Anglican and Catholic churches in his allegorical trilogy His Dark Materials. Set in a parallel universe, the books feature a young girl called Lyra who falls victim to a brainwashing organisation called the Magisterium, which many readers equated with the Vatican.

David McGough, the Catholic Auxiliary Bishop of Birmingham, said: “There is no evidence that Paul influenced the Gospels. No respectable scriptural scholar would have anything to do with [Pullman’s] theory.”

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/ ... 823230.ece

Even when I considered myself a Christian, I recognised that Paul had a disproportionate input into conventional Christianity, so I guess I'll mostly agree with Pullman's ideas now.

 

[segovius]

Even when I considered myself a Christian, I recognised that Paul had a disproportionate input into conventional Christianity, so I guess I'll mostly agree with Pullman's ideas now.

Of course it's true, Pullman is correct in this - Paul is really the 'founder' of Christianity.

Problem is, this has been known for a long, long time...many theologians have argued it. There is nothing new here, it is basic stuff...very pedestrian and even a bit tired and hackneyed. I think we are entitled to expect more from someone with Pullman's reputation. A lot more (or less of some of his other scribblings - difficult to see how this latest effort won't be an improvement).

Having said that, it is a golden opportunity to really nail it down if he can do it right. The disciples and Paul fell out over matters of doctrine (which should set huge alarm bells ringing) and this is even implicit in the New Testament itself.

We also know that James - the brother of Jesus, no less - vehemently opposed Paul (and vice versa) and that he was the head of the Jerusalem Church teaching a very different doctrine.

The dots are all there - but is Pullman the man to connect them or do they need to wheel out a bigger gun?

If I was the faceless General skulking safely behind the lines sipping my G&T in the atheist war-room I think I'd probably have handed this particular mission to Ian McEwan.

We'll see.

 

[Mal_Adjusted]

I see St Paul as a the hyped up salesman of the christian religion.

For him it was a vision thing.

The boring church in Jerusalem was probably just promoting the teachings, but Paul had the vision to go big, make it into a proper religion, and go out and sell it to the wider audience - go beyond the niche it was in. To survive you had to grow. And you had make the claims for the religion bigger and better than anyone else to beat the competition. Never mind if the claims were true or not, belief was what was important.

 

[segovius]

I see St Paul as a the hyped up salesman of the christian religion.

For him it was a vision thing.

The boring church in Jerusalem was probably just promoting the teachings, but Paul had the vision to go big, make it into a proper religion, and go out and sell it to the wider audience - go beyond the niche it was in. To survive you had to grow. And you had make the claims for the religion bigger and better than anyone else to beat the competition. Never mind if the claims were true or not, belief was what was important.

Paul was basically a homicidal maniac before he 'saw the light' and he brought the same psychopathic I-m right/you're wrong zealousness to bear in his new career after his 'conversion'.

In fact the Road to Damascus incident is a classic Freudian psychotic incident coupled with subsequent guilt-assuaging over-compensation.

 

[pTerryH]

On this topic, may I recommend The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity by Hyam Maccoby (Weidenfeld & Nicholson 1986, ISBN 0 297 78805 1?

Maccoby, who published at least 13 books in the period 1973-2004 (the year of his death) was a Talmudic Jewish Scholar, latterly at Leeds University, specialising in the period covering the appearance and rise of Christianity. In the above work he discusses Saul/Paul's own likely origins and character, suggests that Jesus's actual teachings and beliefs were entirely within mainstream Pharisaic tradition (the Pharisees having been misrepresented in Paul's Letters, Acts, and the later-written, Pauline-influenced Gospels), and that Pauline "Christianity" was Paul's own amalgam of Greek Gnosticism, Eastern Mystery Cult Resurrectionism, and Jewish history and philosophy. He draws on a wealth of Jewish tradition and documentation that mainstream Christian historiographers appear to gloss over or be unconversant with.

 

[segovius]

On this topic, may I recommend The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity by Hyam Maccoby (Weidenfeld & Nicholson 1986, ISBN 0 297 78805 1?

Maccoby, who published at least 13 books in the period 1973-2004 (the year of his death) was a Talmudic Jewish Scholar, latterly at Leeds University, specialising in the period covering the appearance and rise of Christianity. In the above work he discusses Saul/Paul's own likely origins and character, suggests that Jesus's actual teachings and beliefs were entirely within mainstream Pharisaic tradition (the Pharisees having been misrepresented in Paul's Letters, Acts, and the later-written, Pauline-influenced Gospels), and that Pauline "Christianity" was Paul's own amalgam of Greek Gnosticism, Eastern Mystery Cult Resurrectionism, and Jewish history and philosophy. He draws on a wealth of Jewish tradition and documentation that mainstream Christian historiographers appear to gloss over or be unconversant with.

Yes, great scholar. It seems that this was actually the root of the problem between Paul and the disciples - particularly Peter and James - he objected to their 'Jewishn ess' and continuing to uphold Jewish traditions.

As they had direct instruction from jesus and Paul never met him it seems fairly certain that Jesus himself saw his teaching as being exclusively situated within a Judaic framework.

 

[rjmrjmrjm]

Studying Theology and Religious Studies at Leeds Uni I met quite a few people who gained a lot from Maccobys works. Sadly he was gone by my time there.

 

[rynner2]

Hey, preacher – leave those kids alone
The final phase of the atheist bus campaign will challenge the idea that children can be labelled with their parents' religion
Ariane Sherine guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 18 November 2009

This week, the final phase of the atheist bus campaign will appear in London, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast – not on buses, but on billboards. Due to the amazing sums donated to the campaign fund by many Cif readers at the end of last year, we raised enough for a second wave of adverts – and the above posters will launch today.

When, in this Cif piece back in October 2008, we asked how the extra funds should be spent, one of the issues which came up repeatedly in the comments concerned the growth of of faith schools in the UK and the segregation of children according to their parents' beliefs. Many of you felt strongly that children should be given the freedom to decide which belief system they wanted to belong to, if any, and that they should not have a religion decided for them. Commenter Finite187 wrote, "A campaign against faith schools would be good as a next step," ciderpower said "You could address faith schools – religions want schools for the few, not for all" and 555555 asked, "How is this distortion of school education happening in this country?"

The atheist campaign team shared this point of view. However, rather than using adverts to try and campaign politically, we thought it would be more beneficial to try and change the current public perception that it is acceptable to label children with a religion. As Richard Dawkins states, "Nobody would seriously describe a tiny child as a 'Marxist child' or an 'Anarchist child' or a 'Post-modernist child'. Yet children are routinely labelled with the religion of their parents. We need to encourage people to think carefully before labelling any child too young to know their own opinions, and our adverts will help to do that."

We have scheduled the launch of the billboards to take place during the same week as Universal Children's Day (20 November), which is the United Nations' "day of worldwide fraternity and understanding between children". We hope the advert's message will encourage the government, media and general public to see children as individuals, free to make their own choices as soon as they are old enough to fully understand what these choices mean, and that they will think twice before describing children in terms of their parents' religion in the future.

Lastly, I'd like to take a final opportunity to thank everyone who donated to the campaign, supported it, commented on it or blogged about it – you really did make a difference to public discourse in this country and around the world. We hope you feel the new poster campaign is worthwhile and effective. After this phase, I will be taking a step back from atheist campaigning and returning to journalism. For those of you would like to continue to donate to campaigns on this issue, the BHA have launched a new pro-inclusive schools initiative here.

links on page
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... s-campaign

 

[rynner2]

BBC rejects call for non-religious speakers on Thought for the Day
Trust rules that Radio 4 programme does not breach impartiality by not including views from atheists, secularists and humanists
Tara Conlan guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 17 November 2009 12.39 GMT

The BBC Trust has rejected calls for non-religious contributors to be allowed on Radio 4's Thought for the Day.

Complaints were made earlier this year that banning atheists, secularist or humanists from taking part in Thought for the Day breached the BBC's guidelines on impartiality.

However, today the trust said it had found that Thought for the Day is "religious output and that it is a matter of editorial discretion for the BBC executive and its director general as editor-in-chief as to whether the BBC broadcasts a slot commenting on an issue of the day from a faith perspective".

The BBC Trust editorial standards chairman, Richard Tait, said: "We understand that some people feel strongly about this issue and have given it careful consideration.

"However, we have concluded that the current arrangements do not breach BBC editorial guidelines and specifically requirements of due impartiality in content."

The BBC Trust confirmed that Thought for the Day must comply with requirements of due impartiality and that any future complaints on particular broadcasts would be judged against these standards on a case-by-case basis.

Thought for the Day is broadcast at about 7.45am on Monday to Saturday as part of Radio 4's flagship Today programme.

Secular and humanist groups have long campaigned for the slot to be opened up to people outside of religious groups, and in January this year a non-religious version, called Thought for the Afternoon, was broadcast on Radio 4's Saturday afternoon programme, iPM.

The National Secular Society, which was one of the complainants, said it would continue to look at "other ways of challenging this unjustifiable slot"

The NSS president, Terry Sanderson, said: "Naturally we are very disappointed. This is a campaign we have been waging for 50 years, ever since Thought for the Day and its predecessors were first broadcast on the BBC.

"Every edition of Thought for the Day is a rebuke to those many people in our society who do not have religious beliefs."

Sanderson added that the campaign to open up Thought for the Day would continue. "This is so blatant an abuse of religious privilege that we cannot simply let it pass," he said. "Our evidence shows that five out of six of the public are heavily on our side. We will be looking at other ways of challenging this unjustifiable slot."

etc...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/no ... or-the-day

 

[Timble2]

It's a bit unfair, the god-botherers also get Prayer for the Day at around 05:40 which more often than not is a mini-sermon in the Thought for the Day mode, with a one-line prayer tacked on at the end.

 

[ramonmercado]

More than one way of skinning a cat. Lets lobby to have Satanists on Thought for the day etc. They'd probably skin a cat as a sacrifice to the Lord of the Flies live on air.


Edit to fix typo.

 

[rynner2]

This sounds interesting:

Atheist author Philip Pullman writes alternative ending for Jesus in Bible
Philip Pullman, the author of His Dark Materials, has written his own version of the New Testament in which the story of Jesus is given a "different ending".
By Tim Walker
Published: 7:00AM GMT 19 Nov 2009

The writer has penned an alternative Bible passage imagining a different fate for Christ, who was executed by the Romans.

"He has written what would have happened if Jesus had had a fair trial," a friend told The Daily Telegraph's Mandrake column.

"He knows it will be controversial, but he has some serious points to make."

Pullman is due to read his "account" of Christ's last days at the Globe theatre on Thursday as part of an event to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Reprieve, an organisation which campaigns for the rights of prisoners.

Books by Pullman, who is an honorary associate of the National Secular Society, have been criticised by the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. His critics often cite an interview in which he reportedly said: "I'm trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief."

The fantasy novels His Dark Materials, with their religious allegories, have been seen as a direct rebuttal of The Chronicles of Narnia by C S Lewis, the late Christian author, which have been criticised by Pullman.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has, however, proposed that His Dark Materials should be taught as part of religious education in schools.

Reprieve's party, which will be hosted by Jon Snow, will also feature John le Carré, and Martha Lane Fox.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop ... Bible.html

 

[escargot]

Replacing one load of dogma with another, newly made-up lot doesn't constitute atheism. :lol:

 

[rynner2]

Replacing one load of dogma with another, newly made-up lot doesn't constitute atheism. :lol:

But atheism is a good reason to look for alternative interpretations of bible stories.

As I get older, and learn more about history, science, and human nature, the more I understand about how religious beliefs begin, grow, and get adorned with add-on bits that have no actual basis in the 'holy writings'.

When you're inside a religion, it mostly feels comforting and true, and you'll probably believe there is hard historical evidence for that truth.

But I believe that outsiders see more of the game. As the song says, "It ain't necessarily so".

 

[coaly]

I'm in the church of "Saint Necessarilyso" :lol:

 

[rynner2]

Philip Pullman's blasphemous Jesus novel 'inspired' by Archbishop of Canterbury
With typically provocative timing, Philip Pullman is planning to publish his controversial book The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ ahead of Easter next year. The best-selling author discloses, however, that he was inspired to write the novel by a most surprising figure: the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams.
By Richard Eden
Published: 10:54PM GMT 05 Dec 2009

"He wondered why I'd not put Jesus in His Dark Materials," says Pullman. "I said I would tackle it in a future book, and I thought it was time to deal with that story."

The book denies that Jesus was the son of God. "I'm not setting out to rival the Bible," he says. "I hope my book is not going to cause anyone to slaughter anyone. It is about how stories become stories, and how they become fixed and settled and differ from the events they are based on."

Pullman, who once said he was "trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief", admits that the book "will make the cross people even crosser". He adds: "Anything I do enrages some people."

Isn't it curious how atheists always choose Christianity for their attacks rather than, say, Islam?

[In what seems to be an editing cock-up, the rest of the article is about Naomi Campbell... :? ]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/book ... rbury.html

 

[Anome]

I don't know about "always". Then again, the threat of being killed for doing a similar book about Mohammed might be more apparent to many authors after that whole Rushdie thing.

In any event, Western atheists will mostly go after Jesus because Christianity is the dominant religion in the Western world. They also perceive that Christianity has done the most evil and started the most wars, because that's the history they learn.

 

[Dr_Baltar]

Isn't it curious how atheists always choose Christianity for their attacks rather than, say, Islam?

Up yours, Islam, you big crock of shit.

There you go.

 

[ramonmercado]

Isn't it curious how atheists always choose Christianity for their attacks rather than, say, Islam?

Up yours, Islam, you big crock of shit.

There you go.

The curse of Allah be upon Islam! Let its Mullahs progeny have the heads of monkeys!

So there!

 

[rynner2]

Now you've done it! :shock:

I bet there's already a nuclear Fatwa heading for Fort Towers as I write....

 

[Dr_Baltar]

To be fair, Pullman is attacking the Christian view of Jesus being the Son of God in this book. Since Islam doesn't harbour such a belief it isn't really open to criticism on that particular front.

 

[ted_bloody_maul]

I suspect that atheists attack Christianity more often than Islam because it makes for a less confused agenda. In a culture where cynical chain emails fly back and forth about what them bloody Muslims have gone and done/complained about/banned now criticising Islam can be too open to misinterpretation. The English Defence League criticise Islam, so do the BNP and so, frequently, does the guy down the pub with the bruised knuckles and Terry Collieresque views on anyone different from himself. Best not to get confused with them.

Also, most western atheists will have a rudimentary knowledge of Christianity with which to ponder upon its claims. Not so for Islam.

 

[rynner2]

Are we better off without religion?
We should be careful about drawing rash conclusions from the correlation between religiosity and societal breakdown
Sue Blackmore guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 8 December 2009 18.23 GMT

Popular religious belief is caused by dysfunctional social conditions. This is the conclusion of the latest sociological research (pdf) conducted by Gregory Paul. Far from religion benefiting societies, as the "moral-creator socioeconomic hypothesis" would have it, popular religion is a psychological mechanism for coping with high levels of stress and anxiety – or so he suggests.

I've long been interested in Paul's work because it addresses a whole bunch of fascinating questions – why are Americans so religious when the rest of the developed world is increasingly secular? Is religious belief beneficial to societies? does religion make people behave better?

Many believers assume, without question, that it does – even that there can be no morality without religion. They cite George Washington who believed that national morality could not prevail without religions principles, or Dostoevsky's famous claim (actually words of his fictional character Ivan Karamazov) that "without God all things are permitted". Then there are Americans defending their country's peculiarly high levels of popular religious belief and claiming that faith-based charity is better than universal government provision.

Atheists, naturalists and humanists fight back claiming that it's perfectly possible to be moral without God. Evolutionary psychology reveals the common morality of our species, and the universal values of fairness, kindness, and reciprocity. But who is right? As a scientist I want evidence. What if – against all my own beliefs – it turns out that religious people really do behave better than atheists, and that religious societies are better in important respects than non-religious ones, then I would have cause to rethink some of my ideas.

This is where Gregory Paul and his research come in. I have often quoted his earlier, 2005, research which showed strong positive correlations between nations' religious belief and levels of murder, teenage pregnancy, drug abuse and other indicators of dysfunction. It seemed to show, at the very least, that being religious does not necessarily make for a better society. The real problem was that he was able to show only correlations, and the publicity for his new research seemed to imply causation. If so this would have important implications indeed.

In this latest research Paul measures "popular religiosity" for developed nations, and then compares it against the "successful societies scale" (SSS) which includes such things such as homicides, the proportion of people incarcerated, infant mortality, sexually transmitted diseases, teenage births and abortions, corruption, income inequality, and many others. In other words it is a way of summing up a society's health. The outlier again and again is the US with a stunning catalogue of failures. On almost every measure the US comes out worse than any other 1st world developed nation, and it is also the most religious.

For this reason Paul carries out his analysis both with and without the US included, but either way the same correlations turn up. The 1st world nations with the highest levels of belief in God, and the greatest religious observance are also the ones with all the signs of societal dysfunction. These correlations are truly stunning. They are not "barely significant" or marginal in any way. Many, such as those between popular religiosity and teenage abortions and STDs have correlation coefficients over 0.9 and the overall correlation with the SSS is 0.7 with the US included and 0.5 without. These are powerful relationships. But why?

The critical step from correlation to cause is not easy. Paul analyses all sorts of possibilities. Immigration and diversity do not explain the relationships, nor do a country's frontier past, nor its violent media, and so he is led to his conclusions: "Because highly secular democracies are significantly and regularly outperforming the more theistic ones, the moral-creator socioeconomic hypothesis is rejected in favour of the secular-democratic socioeconomic hypothesis"; "religious prosociality and charity are less effective at improving societal conditions than are secular government programmes".

He draws implications for human evolution too. Contrary to Dan Dennett, Pascal Boyer and others, he argues that religion is not a deep-seated or inherited tendency. It is a crutch to which people turn when they are under extreme stress, "a natural invention of human minds in response to a defective habitat". Americans, he says, suffer appalling stress and anxiety due to the lack of universal health care, the competitive economic environment, and huge income inequalities, and under these conditions belief in a supernatural creator and reliance on religious observance provides relief. By contrast, the middle class majorities of western Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan have secure enough lives not to seek help from a supernatural creator.

These are powerful conclusions indeed, and if they are right the US in particular needs to take note. But are they? I still retain some caution. I keep reminding myself of the obvious point that in science it is all too easy to apply a more critical eye to research whose conclusions you disagree with. In this case the wiggly route from correlation to cause includes many questionable steps, and clearly a lot more research is needed. I was also dismayed by what might seem trivial – the appalling number of typos and other mistakes in the only version of the paper I could find – the one that is linked from the press release and several other places. There are missing words, added words, "their"s for "there"s and other errors that sometimes made it hard to follow. If the text was so poorly checked, I wondered, what about the data? Should I apply my critical concerns to those stunningly high correlations too?

I guess we'll find out, for this is a hot topic and a thriving research area. For now we need not necessarily agree with Paul that "it is probably not possible for a socially healthy nation to be highly religious" but he has certainly shown that the healthiest nations are also the least religious.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... egory-paul

 

[Pietro_Mercurios]

Some of the comments should be fun.

 

[OneWingedBird]

though none of them yet concerning wtf sue blackmore has on her noggin! :?

 

[rynner2]

though none of them yet concerning wtf sue blackmore has on her noggin! :?

I'm not really a fan of Ms Blackmore - she is too skeptical on Fortean matters for my taste - but in this article she seems to relate the research of Gregory Paul quite clearly, whilst retaining an honest degree of scientific doubt about how thoroughly the data was checked.

 

[Zilch5]

I have indeed pondered the question of why Americans are so (increasingly) religious. There certainly seems to be an increasing amount of anxiety in their society, so that seems to be certainly a factor.

Linking it to the lack of health care is a novel idea.

Should they ever get their act together and pass that health care bill, we should see a reduction in Church attendance. Someone ought to look into this.

But surely, one should also be able to draw a link between financial security and church attendance already. Are the wealthy less religious and less likely to go to church? Probably yes, I'd say.

 

[Timble2]

...Are the wealthy less religious and less likely to go to church? Probably yes, I'd say.

There's been, and are still are plenty of rich people who go to church and put up a lot of money to spread their church's message and agenda...

 

[Mister_Awesome]

I feel that religion serves an important purpose and should always remain. Religion, like sports, helps keep the nuts occupied and off the streets.

I don't think religion is America's biggest problem. Every generation is becoming more spoiled, entitled, and nihilistic. Religion just annoys people like that. On the other hand, most of the worst people I know are Christians, I guess because they want to feel forgiveness for being horrible. Does that make them feel like they can go on being horrible? I hope not. (Not to say that all the Christians I know are horrible. Far from it.)

 

[cranionaut]

Human technology is far ahead of human conciousness .

Intellect does not = compassion or responsibility required for coping with that technology - just look at how bad we're even coping with what we have now !