jk lol.

I’ll try and find time to respond tomorrow to your points about secular historical developments, but it might have to wait until next week.

Take care!

I appreciate that you admit that the existence of God cannot be demonstrated, since (from your perspective) it is like trying to demonstrate the existence of a cloud to a blind person. Although it is manifestly obvious to you that it exists, it can never be known to the blind person no matter how much argumentation you engage in.

Now if you’re going to say that the gospel is tied up with racial and sexual equality, etc, then you must come to the conclusion that almost no one on this planet was an actual Christian until some point in the 20th century–AND THEN ONLY BECAUSE OF SECULAR HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENTS–that would be quite a conclusion.

Lastly, I certainly bristled at your equating secularism with other “religions” because, for me and others, a religion contains an ample amount of beliefs, ideas and claims that are not supported by any objective evidence, whereas secularism only deals with objective, natural evidence (in this regard, you call Dawkins an “amateur,” but another reading would see him as an iconoclastic radical because he is bringing such an incredibly different perspective to the issue). On my blog, I will in the future talk further about these and other topics, including how human life can have any value in a secular mindset.

Regarding your fist point, of course Christianity contains a lot of material supporting those values, but (1) it also contains a lot of material supporting their opposites, and which side one prefers to subscribe to really depends on one’s own theological or sectarian perspective,

(2) the same can be said of all religions, in which case we must say (a) instead of subscribing to Christianity, why not subscribe to Islam or Hinduism and focus on the parts of that religion that you like, in other words, what is so special about Christianity, and (b) since these values are found universally, we must conclude that these values stem from something OTHER than and PRIOR to any individual religion–i.e. something inherent in the human condition, which is to point to a secular basis for these values

I get the Christian vs Republican thing, but that’s not really what I was thinking about. And I get the last part of your comment, but it is a perspective that assumes the existence of the Christian God, for which there is no evidence.

I hear your contention and I understand where you’re coming from, but I don’t think it’s a valid conclusion.

If someone were really to investigate the claims of Christianity, rather than select manifestations (i.e., the random fundamentalists that make headlines) of it, then they would find Christianity to actually have an objective, ontological basis for human rights, for gender equality, and for nonviolence. All of these things are at the heart of Christian discipleship.

Remember not to mistake “Christian” for “Republican”. At the same time, don’t mistake “human rights” and “gender equality” for “radical feminism”. Let’s be honest about imported definitions.

I think people’s resistance to it is more basic than that. Christ makes a claim on people’s lives. People want to retain their individualism and sense of autonomy rather than submit to a suffering servant-emperor of the universe. All that other stuff is baseless and a facade for what’s really going on here.