FTFA: Even so, Hitchens was to atheists what NFL quarterback Tim Tebow is to many
Christians - their voice on the public stage of pop culture.

Really? I guess I didn't know this. However, this would explain why the guy is hated so much.
I just thought he was a lousy quarterback and that's why everyone was so mad at him.

[themoreyouknow.jpg]

TigerStar: [i.imgur.com image 553x646]

It's not a thread about religion without someone pulling this out

Thorndyke Barnhard: cookiefleck: TigerStar: [i.imgur.com image 553x646]

It's not a thread about religion without someone pulling this out

That's actually the first time I've noticed that particular one and I've been hanging around these parts for a while.

Twice yesterday, lol

Looks like Tebow''s hath forsaken him...

Tebow might have Jesus behind him but I learned a long time ago not to bet against Tom Brady during a playoff run.

Lordserb: If someone writes books, makes speeches and is extremely well known for a certain viewpoint then people would certainly be right in calling that person a fanatic.

Nah. Evangelical perhaps, maybe a zealot; but fanatic has more connotation of a lack of critical reflection on the position.

Lordserb: To argue that popular athiests are not fanatics is dishonest and only serves to further the animosity between the two groups.

To call them "fanatics" obscures the nuances and quantitative degree of difference between the groups. Yes, atheists are capable of zealotry. However, atheist groups apparently tend to have a level more comparable to ordinary weekly church-going Christians than to fundamentalist Christians.

Andric: What the hell is a Tebow, and why should I care?

It's sort of like a Beiber, but not quite so macho and without all that snooty highbrow philosophy.

Lordserb: I think perhaps, you mean to say ordinary church-going Christian and an evangelical preacher always in the news and giving speeches and stuff like that.

Nope. I'm basing the statement on the numerical data from the Hunsberger/Altemeyer sociological study, which compared atheists (both in groups and not), agnostics, inactive believers, moderately active believers, regular attendees, and fundamentalists on a few measures. It's published as Atheists: A Groundbreaking Study of America's Nonbelievers (ISBN 1591024137); there's also a kindle edition. Members of the organized atheist groups tended lower than the fundamentalists; they were closer to regular weekly church attendees at worst, and on some measures less zealous than even the inactive believers.

part of the problem: Athiests: Imagine a discussion of your views that was predicated on you defending the statements of 15 year old Slipknot fans.

But by whose choice is the predication?

part of the problem: Its easy to go after the lowest common denominator (tebow, Pat Robertson,etc) and pretend there is no serious intellectual life in the Christian religion.

I agree, Tebow and Pat Robertson make easy targets. However, whose fault is it that Christians consider them in any way emblematic of Christianity, that makes targeting the likes of them rewarding?

There's also the problem that the "intellectual life" is seldom central to why most Christians believe. In Cannon's "ways" terms, the Way of Reasoned Inquiry seems much less emphasized in how most people experience Christianity than any of the other five.

It seems to me that the intellectual life in Christianity appears to have degenerated to where Christians are largely relying on intellectual support of arguments past what I'll term the Kernighan limit. ("Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it." I conjecture there is an analogous relation to arguments, due to the underlying mutual relationship to the concept of "proof". Theory of Computation may allow formalizing this.) In some cases, this goes further, and they are relying on arguments that not only are they not clever enough to have come up with them, they are not clever enough to entirely follow - and thus, not only have problems finding "bugs", but may not grasp how something is a "bug" when the presence of a "bug" is pointed out.

This also leads back to cheap mockery like "The Courtier's Reply".

To be equitable, there are lots of atheists in irritatingly similar positions, even many of the athi-est... though I'm not sure your reference there was intended.

part of the problem: Those of us who know our cogito ergo sum from a hole in the ground are just horrified all the way around.

But you are sanguine about the quality, even when your example is from work in 1641? Have no better and clearer minds come since? Granted, I'm routinely playing with questions Hume raised in the mid 18th century; however, the answers I'm responding with are relying on major work in the 19th and 20th, with a few notions apparently not cropping up until the 21st.

Not to intimidate you to yield merely because of it; but it would at least seem reason to look around. Is Christian intellectual life merely holding its ground while the mundane continues advancing?

part of the problem: Once again, thanks for a meaningful conversation abb3w.

Glad to appeal to the interest.

part of the problem: The failure is not that Christians have stopped thinking (yeah i know, low hanging fruit) but that the American Christian culture has become such an echo chamber that serious ideas are just white noise.

Why is it that only ideas frivolous in tone echo in that chamber?

part of the problem: Joel Osteen, we got.

Glancing at Wikipedia: If he's the next Jerry Falwell, I welcome the change. Feel free to start pushing his thinking in religion threads.

part of the problem: There is a branch of theology called apologetics that is properly conerned with what we'll call "debugging."

Alas, close, but no round smoking thing, due in part to a breakdown of my metaphor. Apologetics is more focused on (in technical terminology) "attitude bolstering", rather than what I'll term "reflexive counterargument response" -- finding new ways to supporting the original conclusion, rather than finding errors so that any mistakes of conclusion can be corrected.

part of the problem: Some of the work on Christian orthodoxy and post modern theory I find interesting, for example.

Any authors you'd care to suggest?

part of the problem: I see these things going in cycles historically. In the 20th cent. Christiantiy was like a river that was wide but shallow. I think in this one it will be narrower but deeper.

Possibly. The GSS demographics (RELITEN versus COHORT) suggest more a tide going out. And that may be an optimistic metaphor.

On the other hand, the GSS only has a bit under four decades of hard data.

part of the problem: Whatever you think about Dec 25th. enjoy it.

And a Merry brand-X-mas to you, too. =)

part of the problem: Polkinghorne is not a bad starting point.

Sigh. The local student religious center's "Faith and Science" group has been doing his Exploring Reality this year. I haven't been all that impressed; again "attitude bolstering", season on my side as source derogation with a Planck misquote about progress in physics.

part of the problem: The church has been declared dead more often than the guys in Motley Crue. It's gonna be fine.

Not "dead". Extinction would take something more dramatic; this is merely a logistic curve decrease in Christians corresponding to a logistic curve increase in the unaffiliated. Worst I'm seeing is that Christianity ends up the 23rd century Amish. And atheists don't seem to be making any significant progress within the unaffiliated; they look to be holding in the 10-15% range. Though that might change; there have been some ominous hints in some of the non-GSS stuff I saw somewhere about teens -- probably Barna Group based, but I lost the bookmark. OTOH, that shift may be an ephemeral/transient/sampling artifact.