Jesus is Magic?

I keep a lot of different folks on my Google Reader list from a lot of different perspectives - people that I think offer the most intelligent examples I have found for a particular niche I am interested in.

One of those sites is Common Sense Atheist. Occasionally, those places put things up that make me question why I keep them on my list. Luke just posted one of those: "Jesus is Magic".

Admittedly, up to now I haven't had a real sense of why belief in a Creator God and belief in magic are not the same; and Luke gave me the opportunity to get this defined for myself.

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Vox Day vs Luke: Nosing into a Discussion

I have quoted The Irrational Atheist by Vox Day in three major posts:

• "War and Religion" and "The Problem Isn't God" based on Chapter 6: "The War Delusion"
• "Atheism, Utopianism,  and Totalitarianism" based on Chapter 13: "The Red Hand of Atheism"

I added Vox Popoli -- Vox Day's blog -- to my reading list and, lo and behold, ran into the 6th letter (3 from each side) in a dialogue between Day and Luke Muehlhauser at Common Sense Atheism. Apparently, Luke requested this dialogue and kicked it off with his first letter at his blog

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Atheism, Utopianism, and Totalitarianism

[Attention: This posts is not about all atheists, or what all atheists believe, or even (necessarily) all utopianism - please read carefully]

I will begin with a comment I made in a discussion of Bill Maher's "enabling" of the "Religious Right" (all the scare quotes there are because I do not think any of that terminology is very good).

Suffice it to say, that the view of Marx on the philosophical side was the same as Dawkins: progress will only occur in solving the world's problems if the metaphysical, non-naturalist ideologies and theologies standing in the way of that progress (and they always stand in the way of that progress) are isolated from the culture so they can no longer stand in the way of that progress.

In either case, both Marxism and Dawkins stated, or seriously implied, that religion must be removed as an influence in society in order for humanity to solve its real problems and evolve to a higher order of human social relationship. In the case of Marxism in power, that led in every case to atrocities against the religious and holders of other "bourgeois philosophies" in order to move that evolution on.

There is no doubt that the modern history of totalitarianism is primarily anchored with expressly atheist ideology (Communism) or non-Christian ideology (Hitler). The slaughter has been enormous - far, far outweighing the closest of Christian kings or rulers since the beginning of Christendom around 400 AD. Religious, but non-Christian, kings have not been as bloodthirsty either by several orders of magnitude. Why is this?

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Blog Tour: 8/30 - 9/5

This re-initiates my old practice of looking around the web - hopefully once a week - and drawing some attention to things I see there that interest me.

If you want to know where I go, look at the links on the left under "Places I Frequent". From there, I will go places those places may point me. Typically, I will also list three of my favorite posts from the current Christian Carnival - and may go somewhere those blogs take me.

Sometimes they will be topically organized, and sometimes just in order of the links I visited. Enjoy:

Christian Carnival picks:

• Shannon at The Minority Thinker examines why they are "Quitting Small Group". After having read it, I have to agree with these two statements:

  Over fifteen years, I have been part of almost a dozen small groups sponsored by three different churches; my husband has joined me in most of them. Never once have I developed a close friendship through one of these groups.

  and

  We are told to confess our sins to each other [I tore a group up doing this], to restore each other, to love each other, to encourage each other, and to serve together as the body of Christ. I have rarely – if ever – seen these things happen in a small group. And if that kind of fellowship isn’t taking place regularly, why do we keep trying the same methods and hoping for different results? It seems to me it’s time for a new approach.

• Henry at Participatory Bible Study Blog responds to:

  … The problem is this: when one takes a close look at the Bible in its original context, there is no evidence that the Bible is such a historically-situated divine revelation, that it is somehow ontologically different than other texts from antiquity and should be privileged or treated in a special way. …

  with "Indentifying Define Revelation"

President Obama's address to school children: I created a category for this expecting to see a bit of stuff on it - but there really wasn't much:

• Jim at Volokh Conspiracy took a look back at the news articles, etc. connected with President George H.W. Bush's 1991 Speech to Schools.

  On WESTLAW, I looked up other news stories about the speech. It was eported as 10 minutes in some reports and 12 minutes in others. It was carried live on CNN, PBS, and [the NBC] and Mutual radio [networks]. The Secretary of Education sent a letter urging schools to have their students watch, but I didn’t find any evidence of how many schools followed that recommendation. And most striking: Bush laid out goals — to increase the graduation rate, improve student competency and better prepare students for entering school — and said, "Let me know how you're doing. Write me a letter. I'm serious about this one. Write me a letter about ways you can help us achieve our goals." [Written text is here - and wasn't checked against the tapes]

• John Piper weighed in with "I Hope My Daughter Hears the President’s Speech":

  I am stunned at the outcry against the President of the United States speaking to the youth of this nation about the importance of education.
  
  I am embarrassed by the governor of my home state saying, that the president’s plan to address them is “disruptive . . . uninvited . . . and number three . . . I don’t think he needs to force it upon the nation’s school children.”
  
  This speech seems, for me, to be an answer to a prayer that I have prayed for the president repeatedly . . .

Jason S at Fundamentally Changed looks at how extreme fundamentalism can be involved in "Transgressing By Traditions":

Today I call upon all of my fundamentalist brethren to honestly take the time to examine their doctrines and practices and see how they measure up to God’s Word, the five sola’s, and the historic fundamentals. If they don’t fit that, they must be discarded, no matter how old, precious, and dear they are to us.

Iraq the Model this week is focusing on the crisis raised by Syria's apparent complicity in the August 19th bombing which killed 95 people and wounded 600. One of the stories began

Iraq continues to insist on internationalizing the crisis with Syria, which began after Iraq demanded that Syria hands over senior Ba’ath Party members. Iraq now plans to persuade the international community to form an international criminal court, similar to the one investigating the assassination of the late Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki stressed at a meeting with the Turkish FM that Iraq “will move forward to demand that the UN forms an international tribunal to prosecute those who committed ugly crimes that target Iraq’s stability and people and killed many innocent lives”.

Scot McKnight at Jesus Creed points to a book by

David Bentley Hart, a historian of ideas, Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies , has been our guide into some of the philosophical and historical issues at work among the new atheists like Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens. One of the implicit and sometimes explicit claims is that we are enlightened and that
the secular state is safer than a religious-shaped state. To which Hart makes this statement, and he expresses the growing body of literature that both denies the myth of secularization (that all things are becoming more secular) and reveals the profound mischief of the secular state:

"We live now in the wake of the most monstrously violent century in human history, during which the secular state (on both the political right and the political left), freed from the authority of religion, showed itself willing to kill on an unprecedented scale and with an ease of conscience worse than merely depraved. If ever an age deserved to be thought an age of darkness, it is surely ours. One might almost be tempted to conclude that secular government is the one form of government that has shown itself too violent, capricious, and unprincipled to be trusted" (106)

Jeremy at Parableman points to "Obama's Widely-Unpublicized Backtrack on Stem Cells" - belatedly for sure because it occurred a while back:

2009 -- March 9th: President Obama rescinds Bush’s August 9, 2001 EO with his own EO entitled, “Removing Barriers To Responsible Scientific Research Involving Human Stem Cells.” The revocation of Bush’s EO is heralded as “lifting the ban on federal funding for promising embryonic stem cell research (ESCR).” (this is the event found in the video offered above)

This EO simultaneously revokes Bush EO # 13435 which has provided federal funding of successful IPSC research. This aspect of the order is not mentioned at the press conference.

2009 -- March 11th: President Obama signs and renews the Dickey-Wicker Amendment, which continues the ban on federal funding for ESCR that Obama claims to have lifted 2 days earlier. No announcement is made and no press conference is called.

Notice that now not only is there no federal funding of ESCR - President Obama removed President Bush's mandate of federal funding for IPSC research as well. Incidentally, Jeremy did what anyone should really do when confronted by such a reported contradiction between stated positions of politicians and their actual actions:

When I first read this, I immediately wanted to find something to verify it. It was incredibly difficult to find an actual news story on it, since the mainstream media either suppressed it or never got the information on it. The one news story I could find was from a partisan organization, but it does give chapter and verse for where to find the language in the bill that does indeed do exactly what the story says it does. It's in Title V, section 509 of the Omnibus spending bill (page 128 of this PDF; it appears in full here). It repeats verbatim exactly the section that since 1996 has appeared in every such spending bill under President Clinton and President Bush.

Rick at Rightwing Nuthouse as been writing a whole series of articles about conservative reform - three in the last week. All of them are, to me, important for both folks on the right and the left to read.

Orin at Volokh Conspiracy looks at "al-Kidd v. Ashcroft: Is Pretextual Use of the Material Witness Statute Unconstitutional?":

The Ninth Circuit handed down a fascinating and important case on preventive detention on Friday, and one that I suspect added a new case to the Supreme Court's docket next year: al-Kidd v. Ashcroft. The basic holding of the opinion is that the post-9/11 practice of using the material witness statute to detain suspected terrorists is not only unconstitutional, but clearly unconstitutional, and that former AG Ashcroft can be personally sued for his role in it. The majority opinion was written by Judge Milan Smith and joined by Judge Thompson; Judge Bea wrote a partial concurrence and partial dissent.

There's a lot of coverage of the case in newspapers and around the web, but nothing that really delves into the legal questions. That's understandable, as the opinions in the case fill about 100 pages. But in this post, I wanted to delve into the legal questions and see if the court's opinion holds up to scrutiny.
. . .
Fortunately, this case is perfect for Supreme Court review: If the en banc Ninth Circuit passes on it, this case will give the Supreme Court an ideal opportunity to evaluate the very important question of how the Fourth Amendment applies to preventive detention.

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Touring the Net

Here is my (sorta) weekly tour of the internet - and some things that struck me as interesting:

Christian Carnival CCXVII (217) is up (or soon will be) on the other side of the Cascade range from me in eastern Oregon at Diary of 1. The three that caught my attention this week:

1. "Can an Atheist be a good Person". Starving Econ Student researched what atheists mean by "good" in that question, found a couple of examples

   I googled around and saw two atheist answers:

   1. A person who does more good deeds than bad deeds
   2. A person who has empathy and compassion towards others.

   and then he addressed those well.



2. Translation does some funny things. "Do You Love Jesus?" - well there are some different words for "love" in scripture; and Chad examines the use of two of them in the same passage of scripture:

   John 21:15 Then when they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these do?” He replied, “Yes, Lord, you know I love you.” Jesus told him, “Feed my lambs.” 16 Jesus said a second time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” He replied, “Yes, Lord, you know I love you.” Jesus told him, “Shepherd my sheep.” 17 Jesus said a third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter was distressed that Jesus asked him a third time, “Do you love me?” and said, “Lord, you know everything. You know that I love you.” Jesus replied, “Feed my sheep. -- NET

   Read the notes to the NET Bible text - those translators disagree - but I am not sure what I think. How about you?



3. David at Boomer in the Pew talks about "Growing Up as a Disciple of Jesus Christ":

   Here was our opening question:
   
   Are you a sinner working on your salvation or are you a child of God (a disciple of Jesus) working on your sin? Talk amongst yourselves!

   and goes on to talk about the concepts of justification, sanctification, and glorification based on passages from Romans and 1 Corinthians

At Stand to Reason:

• As an apologist, I get to deal with the "shellfish" and "mixed fabric" questions with regularity. Here is a great answer to "Why Is It Okay to Wear Mixed Fibers?":

  To believe the Old Testament Law literally is to believe that this was the covenant God made with the ancient nation of Israel--a set of instructions for running their nation. To believe the New Testament literally along with the Old is to believe that when we were joined to Christ, we died with Him and were raised with Him, causing us to be released from the Law.

• Melinda points to a new book Why We're Not Emergent (by Two Guys Who Should Be) :

  They explain why objective, propositional Truth (not just lower-case t truth) can be taught and preached and still communicate with Gen-Xers. Both speak from their practical ministry experience.

Last week I pointed to Scot McKnight's multi-part review of The Case for Civility by Os Guinness. This week had:

• "Civility 4" which

  could be called a “civil screed” against the Religious Right. It is not too harsh; it never falls for the uncivil, but the chp univocally calls the RR to the bar for a civil warning.

• and "Civility 5":

  If Os Guinness, in his attempt to call the nation to public civility, can call the Religious Right to task for its rhetoric, he can do the same to the Left . . . “We are closer,” Guinness states, “to the wild atheism of Madalyn Murray O’Hair, back to barnyard debating, with ungrounded assertions, irresponsible accusations, ad hominem arguments, and reasoning that repeatedly slumps into ranting”

Sarah at Intellectuelle in their "Apologetics 101" series talks about "Faith vs. Values?:

It's unfortunate that he has come to think of the Bible this way--as merely a handbook for morality. Do unto others should not be approached independently of no one comes to the Father except through me. But is he all that different from many Christians who regard the moral propositions of Scripture above the saving power of the gospel. Perhaps we could helpfully understand the gospel call as one of many moral appeals, yet is the one that lacks political correctness.

It is also the one theologically conservative Christians can ignore as they preach morality to non-Christians instead of bringing people to salvation in Christ.

Joe Carter's "Thirty-three Things (v.55)" series always has interesting stuff. Some highlights this week:

• "Designed for Sex", by J. Budziszewski:

  I said that we’re not designed for hooking up, that we’re designed for our bodies and hearts to work together. We human beings really do have a design, and I mean that literally—not just a biological design, but an emotional, intellectual, and spiritual design. The human design is the meaning of the ancient expression “human nature.” . . .

• An attack ad on Thomas Jefferson by the "Re-elect John Adams Committee":
  

• D.A. Carson, as quoted by Mark Driscoll in The Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World:

  Paul refuses to circumcise Titus, even when it was demanded by many in the Jerusalem crowd, not because it didn’t matter to them, but because it mattered so much that if he acquiesced, he would have been giving the impression that faith in Jesus is not enough for salvation: one has to become a Jew first, before one can become a Christian. That would jeopardize the exclusive sufficiency of Jesus.
  
  To create a contemporary analogy: If I’m called to preach the gospel among a lot of people who are cultural teetotalers, I’ll give up alcohol for the sake of the gospel. But if they start saying, “You cannot be a Christian and drink alcohol,” I’ll reply, “Pass the port” or “I’ll think I’ll have a glass of Beaujolais with my meal.” Paul is flexible and therefore prepared to circumcise Timothy when the exclusive sufficiency of Christ is not at stake and when a little cultural accommodation will advance the gospel; he is rigidly inflexible and therefore refuses to circumcise Titus when people are saying that Gentiles must be circumcised and become Jews to accept the Jewish Messiah.

Jan at The View From Her is one of my favorite bloggers. She is an Evangelical woman who simply writes about some neat things. This week, besides saying nice things about McLaren's Generous Orthodoxy - she adds something to the complementarian vs. egalitarian discussion of men and women's roles in the Body of Christ. She reviews Saving Women From the Church: How Jesus Mends a Divide where she picks the story of the Samaritan woman at the well out to discuss.

WorldMagBlog had some interesting stuff:

• First, they have carved out a respectful community of differing opinions - and so their voting on the community's favorite movies is interesting. They have both top 5 category rankings and a top 25 overall. The top five overall:

  1. Lord of the Rings Trilogy
  2. The Princess Bride
  3. The Sound of Music
  4. Indiana Jones films
  5. The Incredibles

• "Pronounced dead, man takes ‘miraculous’ turn":

  Just before Thanksgiving, the 21-year-old was pronounced brain-dead following an ATV accident. As family members gathered to say good-bye before his organs were harvested, Dunlap’s grandmother, Naomi, began praying for “a miracle”–and that’s just what she got.

Jeremy Pierce at Parableman:

• pointed to a piece written by Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly:

  for now I just want to make one comment: the current attempts to tar Hillary as a racist have gone way, way over the top. before the South Carolina primary, the Clinton campaign and its surrogates really did seem to be making a few too many racially charged comments for it to be just a coincidence (though even then some of the accusations were bogus), but after South Carolina it pretty much stopped. I can't say whether it stopped for reasons of politics or reasons of principle, but it stopped.
  
  But the accusations of racism haven't. They've just gotten more ridiculous.

• and deepened the discussion about "Racism Charges and the Clinton Campaign" as well:

  I had to take interest in the first two comments [to Kevin's piece] mentioning Geraldine Ferraro, who didn't come up in the post. What interested me most about their appearance is the assumption that that's a genuine case of racism that they must be taking to undermine his whole argument. First of all, if it's genuine racism that doesn't undermine his argument. His point is that many of the accusations of racism are going way too far. One case that is racism doesn't undermine that claim.
  
  Second, I don't think it's fair to describe that as racist.

Enjoy

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"The Problem Isn't God"

In the last post, I quoted Vox Day from The Irrational Atheist [a downloadable E-book] about Messrs. Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris

While both men are too cautious to ever come right out and state that they believe religion is the direct and primary cause of war, most likely due to the fact that it is so easy to disprove such a belief, they nevertheless attempt to insinuate that this is the case by repeatedly associating religious faith with group violence and military conflict . . . This is done by claiming that while religion is not the explicit cause of most wars, it is still responsible for the fact that those wars are taking place because religious faith is the reason there are two different sides in the first place . . . by constructing a pair of shaky parallel arguments based on the idea that religion causes division.

Certainly, that last post largely destroyed any argument from observation and/or evidence that religion is a major direct cause of war. What about an argument that rests on reason or intuition? This is called an ontological argument:

Its most famous application is an argument for the existence of God, first used by St. Anselm of Canterbury, and it states that because we can conceive of God, something of which nothing greater can be imagined, God must exist. René Descartes also made use of a variant of this argument, but it has never been an important part of Christian theology due to its rejection by Thomas Aquinas. Its fame is more due to its later resurrection and rejections by David Hume and Bertrand Russell.

Richard Dawkins describes the ontological argument for the existence of God to be an infantile one. He pronounces himself offended at the very idea that “such logomachist trickery” could be used to produce such grand conclusions. And he’s correct to reject it, in my opinion, as ontological arguments boil down to the idea that if something can be conceived, it therefore must exist. No supporting evidence is necessary, mere reason and intuition suffice to prove the matter. Daniel Dennett scorns it as well, describing it as the logical equivalent of a carnival fun-house illusion. -- Vox Day

Day characterizes the argument described in the first quote above as exactly an ontological argument, and cites both Dawkins and Harris as employing such arguments despite their disdain for there use in proving God exists. What are the "shaky parallel arguments" they both employ to cover this? Vox Day:

1. Religion causes division between people. [Day points out this is an ontological argument in itself]

   “Religion is undoubtedly a divisive force.” -- Dawkins
   
   “The religious divisions in our world are self-evident" -- Harris

2. Religion provides the dominant label by which people are divided into groups.

   “Without religion there would be no labels by which to decide whom to oppress and whom to avenge.” -- Dawkins
   
   “The only difference between these groups is what they believe about God.” -- Harris

3. Wars are fought between divided groups of people with different labels.

   “Look carefully at any region of the world where you find intractable enmity and violence between rival groups. I cannot guarantee that you’ll find religions as the dominant labels for in-groups and out-groups. But it’s a very good bet.” -- Dawkins
   
   “Religion is as much a living spring of violence today as it was at any time in the past.” -- Harris

4. Therefore, religion is the implicit cause of war.

   “The problem’s name is God.” -- Dawkins
   
   “Faith . . . the most prolific source of violence in our history.” -- Harris

Superficial thinkers who know very little history find this argument compelling because the statements flow nicely from one into the other, and because there is a certain amount of truth in each of the assertions that lead up to the final conclusion. It cannot be denied that religion HAS been known to divide friends and families as well as entire nations. Religion HAS provided a marker by which opposing groups identify each other. War IS fought between divided groups of people bearing different labels; it takes two to tangle. The problem is that merely stringing together three statements that are factually true in some circumstances does not always lead to a logical conclusion.

Consider the same argument, only this time substituting three similarly valid assertions.

1. Pelicans eat sardines.
2. Pelicans improve the sardine species through aiding natural selection.
3. Natural selection is the mechanism through which evolution occurs.
4. Therefore, pelicans are the implicit cause of evolution.

Day goes on to examine the division of Europe into kingdoms - replete with subsequent wars - branching from Charlemagne's son's attempt to divide the Frankish empire into 4 pieces for his sons; and then one of those sons dividing his section into 3 more parts for his sons. From the death of Charlemagne in 814 through 860 - 5 different wars had been fought; and

More wars were fought over the centuries, the Eastern and Western Franks grew more and more apart, until finally it reached the point where they spoke separate languages, possessed separate identities, and, in the end, adopted different forms of Christianity. But the division of the Franks into Germans and Frenchmen predates the division of Christendom into Catholics and Protestants by more than 675 years.

As Day points out using this example, the vast majority of divisions between groups of people are not religious; and religion is not the dominant label by which most distinct groups are indentified.
Day: "The Problem isn't God"

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War and Religion

One of those little arguments popular nowadays - and not challenged much in my sight - is expressed in these two remarks that were part of a post I was involved in this week.

Organized religions do not unite us, they divide us. They segregate one group from another. You can argue the truthfulness of your religion all you want to, but you'll only alienate others who honestly believe in the truthfulness of theirs. Organized religions, regardless of their good intentions, have caused hate, mistrust and in extreme cases death and destruction.

and its comments thread:

More people have slaughtered in religious wars than all other wars combined.

Certainly, the author of these remarks is in good company - and I am guessing, even though s/he is some sort of deist/theist, that this is a parroting of remarks of a similar nature by some of the new atheist writers of our day. These kind of comments have been common since the rash of books by Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, and company in the recent past - and back into the 19th century with the likes of Robert Green Ingersoll:

Religion makes enemies instead of friends. That one word, “religion,” covers all the horizon of memory with visions of war, of outrage, of persecution, of tyranny, and death. . . . Although they have been preaching universal love, the Christian nations are the warlike nations of the world -- “The Damage Religion Causes” [HT: The Irrational Atheist]

The first comment I am only going to briefly deal with: it is counter-intuitive to me that religious expression and organization has been responsible for more division between folks than race, class, nationality, and tribe. Indeed, I am not going to try to speak to all religions, but I will speak to Christianity. Other than the obvious examples of the Crusades (actually, according to modern historians, not so obvious), the wars arising out of the Reformation, and the rise (and delay in the fall) of modern slavery - Christianity has united folks across racial, class, and national lines. Human beings are fallen, and find lots of reasons to kill each other, but religion is no more divisive an issue than class, race nation, and tribe. Indeed, much less potent and, in fact, it has largely served as a restraint in the bloodthirstiness of humans. Now, that is an opinion - for which I hold no proof other that the previously mentioned intuition. However, there is a bit of statistical support

That brings us to the second comment - which is simply factually wrong. I found an interesting resource for folks who wish to see a very good destruction of the "religion = war" arguments of folks like Sam Harris (Letter to a Christian Nation) and Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion):

The Irrational Atheist [downloadable E-book] by Vox Day [HT: Evangelical Outpost]

His arguments against the "religion = war" arguments of what he calls the "new atheists" reside primarily in these chapters: "Sam Tzu and the Art of War" and "The War Delusion" - but not exclusively. Vox cites The Encyclopedia of Wars:

I had barely begun separating the teetering stacks of books dedicated to ancient and medieval warfare when Charles Phillips and Alan Axelrod fortuitously happened to publish their three-volume Encyclopedia of Wars, a massive 1,502-page compendium compiled by nine reputable professors of history, including the director of the Centre of Military History and the former head of the Centre for Defence Studies, of what amounts to a significant percentage of all the wars that have taken place throughout recorded human history. -- Vox Day

where he found

These 1,763 wars cannot be considered entirely comprehensive . . . in any event, the very large size of the sample set definitely provides enough detail for the purpose of determining what percentage of Man’s wars are caused by his diverse religious faiths with some degree of accuracy.

According to the Encyclopedia of Wars, of those 1,763 wars, the following were categorized as religious wars for one reason or another:

Albigensian Crusade, Almohad Conquest of Muslim Spain, Anglo-Scottish War (1559–1560), Arab Conquest of Carthage, Aragonese-Castilian War, Aragonese-French War (1209–1213), First Bearnese Revolt, Second Bearnese Revolt, Third Bearnese Revolt, First Bishop’s War, Second Bishop’s War, Raids of the Black Hundreds, Bohemian Civil War (1465–1471), Bohemian Palatine War, War in Bosnia, Brabant Revolution, Byzantine-Muslim War (633–642), Byzantine-Muslim War (645–656),Byzantine-Muslim War (688-679), Byzantine-Muslim War (698–718), Byzantine-Muslim War (739), Byzantine-Muslim War (741–752), Byzantine-Muslim War (778–783), Byzantine-Muslim War (797–798),Byzantine-Muslim War (803–809), Byzantine-Muslim War (830–841),Byzantine-Muslim War (851–863), Byzantine-Muslim War (871–885), Byzantine-Muslim War (960–976), Byzantine-Muslim War (995–999), Camisards’ Rebellion, Castilian Conquest of Toledo, Charlemagne’s Invasion of Northern Spain, Charlemagne’s War against the Saxons, Count’s War, Covenanters’ Rebellion (1666), Covenanters’ Rebellion (1679), Covenanters’ Rebellion (1685), Crimean War, First Crusade, Second Crusade, Third Crusade, Fourth Crusade,7 Fifth Crusade, Sixth Crusade, Seventh Crusade, Eighth Crusade, Ninth Crusade, Crusader-Turkish Wars (1100–1146), Crusader-Turkish Wars (1272–1291), Danish-Estonian War, German Civil War (1077–1106), Ghost Dance Uprising, Siege of Granada, First Iconoclastic War, Second Iconoclastic War, India-Pakistan Partition War, Irish Tithe War, Javanese invasion of Malacca, Great Java War, Kappel Wars, Khurramite’s Revolt, Lebanese Civil War, Wars of the Lombard League, Luccan-Florentine War, Holy Wars of the Mad Mullah, Maryland’s Religious War, Mecca-Medina War, Mexican Insurrections, War of the Monks, Mountain Meadows Massacre, Revolt of Muqanna, Crusade of Nicopolis, Padri War, Paulician War, Persian Civil War (1500–1503), Portuguese-Moroccan War (1458–1471), Portuguese-Moroccan War (1578), Portuguese-Omani Wars in East Africa, Rajput Rebellion against Aurangzeb, Revolt in Ravenna, First War of Religion, Second War of Religion, Third War of Religion, Fourth War of Religion, Fifth War of Religion, Sixth War of Religion, Eighth War of Religion, Ninth War of Religion, Roman-Persian War (421–422), Roman-Persian War (441), Russo Turkish War (1877–1878), First Sacred War, Second Sacred War, Third Sacred War, Saladin’s Holy War, Schmalkaldic War, Scottish Uprising against Mary of Guise, Serbo-Turkish War, Shimabara Revolt, War of the Sonderbund, Spanish Christian-Muslim War (912–928), Spanish Christian-Muslim War (977–997), Spanish Christian-Muslim War (1001–1031), Spanish Christian-Muslim War (1172–1212), Spanish Christian-Muslim War (1230–1248), Spanish Christian-Muslim War (1481–1492), Spanish Conquests in North Africa, Swedish War, Thirty Years’ War, Transylvania-Hapsburg War, Tukulor-French War, Turko-Persian Wars, United States War on Terror, Vellore Mutiny, Vjayanagar Wars, First Villmergen War, Second Villmergen War, Visigothic-Frankish War.

For someone not wanting to count those, that is 123 wars in all - or just a very fine hair under 7% of the wars in the book. I included the whole list just so those who would argue the numbers could see exactly what they are based on.

Before finding this list, my primary source was going to be this online resource - "Wars, Massacres and Atrocities of the Twentieth Century". It doesn't take much examination of the conflicts and deaths there (there are links to centuries earlier than the 20th) to realize that religion may account for even less than the 7% above if you are actually talking about those killed by wars.

The human race is great at finding reasons to slaughter each other - but religion has neither been the chief cause or the principle feature of that slaughter: not even close. However, those who have repeated the arguments of Dawkins and Harris have missed a point:

While both men are too cautious to ever come right out and state that they believe religion is the direct and primary cause of war, most likely due to the fact that it is so easy to disprove such a belief, they nevertheless attempt to insinuate that this is the case by repeatedly associating religious faith with group violence and military conflict . . . This is done by claiming that while religion is not the explicit cause of most wars, it is still responsible for the fact that those wars are taking place because religious faith is the reason there are two different sides in the first place . . . by constructing a pair of shaky parallel arguments based on the idea that religion causes division. -- Vox Day

That will be the next post .

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Dawkins and McGrath

From Stand to Reason

Richard Dawkins interviewed Christian philosopher Alister McGrath, but it apparently wasn't used for Dawkins' project. Dawkins asks many very sincere questions. One example is when he admits that he defines faith differently than Christians do. Dawkins thinks faith is assent without evidence, which is obviously irrational and worthy of his derision if it's the case. But McGrath corrects this misconception of what faith is talking about evidence and probability, which is very much in the same realm of rationality as science. Dawkins and McGrath don't minimize their disagreements, but engage the discussion in a very intelligent, sincere manner.

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Testimony Part II: It's All Downhill for a Ways

Politics

Two themes govern the next part of my life: politics and sex. There was quite a bit of drug use but it was never really a key to my development. I graduated from high school in 1970. My senior year I had won a debate taking the pro-war side of the Vietnam War. By late April 1971, I was in Washington, DC as part of the Mayday Demonstrations. I had rolled far past being a "peacenik" - by this time I was very radical; and was there to "shut down the government" by blocking traffic in Washington after all the nice people had gone home.

By August of 1972, I was demonstrating from the left against both the Republican and Democratic Partys at their conventions in Miami. Of course, I got a floor pass to the Democratic to watch the show; and was part of the group getting tear gassed outside the Republican so that the gas got sucked into the ventilation system and emptied the hall. I put a paper bag over my head and voted for McGovern that year; after demonstrating outside his hotel in Miami because he blocked a gay rights plank in the Democratic Party platform (plus a few other things). It would be a long time until I voted for a person again.

By this time I was becoming a Marxist (Chinese version). I worked in a radical bookstore in California (so I got to read a lot of theory). I left California heading north in spring of 1973; and lodged in Oregon after getting arrested for violating the H. Rap Brown Act for attempting to get to the AIM siege at Wounded Knee, SD. I became active in a group whose primary radical role was running a very left print shop. People in the group had come together from the Black Panthers, Revolutionary Union, and the Patriot Party. My spiritual slide was complete - at least the philosophical part of it. I never called myself an atheist. When asked I said I felt that made God too important still - I called myself an agnostic not because I didn't know, but because I didn't care and thought it an unimportant question to even pursue or think about.

By 1978, for a variety of reasons my political activism was over - but not because of any real disagreement with Marxism. My first marriage, and the responsibilities of four step-children, and the dismal sectarian state of radical political organizations all put an end to it (the left has always been self-destructive: might have something to say about the validity of the politics).

Sex

I was the nerd in school: glasses, "98 lb weakling", good grades, asthma - so no sports. Most of my friends were jocks. I admired guys that had "the pretty women". It was my goal to be able to do that too; and of course I thought they all were "scoring". I dated the same girl on and off from the summer before my sophmore year in high school until the summer before my senior year in high school. She moved to Ohio.

We lost our virginity together in honor of that event. I went off to church conference in Florida; expecting to be able to see her for about a month before her family left for good. Undying love spoken, she had my ring. After I got to Florida, I found out that her parents found out we had sex - and that she had missed her period and might be pregnant. The mature young man I was, ready for a serious relationship, and wanting to be there to support my girlfriend - I cashed in my ticket home and flew to Ohio to "visit" a friend of mine there and to stay close to a girl I met a conference that I was "in love' with now. I hid there about two weeks until the mother on that end called mine - and they escorted me to a bus. Susan wasn't pregnant.

The summer after my senior year showed the transition. I went to church conference for the last time to see the girl I had met the previous summer. The situation with Roland happened that summer. I would head to college that fall and flunk out by Christmas - much too much time drinking to study. Then, I ran into the guy I won the Vietnam War debate against the year before. Let the politics begin. By April I was at Mayday

Growing my hair long improved my looks. I had a string of sexual relationships in Missouri and beyond. There were any number of bad endings. I met my first wife in the movement in Oregon; and we lived together for about a year before we got married. She was Chicana - freaked my mom out a bit but not bad. She was 11 years older, she had four children. We stayed together for 11 years.

I blew that marriage apart by adultery. I became a sexual addict for nude dancers, massage parlors, and prostitution. I got caught, I got divorced. Within six months of the divorce, I met my second wife. In that six months I had had two more sexual relationships. The plunge was complete.

Next Post: The Road Back to God

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