The recent Pew Forum study on religion, widely reported in the media, shows that the vast majority of Americans remains religious: 92 percent believe in God. This percentage has remained relatively stable for more than half a century.
Atheists remain a tiny proportion of the population with some interesting anomalies: 21 percent of self-identified atheists say they believe in God, with nearly 10 percent of them "absolutely sure" of it. What this means is that 21 percent of self-described atheists are highly confused and 10 percent are certified nut-cases.
What got the most attention, however, was Pew's discovery that a majority of religious Americans believe that other religions make valid claims about God and can lead to heaven. Around 80 percent of Catholics, Protestants and Jews, as well as 55 percent of Muslims, reject the idea that their religion is the only way.
These findings, however, hardly suggest that pluralism has overtaken truth as the defining feature of American religion. First of all, Christianity is the only religion to hold another religion to be wholly true. That religion is Judaism. Second, Catholics and Protestants have become increasingly convinced that it is fidelity to creedal Christianity--and not the denominational differences of past centuries--that is decisive for salvation. Finally many people don't realize that just as Christianity sees itself as succeeding and incorporating Judaism, so Islam sees itself as coming after and incorporating both Judaism and Christianity. Consequently I'm not surprised that most Muslims view Jews and Christians as fellow monotheists rather than hell-bound infidels.
Soon my Orange County debate with atheist Christopher Hitchens and Jewish radio host Dennis Prager will be up on the web and I'll link to it. The debate, amusingly billed as a Christian-Atheist-Jewish showdown, had some fiery and fascinating exchanges. At one point Hitchens sought to alienate me from the Jews in the audience by asking me if good and decent Jews can go to heaven. I said I believe they can. This is no denial of the central Christian proposition that Christ is the way to salvation. The Bible clearly specifies that there is salvation through Christ for his followers.
But Scripture and Christian teaching leave open the question of what happens to virtuous non-Christians who either lived before Christ or who have not had a chance to accept him. My hope and belief is that God's mercy can extend to them also, as it did to Moses and Abraham and the God-fearing Jews of the Old Testament. If so, they too would be saved through Christ's sacrifice on the cross, even if they did not consciously and explicitly embrace that sacrifice. As for atheists who reject God and affirm with Hitchens that they want nothing to do with heaven, we can be reasonably confident that God will respect their free will and reluctantly grant their wish.
There are two kinds of pluralism: the kind that holds that truth does not matter, and the kind that holds that truth matters greatly but as flawed human beings our reason and experience gives us only limited access to the truth. The first kind of pluralism is deadly for religion, and is typically embraced by flaccid people who are too lazy to think or who have been seduced by postmodernist flimflam. The second kind of pluralism is the shared ground of debate between intelligent believers and unbelievers. The stakes could not be higher.
Reader Comments ( Page 4 of 69)
46. Atheists who reject God... Even in the words are hubris? Why are we all rejecting YOUR god? When we say we're atheists, you think we specifically reject YOUR god! Silliness! What's so special about it? To you it's special; to us it's just another fantasy. We are rejecting ALL gods here, get it straight, so that means that we also can't 'enjoy' the moslem afterlife, the hindu karmic wheel, and every other afterlife MEN have ever thought of. And we fucking like it that way just fine, thanks so much.
Funny, from the hypochrist point of view the whole world's against you except for those christians that think like you do. But to us atheists, the view is different. We can see ALL religions are against ALL OTHER religions, all differing, and all claiming to be the ultimate authority. So, you hypochrists are one in a huge crowd of deluded schmucks who all theik they're right. And as Dire Straits said; "Two men say they're Jesus; one of them must be wrong..." Implying of course, the logical, that both of them are.
Godless Heathen Brian at 2:17PM on Jun 25th 2008
47. Sorry for the typos.. Didn't proof read.
Godless Heathen Brian at 2:19PM on Jun 25th 2008
48. SOMBER: If [the atheist gets into heaven], then it would mean the the reward doesn't hinge on identifying yourself as a member of faith X or praying to God Y but in your day to day actions and their conseqences with fellow humans. A humanistic judgement of salvation.
PV: Of course doing good matters...and so does doing bad. Both matter. You are appropriately dealing with the good, but you are forgetting the bad and its implications.
[Side Note: Your comment assumes that "good" and "bad" acts exist; such an assumption requires the presupposition of the theistic philosophical framework---for 'good' and 'evil' don't exist in an accidental universe that lacks objective design, intent, and purpose.]
preteristvision at 2:21PM on Jun 25th 2008
49.
By all means, PV -
Elaborate. You say I'm wrong, but the bible says one thing; the pope says another.
Lorenzago di Cadore, Italy - Pope Benedict XVI reasserted the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church, approving a document released Tuesday that says other Christian communities are either defective or not true churches and Catholicism provides the only true path to salvation.
The new document, formulated as five questions and answers, restates key sections of a 2000 text, "Dominus Iesus," that the pope wrote when he was prefect of the congregation. The 2000 text riled Protestant and other Christian denominations because it said they were not true churches but merely ecclesial communities and therefore did not have the "means of salvation."
The other communities "cannot be called 'churches' in the proper sense" because they do not have apostolic succession - the ability to trace their bishops back to Christ's original apostles - and therefore their priestly ordinations are not valid, it says.
Jesus said: WHOSOEVER BELIEVETH IN ME SHALL HAVE EVERLASTING LIFE.
Once again, there is solid, undisputable proof that the pope called jesus a liar. I'd love to hear your explanation of how I'm wrong, but all you say is that I'm wrong.
By all means, prove it.
ex-christian at 2:21PM on Jun 25th 2008
50. DD: THE ONLY NUT CASE IS YOU !
THERE IS NO HEAVEN, THERE IS NO HELL, THERE ARE NO GHOSTS OR ANGLES, AND SURELY . . .
THERE IS NO GOD !
Daniel Mullane at 2:25PM on Jun 25th 2008
51. 1590.
pv what are your thoughts on the Supreme Court overturning the death penalty verdict of the child rapist in Louisiana?
Was justice for all done?
JefFlyingV at 2:28PM on Jun 25th 2008
52. PV: "Of course doing good matters...and so does doing bad. Both matter. You are appropriately dealing with the good, but you are forgetting the bad and its implications"
Is your position here that simply not believing in God (or Jesus) is "doing bad"?
Also, give the "atheists have no objective morality" thing a rest. We've dismantled your argument ad nauseum.
Ryan Anderson at 2:28PM on Jun 25th 2008
53.
The other communities "cannot be called 'churches' in the proper sense" because they do not have apostolic succession - the ability to trace their bishops back to Christ's original apostles - and therefore their priestly ordinations are not valid, it says.
Here it is again, PV, so that you don't gloss over the fact that my term "Martin Scorsese-Mafia bullshit" is accurate.
Does it say anywhere in the bible that who preaches the word is more important than the word istelf? Good luck finding that.
ex-christian at 2:29PM on Jun 25th 2008
54. 1590 pv,
If the child rapist had cofessed his sins to you and then the Supreme Court had overturned the death penalty verdict, would justice have been served?
JefFlyingV at 2:32PM on Jun 25th 2008
55. Pretervision- and you are not providing a coherent rebuttal of that position to demonstrate the superiority of your alternative.
Emanon: one of the first and biggest cracks that came to my faith (yes, I was a christian for 18 some on yeas) came in form of a moral delemnia: how could god favor one religion over another? Genetically, we are all human. Presumably we are all equal to god. So why is it a buddhist saint is slated for hell according to christian theology while a christian bastard gets saved because they're a part of the 'right' religion? The manifest unfairness was inescapable in a supposed 'supremely just' being. Am I to believe that Ghandi, a man I respect immensely, is in hell while Dahlmer, a christian who recieved last rites and died a christian is saved? I'm sorry. I could accept a god who forgives everyone, but not one who picks and chooses according to such a superficial criteria.
And the problem with the idea of an God who is more than just christianity is that it challenges the authority of religious institutions. If there is a God, and if that God is both the God of the Christians AND the God of the Muslims then there are two possibility: God has a nasty case of MPD, or people have twisted God's expectations to suit their own cultural and instutional biases. So the idea that there are multiple paths of salvation is one that fundamentalists of all religions reject: it dilutes the authority they employ to act against non-believers.
When I stopped being a christian I tried being a pantheist for a while. In the end I dropped the attempt because nowhere did I see evidence of any God... pantheist or otherwise. I recognize there are mysteries unexplainable and misteries unknowable and some day I will die. What happens then will be either nothing, or something interesting and I'll find out just how right or wrong I am.
Somber at 2:28PM on Jun 25th 2008
56. Pretervision: Let me ask you a question. Is Jeffery Dahlmer in heaven? Yes, he was a murderer. Yes, he was a homosexual. Yes, he was a cannibal, and though I don't think the bible forbids it I'm pretty sure it should. But he was a christian and on his execution confessed his sins and recieved last rights. So, according to the rules of christianity, he must be in heaven because no sin, great or small, is too large to be forgiven by faith in Jesus?
Now I acknowledge it's impossible to prove one way or the other. After all we can't go to saint peter or cerberus and ask 'hey, do you have one Jeffery Dahlmer in there?' But according to the rules of christianity as set forth in the bible, it doesn't matter how good you are. You can be an absolute saint and if you're not a christian you go to hell. "There is only one way to the father; by me." Remember? No good clause. No bad clause. And sure, if you're good it will, supposedly, be easier to get into heaven than if you're a greedy SOB. But there's no prohibitation.
Incidently, being that my lover is a christian, the major argument against homosexual christians is that, if they really loved Jesus, they would stop having sex. But aside from individuals like Robertson, Hagge, and Phelps, I don't find many christians presumptious enough to say that simply being gay is enough to guarentee damnation regardless of faith. Just an interesting aside IMO.
Somber at 2:37PM on Jun 25th 2008
57. Judaism,Christianity,Islam,Yes.Judaism is covered by a separate Covenant with God.Christianity derives from Judaism["Salvation is from the Jews"];Islam derived from the latters.As for the rest of Religions;I don't know?But I will confess and be honest; I don't care.
Stephen Chizmar at 2:37PM on Jun 25th 2008
58. McCain’s real military file is unflattering. To end all the speculation, McCain should authorize the Navy to release all his military record.
In June 2005, seven months after he lost his bid for president, Senator John Kerry signed the 180 waiver, authorizing the release of his complete military service record to the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, and the Associated Press. ** Unlike Kerry, McCain shouldn't wait until after the election to do so. The Navy may claim that it already released McCain's record to the Associated Press on May 7, 2008 in response to the AP's Freedom of Information Act request. But the McCain file the Navy released contained 19 pages -- a two-page overview and 17 pages detailing Awards and Decorations. Each of these 17 pages is stamped with a number. These numbers range from 0069 to 0636. When arranged in ascending order, they precisely track the chronology of McCain's career. It seems reasonable to ask the Navy whether there are at least 636 pages in McCain's file, of which 617 weren't released to the Associated Press.
Some of the unreleased pages in McCain's Navy file may not reflect well upon his qualifications for the presidency. From day one in the Navy, McCain screwed-up again and again, only to be forgiven because his father and grandfather were four-star admirals. McCain's sense of entitlement to privileged treatment bears an eerie resemblance to George W. Bush's.
Despite graduating in the bottom 1 percent of his Annapolis class, McCain was offered the most sought-after Navy assignment -- to become an aircraft carrier pilot. According to military historian John Karaagac, "'the Airdales,' the air wing of the Navy, acted and still do, as if unrivaled atop the naval pyramid. They acted as if they owned, not only the Navy, but the entire swath of blue water on the earth's surface." The most accomplished midshipmen compete furiously for the few carrier pilot openings. After four abysmal academic years at Annapolis distinguished only by his misdeeds and malfeasance, no one with a record resembling McCain's would have been offered such a prized career path. The justification for this and subsequent plum assignments should be documented in McCain's naval file.
McCain's file should also include records and analytic reviews of McCain's subsequent sub-par performances. Here are a few cited in two highly favorable biographies, both titled John McCain, one by Robert Timberg and the other by John Karaagac.
Timberg:
"[A]fter a European fling with the tobacco heiress, John McCain reported to flight school at Pensacola in August 1958.... [H]is performance was below par, at best good enough to get by. He liked flying, but didn't love it. What he loved was the kick-the-tire, start-the-fire, scarf-in-the-wind life of a naval aviator. ...One Saturday morning, as McCain was practicing landings, his engine quit and his plane plunged into Corpus Christi. Knocked unconscious by the impact, he came to as the plane settled to the bottom....McCain was an adequate pilot, but he had no patience for studying dry aviation manuals.... His professional growth, though reasonably steady, had its troubled moments. Flying too low over the Iberian Peninsula, he took out some power lines, which led to a spate of newspaper stories in which he was predictably identified as the son of an admiral.... [In 1965] he flew a trainer solo to Philadelphia for the Army-Navy game. Flying by way of Norfolk, he had just begun his descent over unpopulated tidal terrain when the engine died. 'I've got a flameout,' he radioed. He went through the standard relight procedures three times. At one thousand feet he ejected, landing on the deserted beach moments before the plane slammed into a clump of trees."
Adds Karaagac:
"In his memoir, everything becomes a kind of game of adolescent brinksmanship, how much can one press the limits of the acceptable and elude the powers that be....The [fighter jocks'] ethos of exaggerated, almost aggressive sociability becomes an end in itself and an excuse for license. There is a tendency for people, not simply to believe their own mythology but, indeed, to exaggerate it.... Fighter jocks, like politicians around their campaign contributions, often press the limits of the acceptable. It is a type of mild corruption that takes place in a highly privileged atmosphere, where restraints are loosened and excuses made....McCain gives some hint in his memoirs about where he stood in the hierarchy among carrier flyers. Instead of the sleek and newer Phantoms and Crusaders, McCain flew the dependable Douglas A-4 Skyhawk in an attack, not a fighter squadron. He was thus on the lower end of the flying totem pole."
The genius of McCain's mythmaking is his perceived humility amid perpetual defiance. Having been a rebel without cause, and often a rebel without consequences, McCain apparently was not surprised when his Vietnamese captors went relatively easy on him compared to his fellow POWs. The Vietnamese military secretly and frequently filmed the American POWs to learn their propensities. Col. Pham Van Hoa of the Vietnamese People's Army Film Department was in charge of the filming. Asked recently for his dominant impression of McCain, the now-retired Van Hoa said that McCain "seemed superior to other prisoners." How so? "Superior in attitude towards them."
But when Mark Salter, McCain's closest aide and co-author, was asked by the Arizona New Times about the first McCain memoir, Faith of My Fathers, that he was then working on, Salter said "the book will showcase a humble McCain. When I worked on this book with him, he just kept saying, 'Other guys had it a lot worse. I think they took it easier on me because of who my dad was. . . . When they tied me in ropes, they'd roll my sleeve up to give it a little padding between the rope and my bicep, you know, little things I noticed. The only really hard time I had was when I didn't go home, and then it only lasted a week, and sometimes I felt braver, I felt I could get away with more.'"
Is McCain now getting away with more by hiding his official history and by having his national security adviser inflate McCain's resume with a bogus promotion to admiral humbly declined? If so, McCain may be attempting to hide why the Navy was in fact slow to promote him upwards despite his suffering as a POW and his distinguished naval heritage.
One possible reason: After McCain had returned from Vietnam as a war hero and was physically rehabilitated, he was urged by his medical caretakers and military colleagues never to fly again. But McCain insisted on going up. As Carl Bernstein reported in Vanity Fair, he piloted an ultra-light, single propeller plane -- and crashed another time. His fifth loss of a plane has vanished from public records, but should be a subject of discussion in his Navy file. It wouldn't be surprising if his naval superiors worried that McCain was just too defiant, too reckless and too crash prone.
Regardless, McCain owes it to the country to release his complete naval records so that American voters can see his documented history and make an informed decision.
iynaroc02 at 2:39PM on Jun 25th 2008
59. X-Xian: By all means, PV - Elaborate. You say I'm wrong, but the bible says one thing; the pope says another.
PV: You're committing an error by pitting Jesus against his own Church---which Jesus set up as his own human community and body---and against a variety of his own commands that he gave to men to follow.
In the New Testament scriptures, "believing in Jesus" actually equates to doing what he said and taught, which involves a wide range of things. The Pope is merely examining the whole range of things that must be followed, whereas you are reducing Christianity to some kind of singular mental exercise.
It appears to me that you haven't read the documents you cite:
Dominus Iesus
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20000806_dominus-iesus_en.html
preteristvision at 2:41PM on Jun 25th 2008
60. PV?
I'm afraid your assertion that "I don't know what I'm talking about" isn't a rebuttal, but a stupid excuse for "I can't answer to that."
Please elaborate on how and why I'm wrong.
ex-christian at 2:41PM on Jun 25th 2008