Colleagues List, July 28th, 2019

Vol XV. No. 4

GLOBAL AND ECUMENICAL IN SCOPE
CANADIAN IN PERSPECTIVE

Wayne A. Holst, Editor
My E-Mail Address: waholst@telus.net

This email is sent only to a voluntary subscriber list.
If you no longer wish to receive these weekly columns,
write to me personally - waholst@telus.net

*****

Dear Friends:

Welcome to a summer edition of Colleagues List!
By that I mean summer for me if not for you.

This issue takes a normal form with a new book
introduction, colleagues contributions, net notes,
and wisdom of the week. I hope you like it.

My Special Item is a notice about a book that was
suggested for our autumn study at St. David's church,
but it was competing with four others. Our policy is
that when a book suggestion does not get selected,
we still buy a copy of it for the church library.

"Atheist Overreach" is an investigation into some of
the key arguments posed by the New Atheists against
religious faith, and the author's attempt to challenge
the intellectual substance of those arguments. It is
meant to promote dialogue between people seeking
intellectual clarity and fairness and not an argument
against atheism.

This should be of special interest to those watching
the issue of atheistic ministers in the United Church
of Canada.

I hope you will find this letter interesting.

Wayne

*****

SPECIAL ITEM

Book Notice -

ATHEIST OVERREACH
What Atheism Can't Deliver,
by Christian C. Smith

Oxford University Press,
New York, NY. Nov. 2018
159 pages. Hardcover.
$21.00 CAD. Kindle $10.69 CAD.
ISBN #976-0-19-088092-7.

Publisher's Promo:

In recent years atheism has become ever more visible,
acceptable, and influential. Atheist apologists have
become increasingly vociferous and confident in their
claims: that a morality requiring benevolence towards
all and universal human rights need not be grounded
in religion; that modernscience disproves the existence
of God; and that there is nothing innately religious
about human beings.

In Atheist Overreach, Christian Smith takes a look at
the evidence and arguments, and explains why we
ought to be skeptical of these atheists' claims about
morality, science, and human nature. He does not
argue that atheism is necessarily wrong, but rather
that its advocates are advancing crucial claims that
are neither rationally defensible nor realistic.

Their committed worldview feeds unhelpful arguments
and contributes to the increasing polarization of today's
political landscape. Everyone involved in the theism-
atheism debates, in shared moral reflection, and in the
public consumptionof the findings of science should be
committed to careful reasoning and rigorous criticism.

This book provides readers with the information they
need to participate more knowledgably in debates about
atheism and what it means for our society.

--

Author's Words:

People the world over today are engaged in big struggles
over the viability and importance of religion in personal
and public life.

The modern world has set in motion powerful forces of
secularization, and as part of that, recurrent waves of
activist atheism have confronted and criticized religion.

Most recently in the West, the so-called New Atheism
has pressed hard to discredit belief in God and undermine
religious influences in society.

In much of Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand,
religious beliefs and practices have been declining for
decades and similar trends are evident in the USA also...

With these developments emerge new questions like -
What kind of moral standards are genuinely secular
people justified in upholding? How much can we rely
on the findings of science to know whether of not God
exists? Are human beings somehow "naturally" religious
(as people of faith have always advocated?)... Could
humans as a species actually leave religion behind?....

People of faith should be very interested in these questions.
As a sociologist of religion and culture, I find these questions
fascinating and important and have come to some definite
conclusions about them. In this book I present some of
my answers to these questions.

I do not try to prove that atheism is definitely wrong. I
try to demonstrate that the way atheism tries to advance
its cause is incorrect.

I argue that atheism is overreaching, and that many of
its current advocates are overextending themselves
in many of their important assumptions, arguments and
conclusions.

Such atheists need to pull back from their over-reaching
and I would like us to discuss these matters in an
intellectually clear, honest and fair way.

My concern is not to mount a major argument against
atheism but to focus on what I consider intellectual
weak spots on the part of its advocates.

I attempt to take this approach in four carefully selected
areas and draw some conclusions. I also believe that this
is an exercise with which non-professional philosophers
and theologians need to be engaged; so I try to make
their involvement in the discussion possible.

- taken and interpreted from the Introduction

--

Author's Bio:

Christian Smith is a professor of sociology at Notre Dame
University. He has a doctorate in sociology and studied
theology at Harvard Divinity School. He has also taught
at the University of North Carolina and Gordon College. 

--

 My Thoughts:

Until recently, we have been inundated with books and
arguments by numerous specialists - New Atheists they
tend to be called - who disclaim supernatural theism
and are at least partly responsible for the emergence
of a major poling category, unknown in previous eras -
the "Nones" or persons who do not claim to be religious.

The fact of the matter is, many who remain within the
ranks of the "faithful" often agree with New Atheists
who criticize traditional religious ways of describing
reality.

In some respects, we owe a lot to the New Atheists
for pointing out major flaws in traditional religious
thinking. Yet, for some decades now, we have been
holding to a basic need for religious foundations
in personal and societal life. We have investigated
the importance of spirituality and have learned much
from other faith traditions. But something has been
missing. What, if any, is the value of religion in a
world that is growingly secular?

This book helps us to look at such issues intelligently -
not in an adversarial way (a typical Christian posture) -
but to view atheists as potential allies in a common
quest for truth.

Each of the four chapters of the book focus on one
of the questions noted above - morality, humans as
'naturally' religious, religion and science, and the
viability of leaving 'religion' behind.

At the present time, the United Church of Canada is
struggling with these issues in a special way and I
believe this book can help to bring clarity to the issues.

This subject is indeed a timely one. It is not esoteric.
____

Buy the book from Amazon.ca:
https://tinyurl.com/yykrf6wk

*****

COLLEAGUE CONTRIBUTIONS

Isabel Gibson,
Ottawa, ON.

I thought this would interest you.
Isabel

Smithsonian Magazine,
July, 2019

"Two Tour Guides - One Palestinian,
  One Israeli - Offer a New Way to
  Visit the Holst Land"

https://tinyurl.com/y5f8k44y

--

Jim Taylor,
Okanagan, BC

Personal Web Log
July 17th, 2019

"Dreams - Encounter With a Crashing Boar"
  https://tinyurl.com/y5bjpojz

--

Philip Yancey,
Colorado

Philipyancey.com
July 15th, 2019

"A Refugee Haven"
  https://tinyurl.com/yyvtr7qw

--

Ron Rolheiser,
San Antonio, TX

Personal Web Si
July 22nd, 2019

"What Does It Mean to be Born Again?"
  https://tinyurl.com/y4p2fh4m

*****

NET NOTES - July 28th, 2019

QUEBEC'S MORAL QUAGMIRE
What Bill 21 Means for
Religious Pluralism in Canada
by Colleague Michael Higgins

La Croix International
July 13rh, 2019

https://tinyurl.com/y4lh6hny

--

ON COURT PROPHETS AND
WILDERNESS PROPHETS
Conservative American Evangelicals
Speak Truth to Power

Christianity Today,
July 19th, 2019

https://tinyurl.com/y2elgnrz

--

IS EVANGELICALISM RELEVANT
TO CANADIAN CULTURE?
What Makes it Different?

Loveismoving.ca
July, 2019

https://tinyurl.com/yx9bzghz

--

I'M AN ATHEIST WHO LOVES
THE UNITED CHURCH OF CANADA
I Try to Live It's Values

Broadview,
July 15th, 2019

https://tinyurl.com/y4c5x89j

--

FALLUN GONG'S SECRETS
FOR SURVIVING IN CHINA
A New Era of Freedom Anticipated

UCA News,
July 19th, 2019

https://tinyurl.com/yxfkokcu

--

THE RISE OF THE SATANIC TEMPLE
IN CANADA - A REBUILDING PROJECT
Goal is the "Un-Doing" of Christianity

Global News,
July 21st, 2019

https://tinyurl.com/y4bonda4

--

HYMN SOCIETY TOURNY REVEALS
"THE GREATEST HYMN OF ALL TIME"
Serious Project Reveals Best of All

Religion News Service,
July 19th, 2019

https://tinyurl.com/y2nsp6pc

--

TONI MORRISON WRITES ABOUT
RACE, RELIGION AND HER OWN FICTION
A Collection of Her Work With Language

The Christian Century,
July 17th, 2019

https://tinyurl.com/y6fff9m7

--

BUILDING A CHURCH WITHOUT GOD
WAS NEVER GOING TO BE EASY
Secularists Forced to Rethink Approach

The Atlantic,
July 21st, 2019

https://tinyurl.com/y2rjc3n3

--

RECENT AMERICAN POLL SUPPORTS VIEW
THAT CLERGY ARE BECOMING IRRELEVANT
Low Church Attenders are Most Against Them

Religion News Service,
July 16th, 2019

https://tinyurl.com/y5bhofyg

--

GOVERNMENT-IMPOSED RESTRICTIONS ON
RELGION HAVE BEEN RISING, WORLD-WIDE
Research Shows Considerable Increase By Decade

Pew Research Institute,
July, 2019

https://tinyurl.com/y5srlcn5

"US Receives Poor Marks on Religious Freedoms"

Catholic News Service,
July 15th, 2019

https://tinyurl.com/y2jjn2vp

****
 
WISDOM OF THE WEEK - July 28th

Provided by Sojourners and the Bruderhof online:

The reason you have a hard time trusting your intuition
is because you are still convinced that some outside
authority knows better than you.

- Maryam Hasnaa

--

Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has
to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.

- Ursula K. Le Guin

--

Anger is not a shortcoming to be denied, but a creative
force that tells us when something is wrong.

- Austin Channing Brown

--

We live in a world in which we need to share responsibility.
It's easy to say 'It's not my child, not my community, not
my world, not my problem.' Then there are those who see
the need and respond. I consider those people my heroes.

- Fred Rogers

--

When we get our spiritual houses in order, we’ll be dead.
This goes on. You arrive at enough certainty to be able to
make your way, but it is making it in darkness. Don’t expect
faith to clear things up for you. It is trust, not certainty.

- Flannery O’Connor

--

Each and every one of us has the capacity to be an oppressor.
I want to encourage each and every one of us to interrogate
how we might be an oppressor and how we might be able
to become liberators for ourselves and for each other.

- Laverne Cox

--

Paperwork, cleaning the house, dealing with the innumerable
visitors who come all through the day, answering the phone,
keeping patience and acting intelligently, which is to find some
meaning in all that happens – these things, too, are the
works of peace.

- Dorothy Day

--

It is so important not to let ourselves off the hook or to
become apathetic or cynical by telling ourselves that
nothing works or makes a difference. Every day, light
your small candle.The inaction and actions of many
human beings over a long time contributed to the crises
our children face, and it is the action and struggle of
many human beings over time that will solve these crises
with God’s help. So every day, light your small candle.

- Marian Wright Edelman

--

Has it ever struck you that those who most fear to die are the
ones who most fear to live? Life is flexible and free, and you
are rigid and frozen. Life carries all things away, and you crave
stability and permanence. You fear life and death because you
cling. You cannot bear the thought of losing a relative or friend;
you dread losing a pet theory or ideology or belief. When you
cling to nothing, when you have no fear of losing anything, then
you are free to flow like a mountain stream that is always fresh
and sparkling and alive.

- Anthony de Mello

--

We live in a time when the good faith of peoples is doubted more than
ever before. Expressions throwing doubt on the trustworthiness of each
other are bandied back and forth.… We cannot continue in this
paralyzing mistrust. If we want to work our way out of the desperate
situation in which we find ourselves, another spirit must enter into
the people.…

We must approach them in the spirit that we are human beings,
all of us, and that we feel ourselves fitted to feel with each other;
to think and will together in the same way.

- Albert Schweitzer

*****

CLOSING THOUGHT - Thorton Wilder

Soon we shall die and all memory of those we have known will
have left the earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while
and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those
impulses of love return to the love that made them.

Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the
living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only
survival, the only meaning.

(end)

*****