Jeremy Thompson Catholic PhD in Biblical Languages, Programmer, Runner

Here’s a quote of the day from Paul Tillich from his Theology of Culture:

A God about whose existence or non-existence you can argue is a thing beside others within the universe of existing things.  And the question is quite justified whether such a thing does exist, and the answer is equally justified that it does not exist.  It is regrettable that scientists believe that they have refuted religion when they rightly have shown that there is no evidence whatsoever for the assumption that such a being exists.  Actually, they have not only refuted religion, but they have done it a considerable service.  They have forced it to reconsider and restate the meaning of the tremendous word God….

Related:

Interesting Thought on Faith and Skepticism

Chris Heard on Atheism and the Legitimacy of Change in Religion

James McGrath on Atheism

Daniel McClellan and Doug Chaplin are two bloggers that I enjoy reading a lot.  They have both drawn attention to a relief effort being made by Richard Dawkins for the recent earthquake in Haiti.  Daniel is a little more hopeful; Doug is a bit more disappointed.  These are interesting takes on the topic, and I hope you will click over an read them.  I have to say that I find at Daniel’s assessment spot on and couldn’t agree more with this point (I would bold it and italicize it, but that might be overdoing it a bit):

First, I’d like to say that contributing to the relief efforts in Haiti is important no matter the motivation.

If you haven’t made use of the Red Cross’ opportunity to give through text message, I can’t think of any way that it could possibly be any easier.

My online buddy Joel Watts has written a post today with the main title as “Engaging Atheism.”  There is a lot of discussion going on in the comments section, and I think Joel has done a service to write such a post.  I would encourage readers to go and engage in the dialogue regardless of your viewpoints.  Or, perhaps you might consider starting a side discussion on your own blog.  As Joel and I dialogue a good bit, he knows we hold very different views on a lot of different things.  I felt like on this though I could engage in the comments; however, if you want to present a completely different view and want to do that on your own blog rather than just in the comments, I think that will be helpful too.  Just remember to leave a link somewhere.

Related:

Chris Heard on Atheism and the Legitimacy of Change in Religion

James McGrath on Atheism

Have you heard that religious belief is supposedly dying out?  Not according to THESE FACTS AND FIGURES.  Thanks to John Hobbins over at Ancient Hebrew Poetry for posting them.  Some of these statistics are absolutely astounding.  I’ll give you just one to whet your appetite:

2#. Every 24 hours, the number of atheists in the world is estimated to increase by 900; of Jews, by 330; of Buddhists, by 7,700; of Hindus, by 34,000; of Muslims, by 70,000; of Christians, by 82,000 [ IBMRJan 2009, 32].

Click over and check the rest out.  You may be just as floored as I was.

I could not have said this better myself.  Chris Heard points out one of the problems with recent atheist critiques of religion, namely that they disallow for any type of change or development in a religious belief system.  Here is his conclusion:

Change is normal in religions, including Judaism and Christianity. To admit that “we” (in a particular religion) once thought x about a particular topic, but now think y does not invalidate that religion, nor does it demonstrate the non-existence of whatever deity that religion reveres. Change over time in a religion may speak to the character of that religion or its deity, but changes as such can hardly carry the freight that some recent atheists want to put on them.

I recommend reading the whole post HERE.