Page Contents

 

•  Chapter Content
•  General Comment
•  Specific Comments
•  Conclusions

  

        

    

Chapter Content

   

Use the links and drop down to the comments if you would like to see each comment applying to each paragraph here.

     

P.277-278 A call for doubt and enquiry    Link below

      

P.278-280 Examples of silly and nasty people   Link below

     

P.280-281 Examples of silly religion   Link below

      

P.282,283 Outmoded religion and the optimism of humanism   Link below

  

    

     

General Comment

   

This final chapter is a final last blast at the negatives of religion and a declaration of unrealistic optimism for which humanists are so well known.

    

       

Specific Comments

   

Again we look at the specific points we have observed in the ‘Content' part above

    

P.277-278 A call for doubt and enquiry. The deception in this part is deriding revelation and, believing it to be truth, all hope is placed in doubt and enquiry, which is really a subtle way of saying there is no truth and so anything us up for grabs. Relativism under cover!

     

P.278-280 Examples of silly and nasty people. I don't know where the author dragged up the bizarre smearing of Thomas Aquinas. As he does not give us his sources for this I assume he must be using some fringe Catholic source which runs very much contrary to the bulk of the materials about Aquinas. Character assassination seems a ready tool in the hand of the atheist.

   

The following page or so covers the Iranian president and Shia extremists so I have no need to defend their antics. Similarly there is no need to defend Afghanistan extremism and 9/11 bombings, but neither have anything to do with God, only men's inventions of God for their own political purposes.

       

P.280-281 Examples of silly religion.   Here again the author picks up the example of the Islamic upset over ‘the Cartoons' and then a silly example of a prayer experiment. The former needs no comment. For the latter see my comments on the Dawkins appraisal.

       

P.282,283 Outmoded religion and the optimism of humanism. In a swift final couple of pages the author seeks to suggest that religion is now outmoded and has been taken over by science and modernity. In a plea for a new Enlightenment we find the optimism so often found in humanism. We have covered in our Apologetics pages both the problems of modern science (uncertainty and unrighteousness) and the crazy optimism of humanists and therefore rather than repeat those pages here, we would request you go to our Apologetics pages and consider these things there. CLICK HERE

   

     

      

Conclusions

   

On this page we have:

•  highlighted some of the key points he makes,
•  observed that this brief chapter seeks to make its point by bad examples of bad religion, as if that has anything to say about God, and then by hopeless optimism.
•  responded, point by point, to the points he makes.

 

Because this is such a brief chapter, we will simply reiterate the headings we've used with brief comment:

•  A call for doubt and enquiry – relativism by another guise – see Apologetics Pages
•  Examples of silly and nasty people – smearing religion by use of untypical people
•  Examples of silly religion – smearing religion by silly examples
•  Outmoded religion and the optimism of humanism – generalisations and denunciations with an unwise reliance upon science in the hands of fallible humans.

 

The author has obviously run out of energy and so fires broadsides at scarecrows and misses the real targets that aren't even mentioned. We are simply left with humanistic optimism which has not got a good history. Perhaps that is why he says so little.