Christopher Hitchens On Religious Instruction and the Age of Reason- Pretentious Is Not Accurate

Ia Yanc “If religious instruction were not allowed until the child had attained the age of reason, we would be living in a quite different world.” -Christopher Hitchens- 5 ·

Mark Rego Monteiro Ian Yancey Oh, you gave me a rather lame drool of a comment above, so I can´t resist. Hitchens was a rather reactionary sort who demonstrated little integrity as he ratched sensationalism and misdirection not least of all against Mother Theresa. You should certainly avoid such mistaken pretension with a little more authentic characters: " “God has commanded us to be concerned about the slums down here, and his children who can´t eat three square meals a day.” I would urge you to give priority to the search for God. Allow his spirit to permeate your being....If you don not have a deep and patient faith in God, you will be powerless to face the delays, disappointments, and vicissitudes that inevitably come.” Or, you can snidely follow Hitchens who made as simplistic a mistake as having Tom Paine for a hero and having no idea that he had at least one Quaker parent, the religion that led the anti-slavery movement and modern social movements, as with Susan B Anthony, the founding of Oxfam, and Greenpeace, no less. Sad pretension.

Ian Yancey Mark Rego Monteiro I only took a quote from Hitchens for two reasons. One, because the statement happens to be accurate. Two, he is/was the most pretentious and intellectual person in opposition of religious thinking. 1 ·

Ian Yancey Mark Rego Monteiro the shaping of children's minds is historically utilitarian. Disgraceful by way of teaching what to think instead of how to think. ·

Mark Rego Monteiro Ian Yancey "Accurate" So, you jump right ahead because you AGREE with his statement, and assume it´s TRUE. Just exactly how familiar are you with the social sciences? Not much, apparently. One comparative perspective is ancient Greece of Aristotle. Hey, Alexander the Great wasn´t known for being particularly pious, but was tutored by Aristotle, a great philosophical intellect who spurred Christianity´s own scholarship greatly. Alexander the Great executed his family rivals, according to a rationale, succeeded brilliantly and often enough, brutally and began to put statues of himself in temples. Then, he was assassinated at the age of 32. Aristotle fled at the word of the assassination. So much for reason without religion in ancient Greece. By the time of the Neoplatonic Academy in 529, those philosophers were a bunch of elitists, with no interest in Jesus´ integrity or its institutional deviations. Eastern Emperor Justinian closed them down in the doomed Eastern Empire (by 1453). By contrast, early Christians from Paul to Justin Martyr´s legacy after around 165 AD were Christian philosophers. Anthony of the Desert´s legacy after 270 AD founded Christian monasticism. Cassiodorus instituted classical learning for monks by the 500s, and by 1150, Christians were turning monastic schools´ legacy into the U of Paris, then later Oxford, and Cambridge. They loved learning, and Thomas of Aquinas took Aristotle´s First Cause logic which he couldn´t reconcile with his view of an Eternal Universe and a inaccessible Unmoved Mover. The Bishop Tempier of Paris also responded to complaints overvaluing Aristotle and asserted that God´s omnipotence applied. As per God, things could move in curved lines, contrary to Aristotle. Yay for the church. And so on to through abolition from George Fox´s Quaker legacy and a dissident Anglican college grad, FDR, Eleanor, Gandhi, and Rev MLK, and many others. Reason is a valuable development, but has been directed by informed spiritual awareness, not atheist rationalism. was developed by Christians, not atheist materialists. Sorry. As for Hitchens, indeed, you don´t get that "pretentious" is not a credible quality. "Most intellectual"? Confusing "religion" with "fundamentalist religion" is not even just a gradeschool error, but evidence of psychological issues. Clearly, it is a common enough confusion amongst Americans, who have been indoctrinated in superpower propaganda of various kinds by Big Biz profiteers, or some splinter view. Sadly, even Obama´s example generates people saying, "Yeah, but he doesn´t really believe." Sorry, but America´s WWF fan mentality is not sustainable. As I demonstrate in various points, Hitchens´ fallacies and pretensions reverberated with the prejudices of low information people. You need to inform yourself better with religious scholars like Huston Smith, who started me off with Taoism. Otherwise, Chris Hedges is the most progressive public voice who confronted the New Atheists. Brian L McClaren is also an activist, though a little more toned down. You´ll need to face the consequences of your standards at some point. Meanwhile, James Hannam has done great historical work. All on top of Karen Armstrong´s work. · Reply · 11m Mark Rego Monteiro Ian Yancey Education has various challenges, not least of all in America´s post WWII superpower fantasyland ratcheted by Big Biz profiteering corp execs and their indoctrination. Your jumping on the scapegoat of religion bandwagon is as utilitarian as they come, "Religion is the problem because Hitchens is pretentious and intellectual!" Excuse me? I was raised atheist humanist, and in high school my ex-Catholic atheist hum. dad´s interest in liberal arts including psychology gave me the fuel to perceive my need for non-objectified reality. I picked Huston Smith´s Chinese Tao at first, and Unitarian Universalism´s "spiritual path." Meditation and prayer, like religious membership, provide measurable benefits. Their depth involves the discussion of spiritual-religious phenomena that include the values we find in nature, and the need to recognize the threat to nature by overindulgent and heedless economic industrialization and production. I started with Taoism, Buddhism, self-help stuff, Kung Fu, casually, to Jungian type psychology. When you get to "love heals," and "Rev MLK was righteous and religious," you then ask, "Where does that kind of love come from?" Jesus was no fundamentalist, and his legacy has resurgent integrity. Fundamentalists, on the other hand, are a different group. Where do they come from? They emerge in force from America´s Big Biz profiteer corp execs after FDR´s amazing New Deal for his Christian service values. How to think? Man, that´s how you think. I owe it all to the lack of prejudice and the valuation of liberal arts education. I see now it needs to be called Multidisiciplinary Philosophy with empiricism to put "science" in its more restricted, value free objectivist place.