It is easy to find examples of how religious thinking among lay or fundamentalist Christians can result in profoundly irrational ideas. But the evidence that reason is abandoned in Christianity equally comes from the mouths of “sophisticated” theologians, leaders, scholars and spokespersons practising it.
By Madison S. Hughes (08.13.2011)
On innumerable occasions during my twenty-three year career as a U.S. Army Officer I found myself a captive audience member of Staff meetings that began with prayer. While deployed I vividly recall one instance where a Mississippi Redneck Chief of Staff, Colonel Massey, asked before a mandatory Staff meeting if anyone objected to the Chaplain opening the mandatory Staff meeting with a prayer. When I voiced my objection, I was told that I was welcomed to leave the room during the prayer. The U.S. Army, especially the Officer corps, is highly right-wing, and religious. It never ceases to amaze me that I, a lifelong Atheist, was able to serve twenty-three years in such an overtly religious organization.
Some of the Catholic Church’s misbehavior in all this can be attributed to a desire to handle things “in house”. (sic) Many Catholic leaders have wanted to take care of abusers themselves rather than subject them to civil law and criminal punishment.
Americans are becoming less religious, with rates of atheism and secularism increasing in each new generation. This demographic transformation has been in progress ever since World War II, but in recent years it’s begun to seriously pick up steam.
Why is religion featuring so prominently in the Republican presidential race? What happened to jobs? […] Melissa Harris-Perry argues that religion has been central to Republican party politics for more than a decade. After 9/11, faith became a central part of conservatives’ electoral strategy as politicians tapped anti-Muslim anxiety to gain votes.
Every time that we say that God is the author of some phenomenon, that signifies that we are ignorant of how such a phenomenon was caused by the forces of nature.
