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(photo from threfreethinker)
Freethought Day is October 12th, the annual observance by freethinkers and secularists of the anniversary of the effective end of the Salem Witch Trials.
The seminal event connected to Freethought Day is a letter written by then Massachusetts Governor William Phips in which he wrote to the Privy Council of the British monarchs, William and Mary, on this day in 1692. He outlined the quagmire into which the trials had degenerated, in part by a reliance on "evidence" of a non-objective nature and especially "spectral evidence" in which the accusers claimed to see devils and other phantasms consorting with the accused. (Click here for full Wikipedia article)
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Every man- in the development of his own personality- has the right to
form his own beliefs and opinions. Hence, suppression of belief, opinion
and expression is an affront to the dignity of man, a negation of man’s
essential nature.
-Thomas Emerson
First Amendment freedoms are most in danger when the government seeks to
control thought or to justify its laws for that impermissible end. The
right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected
from the government because speech is the beginning of thought.
-Anthony
Kennedy
For the First Amendment rests upon the premise that both religion and
government can best work to achieve their lofty aims if each is left
free from the other within its respective sphere.
-Hugo Black
Freedom of expression must be considered sacred and thought can only be
corrected by counter thought.
-Mahfouz Naguib
Freedom of thought and the right of private judgment, in matters of
conscience, driven from every other corner of the earth, direct their
course to this happy country as their last asylum.
-Samuel Adams
Freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That
would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the
right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order.
-Chief
Justice Robert Jackson
Heresy is only another word for freedom of thought.
-Graham Greene
I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of
the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power, than
by violent and sudden usurpations; but, on a candid examination of
history, we shall find that turbulence, violence, and abuse of power, by
the majority trampling on the rights of the minority, have produced
factions and commotions, which, in republics, have, more frequently than
any other cause, produced despotism. If we go over the whole history of
ancient and modern republics, we shall find their destruction to have
generally resulted from those causes.
-James Madison
If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we
don't believe in it at all.
-Noam Chomsky
It is true that many Americans find the (Ten) Commandments in accord
with their personal beliefs. But we do not count heads before enforcing
the First Amendment.
-Sandra Day O'Connor
No people in history have ever survived who thought they could protect
their freedom by making themselves inoffensive to their enemies.
-Dean
Acheson
The freedom of thought is a sacred right of every individual man, and
diversity will continue to increase with the progress, refinement, and
differentiation of the human intellect.
-Felix Adler
The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always
stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking,
speaking, and writing.
-John Adams
They (the Pilgrim Fathers) believed in freedom of thought for themselves
and for all other people who believed exactly as they did.
-Will
Cuppy
Unreason and anti-intellectualism abominate thought. Thinking implies
disagreement; and disagreement implies nonconformity; and nonconformity
implies heresy; and heresy implies disloyalty- so, obviously, thinking
must be stopped. But shouting is not a substitute for thinking and
reason is not the subversion but the salvation of freedom.
-Adlai
E. Stevenson II
We are so proud of our guarantees of freedom in thought and speech and
worship, that, unconsciously, we are guilty of one of the greatest
errors that ignorance can make- we assume our standard of values is
shared by all other humans in the world.
-Dwight D. Eisenhower
When people talk of the freedom of writing, speaking or thinking I
cannot choose but laugh. No such thing ever existed. No such thing now
exists; but I hope it will exist. But it must be hundreds of years after
you and I shall write and speak no more.
-John Adams
You simply disobey. Peaceably, yes. Respectfully, of course.
Nonviolently, absolutely. But when told how to think or what to say or
how to behave, we don't. We disobey the social protocol that stifles and
stigmatizes personal freedom.
-Charlton Heston
Categories: Atheism, Church and State, First Amendment, Freethought, Religion
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A man who is convinced of the truth of his religion is indeed never
tolerant.
-Albert Einstein
Because we have sought to cover up past evil, though it still persists,
we have been powerless to check the new evil of today. Evil unchecked
grows, Evil tolerated poisons the whole system.
-Jawaharlal Nehru
Clever men will recognize and tolerate nothing but cleverness; every
authority rouses their ridicule, every superstition amuses them, every
convention moves them to contradiction.
-Henri Frédéric Amiel
Endurance is not toleration.
-Unattributed
History balances the frustration of 'how far we have to go' with the
satisfaction of 'how far we have come.' It teaches us tolerance for the
human shortcomings and imperfections which are not uniquely of our
generation, but of all time.
-Lewis F. Powell, Jr.
I believe that the fundamental alternative for man is the choice between
'life' and 'death;' between creativity and destructive violence; between
reality and illusions; between objectivity and intolerance; between
brotherhood-independence and dominance- submission.
-Erich Fromm
I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the
intolerant, and kindness from the unkind, yet strangely, I am ungrateful
to those teachers.
-Kahlil Gibran
I have seen great intolerance shown in support of tolerance.
-Samuel
Taylor Coleridge
I have zero tolerance for self-inflicted drama.
-Tina Roth
Eisenberg
I respect those who resist me; but I cannot tolerate them.
-Charles
de Gaulle
If it was necessary to tolerate in other people everything one permits
in oneself, life would be unbearable.
-Georges Courteline
Intolerance of ambiguity is the mark of an authoritarian personality.
-Theodor
W. Adorno
It is our utopias that make the world tolerable to us: the cities and
mansions that people dream of are those in which they finally live.
-Lewis
Mumford
It's a stupid word... tolerance.
-Phyllis Schlafly
Lying is an indispensable part of making life tolerable.
-Bergen
Evans
Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more
uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is
right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been
the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men
who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized
man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others.
His culture is based on 'I am not too sure.'
-H.L. Mencken
New Year's Resolution: To tolerate fools more gladly, provided this does
not encourage them to take up more of my time.
-James Agate
No man has a right in America to treat any other man 'tolerantly,' for
tolerance is the assumption of superiority.
-Wendell Willkie
Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires
tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth.
-Rex Stout
Nothing makes you more tolerant of a neighbor's noisy party than being
there.
-Franklin P. Adams
Our universities are so determined to impose tolerance that they'll
expel you for saying what you think and never notice the irony.
-John
Perry Barlow
Rooted in freedom, bonded in the fellowship of danger, sharing
everywhere a common human blood, we declare again that all men are
brothers, and that mutual tolerance is the price of liberty.
-Will
Durant
Southerners have a genius for psychological alchemy. If something
intolerable simply cannot be changed, driven away or shot they will not
only tolerate it but take pride in it as well.
-Florence King
Stop tolerating in your leaders what you would not tolerate in your
friends.
-Michael Ventura
The bleak fact is that new tolerances often resemble the old
intolerances. In many instances, bitterness over having been 'the
oppressed' seems to be little more than jealousy over not having been
the oppressor.
-Jim Goad
The evils of government are directly proportional to the tolerance of
the people.
-Frank Kent
The First Amendment is often inconvenient. But that is besides the
point. Inconvenience does not absolve the government of its obligation
to tolerate speech.
-Anthony Kennedy
The highest result of education is tolerance.
-Helen Keller
The idea that horrors are required to give zest to life and interest to
art is the idea of savages, men of no experience worth mentioning, and
of merely servile, limited sensibilities. Don't tolerate it.
-George
Santayana
The most intolerable pain is produced by prolonging the keenest pleasure.
-George
Bernard Shaw
The perception of poverty as morally intolerable in a rich society had
to await the emergence of a rich society.
-Nathan Rosenberg
The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
-Oscar
Wilde
The society that scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a
humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an
exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy.
Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.
-John Gardner
The world is in greater peril from those who tolerate or encourage evil
than from those who actually commit it.
-Albert Einstein
The world tolerates conceit from those who are successful, but not from
anybody else.
-John Blake
The worst government is the most moral. One composed of cynics is often
very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit
to oppression.
-H.L. Mencken
There are three intolerable things in life- cold coffee, lukewarm
champagne, and overexcited women.
-Orson Welles
There's no one more intolerant than a liberal in San Francisco.
-Tim
Goodman
To know a person's religion we need not listen to his profession of
faith but must find his brand of intolerance.
-Eric Hoffer
Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil.
-Thomas Mann
Tolerance comes with age. I see no fault committed that I myself could
not have committed at some time or other.
-Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe
Tolerance does not... do anything, embrace anyone, champion any issue.
It wipes the notes off the score of life and replaces them with one long
bar of rest. It does not attack error, it does not champion truth, it
does not hate evil, it does not love good.
-Walter Farrell
Tolerance grows only when faith loses certainty; certainty is murderous.
-Will
Durant
Tolerance is an admirable intellectual gift, but it is worth little in
politics.
-Woodrow Wilson
Tolerance is just a makeshift, suitable for an overcrowded and
overheated planet. It carries on when love gives out, and love generally
gives out as soon as we move away from our home and our friends.
-E.M.
Forster
Tolerance is only another name for indifference.
-W. Somerset
Maugham
Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.
-G.K.
Chesterton
Tolerance, good temper and sympathy are no longer enough in a world
where ignorance rules, and Science, which ought to have ruled, plays the
pimp.
-E.M. Forster
Tolerance: (n) Openness to all ideas from the Left.
-Kenneth Lloyd
Billingsley
Tolerating those who will not tolerate you is more correctly known as
cowardice.
-Perry de Havilland
Toleration is a good thing in its place; but you cannot tolerate what
will not tolerate you, and is trying to cut your throat.
-J.A.
Froude
Too much of what passes as tolerance in America is not the result of
principled judgment but is simple moral indifference.
-Daniel
Taylor
True Patriotism, it seems to me, is based on tolerance and a large
measure of humility.
-Adlai E. Stevenson II
We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in
tolerance and free speech.
-David Brin
We should not permit tolerance to degenerate into indifference.
-Margaret
Chase Smith
We tend to idealize tolerance, then wonder why we find ourselves
infested with losers and nut cases.
-Patrick Nielsen Hayden
While the American system may be forgivingly tolerant of people with
wild and dangerous ideas, it doesn't generally let them run the country.
-Gerard
Baker
Who teaches you tolerance? Maybe sometimes your children teach you
patience, but always your enemy will teach you tolerance. So your enemy
is really your teacher.
-Tenzin Gyatso (The Dalai Lama)
Whoever kindles the flames of intolerance in America is lighting a fire
underneath his own home.
-Harold E. Stassen
You would better educate ten women into the practice of liberal
principles than to organize a thousand on a platform of intolerance and
bigotry.
-Susan B. Anthony
You would not even tolerate for one moment the conduct in an individual
that is commonplace in the acts of some nations. You would lock up such
a person.
-L. Ron Hubbard
Categories: Hypocrisy, Intolerance, Quotes on a topic, Religion, Tolerance
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(via Reddit)
Categories: Canada, Church and State, Reddit, Religion
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... when Jesse Ventura is the voice of reason:
This is simply the protection of religion, again, to gain its foothold into our state houses, and to inflict their beliefs on people like me that don't want to believe what they believe.
You listening to me out there? I don't want to believe what you believe, and you can't make me. And you never will. Enough of this.
You have your religion, you're free to practice it, but stop bringing it into the state house and stop trying to pass now federal laws that protect you.
When the churches start paying taxes, then the church can have a say so."
Categories: Church and State, First Amendment, Jesse Ventura, Religion, Signs of the Apocalypse, Supreme Court, Video, YouTube
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Categories: Church and State, First Amendment, Religion, Supreme Court
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Where men are people, corporations are people, and women apparently just don't make the judicial cut...
Corporations are people, my friend. Women? Not so much.
-Erin
Gloria Ryan
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This is the kind of ruling where you look at the dissent and you think,
'Oh yeah, this is definitely going to get overturned on appeal,' and
then you realize 'Oh God, there's no appeal.'
-Rachel Maddow
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Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and
conscientious stupidity.
-Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (dissenting):
In the Court’s view, RFRA demands accommodation of a for-profit corporation’s religious beliefs no matter the impact that accommodation may have on third parties who do not share the corporation owners’ religious faith- in these cases, thousands of women employed by Hobby Lobby and Conestoga or dependents of persons those corporations employ. Persuaded that Congress enacted RFRA to serve a far less radical purpose, and mindful of the havoc the Court’s judgment can introduce, I dissent...
...Religious organizations exist to foster the interests of persons subscribing to the same religious faith. Not so of for-profit corporations. Workers who sustain the operations of those corporations commonly are not drawn from one religious community. Indeed, by law, no religion-based criterion can restrict the work force of for-profit corporations... The distinction between a community made up of believers in the same religion and one embracing persons of diverse beliefs, clear as it is, constantly escapes the Court’s attention. One can only wonder why the Court shuts this key difference from sight...
The court, I fear, has ventured into a minefield.
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Justice Sonia Sotomayor (dissenting):
Those who are bound by our decisions usually believe they can take us at our word. Not so today.
Let me be absolutely clear: I do not doubt that Wheaton genuinely believes that signing the self-certification form is contrary to its religious beliefs. But thinking one's religious beliefs are substantially burdened... does not make it so. Not every sincerely felt 'burden' is a 'substantial' one, and it is for courts, not litigants, to identify which are.
The Court's actions in this case create unnecessary costs and layers of bureaucracy, and they ignore a simple truth: The Government must be allowed to handle the basic tasks of public administration in a manner that comports with common sense.
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The men who wrote this decision on behalf of the Supreme Court have
entered into a war on women. They have become a blatantly political
activist anti-women political organization. There are some [religious]
beliefs that are so heinous that government should not respect them…
Withholding basic health care from women is bigotry, plain and simple.
We should not accept it, no matter how ‘sincerely’ the belief is held.
-Terry
O'Neill, President, National Organization of Women
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Guess which justices supported corporations' refusal to pay for female
contraceptives?
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It's good to know that the Supreme Court is dominated by the town elders
from "Footloose."
-Frank Conniff
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John Fugelsang:
Supreme Court rules in #HobbyLobby case that religious preferences don't
have to follow laws.
Your move, Rastafarians.
Hobby Lobby covers Viagra, not IUD; because a fertilized egg is clearly God's will but impotency clearly isn't.
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It may be time for some personal sidewalk counseling by liberals outside
of Hobby Lobby doors.
-Susan Gardner
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KGB:
The U.S. Constitution and the Bible have a lot in common. Few people have read them in their entirety; they are quoted out of context and cherry-picked; their official interpreters wear robes and issue pronouncements that sometimes benefit an entitled few or discriminate against women and minorities; and their decrees and commandments are simply ignored when they interfere with the interests of those in power.
The Roberts court has certainly made history. Does the name Dred Scott ring a bell?
Let me see if I understand this: the Supreme Court upheld the Religion Freedom Restoration Act by allowing corporations, which the Court considers to be people, to force their religious beliefs upon those who do not share those beliefs. Ok. Got it. (facepalm)
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Re: today's Supreme Court cases: How many 2000 Nader voters still think
it made no difference whether Bush or Gore won?
-@JeffGreenfield
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Pastafarian business owners free to deny coverage of celiac disease.
-@OmarJorge
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My corporation was Wiccan for 1-2 yrs after college and would only cover
hyssop for purification and yarrow flower to dispel negative energy.
-@KenJennings
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Take away our sex ed, contraception, and access to abortions, then
condemn us for having children, then make sure we get unfair wages so we
can't support the children we have. Then take away the social safety net
so we're totally screwed. Then call us irresponsible sluts.
-@Kelly
Fineman
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@pourmecoffee:
Closely held 21,000 employee, 572 store $2.28 billion dollar retail craft store chains are people, my friend.
Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray my Boss my benefits keep
He
watches me through day and night
Telling me what's wrong and right
Amen
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Religious freedom is your freedom to live according to the dictates of
my religion's misconceptions, no matter how wrong.
=Mary W.
Matthews
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@LOLGOP:
Conservatives are fierce defenders of your freedom to practice their religion.
It's just a coincidence my religious liberty concerns only target women and gays. And you pointing that out violates my religious liberty.
A Christian business that takes a stand against divorcees would impress since Jesus actually, you know, mentioned divorce.
If corporations could have abortions, abortion would be tax deductible.
Work's tough now that my boss decided that coffee breaks actually cause abortions.
This birth control mandate violates my religious belief that Obama shouldn't be president.
If forcing you to provide a resource to your employees that they could use in way you find wrong is immoral, only slavery would be moral.
Be back in a few hours. Boss is making me get circumcised.
Newt Gingrich can now object to your birth control coverage on moral
grounds. Rush Limbaugh. Donald Trump.
On moral grounds.
Categories: Church and State, First Amendment, Religion, Supreme Court
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The real Duck Dynasty.
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Categories: Church and State, Civil Rights, Cleaning off the desktop, Duck Dynasty, First Amendment, Religion
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The Family Research Council is either adorably oblivious,
or their PR
outfit is just plain evil.
Variations on a theme:
When this man smiles, a fairy dies:
Speaking of smiles:
(YouTube video: formerly captive ducks see water for the first time).
Categories: Animals, Cartoons, Church and State, Politics, Religion, Supreme Court, The New Yorker, Video, YouTube
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Motorola shows off tattoo and swallowable password hardware
Mobe manufacturer playing long game for end times
By Iain
Thomson in San Francisco
Motorola has shown off an electronic authentication tattoo and an FDA-approved pill that uses the body to transmit passwords, and says it wants to see a new generation of smartphones geared towards such wearable- or edible- technology.
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.
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One marketing problem Motorola may not have anticipated is the reaction of biblical literalists to its wearable authentication systems
A surprising number of people in the US still adhere to an apparent literal translation of the current version of the Bible. These include Jehovah's Witnesses, who refuse blood transfusions and shun those who take them, to those who look to the finale of the New Testament: The Book of Revelation- or, for you believers of the Catholic persuasion, The Apocalypse.
The text, thought to be written about 60 years after the biblical death of Christ, is regarded as either a description of the end times of humanity, a satirical pastiche on the increasingly subverted tenants of Christian bureaucracy, or a really bad mushroom trip on a Greek island. Nevertheless it contains the following warning:
"It causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name. This calls for wisdom: let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man, and his number is 666."
Be reassured that the majority of people of faith in the US and elsewhere aren't quite so inflexible. Those that aren't may be shrill, particularly in the US, but do not form a representative sample of Christianity.
Categories: Religion, Signs of the Apocalypse, Technology
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(91 years later, and this sermon is probably even more valid today.)
Harry Emerson Fosdick (May 24, 1878 - October 5, 1969) was an American pastor. Fosdick became a central figure in the fundamentalist-modernist controversy within American Protestantism in the 1920s and 1930s and was one of the most prominent liberal ministers of the early 20th Century. Although a Baptist, he was guest preacher in New York City at First Presbyterian Church on West Twelfth Street and then at the historic, interdenominational Riverside Church. (Click for full Wikipedia article).
"Shall the Fundamentalists Win?": Defending Liberal Protestantism in the 1920s
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Urban as well as rural Americans flocked to fundamentalist and evangelical churches in the 1920s. "Liberal" Protestants sought to reconcile faith and science and to slow what they saw as the reactionary tendencies of fundamentalism. Harry Emerson Fosdick's influential 1922 sermon, "Shall the Fundamentalists Win?," called for an open-minded, intellectual, and tolerant "Christian fellowship." Though the sermon cost him his post at New York's First Presbyterian Church, his views represented those of an influential Protestant minority, and Fosdick enjoyed a long career at Riverside Church, built for him by John D. Rockefeller. Following the Scopes trial and a well-publicized scandal involving well-known pastor Aimee Semple McPherson and a mysterious lover, fundamentalists began to lose the prominence they enjoyed in the 1920s. But religious fundamentalism would remain a vital political force in American life.
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This morning we are to think of the fundamentalist controversy which threatens to divide the American churches as though already they were not sufficiently split and riven. A scene, suggestive for our thought, is depicted in the fifth chapter of the Book of the Acts, where the Jewish leaders hale before them Peter and other of the apostles because they had been preaching Jesus as the Messiah. Moreover, the Jewish leaders propose to slay them, when in opposition Gamaliel speaks "Refrain from these men, and let them alone; for if this counsel or this work be of men, it will be overthrown; but if it is of God ye will not be able to overthrow them; lest haply ye be found even to be fighting against God."...
Already all of us must have heard about the people who call themselves the Fundamentalists. Their apparent intention is to drive out of the evangelical churches men and women of liberal opinions. I speak of them the more freely because there are no two denominations more affected by them than the Baptist and the Presbyterian. We should not identify the Fundamentalists with the conservatives. All Fundamentalists are conservatives, but not all conservatives are Fundamentalists. The best conservatives can often give lessons to the liberals in true liberality of spirit, but the Fundamentalist program is essentially illiberal and intolerant.
The Fundamentalists see, and they see truly, that in this last generation there have been strange new movements in Christian thought. A great mass of new knowledge has come into man's possession— new knowledge about the physical universe, its origin, its forces, its laws; new knowledge about human history and in particular about the ways in which the ancient peoples used to think in matters of religion and the methods by which they phrased and explained their spiritual experiences; and new knowledge, also, about other religions and the strangely similar ways in which men's faiths and religious practices have developed everywhere...
Now, there are multitudes of reverent Christians who have been unable to keep this new knowledge in one compartment of their minds and the Christian faith in another. They have been sure that all truth comes from the one God and is His revelation. Not, therefore, from irreverence or caprice or destructive zeal but for the sake of intellectual and spiritual integrity, that they might really love the Lord their God, not only with all their heart and soul and strength but with all their mind, they have been trying to see this new knowledge in terms of the Christian faith and to see the Christian faith in terms of this new knowledge.
Doubtless they have made many mistakes. Doubtless there have been among them reckless radicals gifted with intellectual ingenuity but lacking spiritual depth. Yet the enterprise itself seems to them indispensable to the Christian Church. The new knowledge and the old faith cannot be left antagonistic or even disparate, as though a man on Saturday could use one set of regulative ideas for his life and on Sunday could change gear to another altogether. We must be able to think our modern life clear through in Christian terms, and to do that we also must be able to think our Christian faith clear through in modern terms.
There is nothing new about the situation. It has happened again and again in history, as, for example, when the stationary earth suddenly began to move and the universe that had been centered in this planet was centered in the sun around which the planets whirled. Whenever such a situation has arisen, there has been only one way out— the new knowledge and the old faith had to be blended in a new combination. Now, the people in this generation who are trying to do this are the liberals, and the Fundamentalists are out on a campaign to shut against them the doors of the Christian fellowship. Shall they be allowed to succeed?
It is interesting to note where the Fundamentalists are driving in their stakes to mark out the deadline of doctrine around the church, across which no one is to pass except on terms of agreement. They insist that we must all believe in the historicity of certain special miracles, preeminently the virgin birth of our Lord; that we must believe in a special theory of inspiration—that the original documents of the Scripture, which of course we no longer possess, were inerrantly dictated to men a good deal as a man might dictate to a stenographer; that we must believe in a special theory of the Atonement— that the blood of our Lord, shed in a substitutionary death, placates an alienated Deity and makes possible welcome for the returning sinner; and that we must believe in the second coming of our Lord upon the clouds of heaven to set up a millennium here, as the only way in which God can bring history to a worthy denouement. Such are some of the stakes which are being driven to mark a deadline of doctrine around the church.
If a man is a genuine liberal, his primary protest is not against holding these opinions, although he may well protest against their being considered the fundamentals of Christianity. This is a free country and anybody has a right to hold these opinions or any others if he is sincerely convinced of them. The question is— Has anybody a right to deny the Christian name to those who differ with him on such points and to shut against them the doors of the Christian fellowship? The Fundamentalists say that this must be done. In this country and on the foreign field they are trying to do it. They have actually endeavored to put on the statute books of a whole state binding laws against teaching modern biology. If they had their way, within the church, they would set up in Protestantism a doctrinal tribunal more rigid than the pope's.
In such an hour, delicate and dangerous, when feelings are bound to run high, I plead this morning the cause of magnanimity and liberality and tolerance of spirit. I would, if I could reach their ears, say to the Fundamentalists about the liberals what Gamaliel said to the Jews, "Refrain from these men and let them alone; for if this counsel or this work be of men, it will be everthrown; but if it is of God ye will not be able to overthrow them; lest haply ye be found even to be fighting against God."
That we may be entirely candid and concrete and may not lose ourselves in any fog of generalities, let us this morning take two or three of these Fundamentalist items and see with reference to them what the situation is in the Christian churches. Too often we preachers have failed to talk frankly enough about the differences of opinion which exist among evangelical Christians, although everybody knows that they are there. Let us face this morning some of the differences of opinion with which somehow we must deal.
We may well begin with the vexed and mooted question of the virgin birth of our Lord. I know people in the Christian churches, ministers, missionaries, laymen, devoted lovers of the Lord and servants of the Gospel, who, alike as they are in their personal devotion to the Master, hold quite different points of view about a matter like the virgin birth. Here, for example, is one point of view that the virgin birth is to be accepted as historical fact; it actually happened; there was no other way for a personality like the Master to come into this world except by a special biological miracle. That is one point of view, and many are the gracious and beautiful souls who hold it. But side by side with them in the evangelical churches is a group of equally loyal and reverent people who would say that the virgin birth is not to be accepted as an historic fact... So far from thinking that they have given up anything vital in the New Testament's attitude toward Jesus, these Christians remember that the two men who contributed most to the Church's thought of the divine meaning of the Christ were Paul and John, who never even distantly allude to the virgin birth.
Here in the Christian churches are these two groups of people and the question which the Fundamentalists raise is this— Shall one of them throw the other out? Has intolerance any contribution to make to this situation? Will it persuade anybody of anything? Is not the Christian Church large enough to hold within her hospitable fellowship people who differ on points like this and agree to differ until the fuller truth be manifested? The Fundamentalists say not. They say the liberals must go. Well, if the Fundamentalists should succeed, then out of the Christian Church would go some of the best Christian life and consecration of this generation—multitudes of men and women, devout and reverent Christians, who need the church and whom the church needs.
Consider another matter on which there is a sincere difference of opinion between evangelical Christians: the inspiration of the Bible. One point of view is that the original documents of the Scripture were inerrantly dictated by God to men. Whether we deal with the story of creation or the list of the dukes of Edom or the narratives of Solomon's reign or the Sermon on the Mount or the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians, they all came in the same way, and they all came as no other book ever came. They were inerrantly dictated; everything there— scientific opinions, medical theories, historical judgments, as well as spiritual insight— is infallible. That is one idea of the Bible's inspiration. But side by side with those who hold it, lovers of the Book as much as they, are multitudes of people who never think about the Bible so. Indeed, that static and mechanical theory of inspiration seems to them a positive peril to the spiritual life...
Here in the Christian Church today are these two groups, and the question which the Fundamentalists have raised is this— Shall one of them drive the other out? Do we think the cause of Jesus Christ will be furthered by that? If He should walk through the ranks of his congregation this morning, can we imagine Him claiming as His own those who hold one idea of inspiration and sending from Him into outer darkness those who hold another? You cannot fit the Lord Christ into that Fundamentalist mold. The church would better judge His judgment. For in the Middle West the Fundamentalists have had their way in some communities and a Christian minister tells us the consequences. He says that the educated people are looking for their religion outside the churches.
Consider another matter upon which there is a serious and sincere difference of opinion between evangelical Christians: the second coming of our Lord. The second coming was the early Christian phrasing of hope. No one in the ancient world had ever thought, as we do, of development, progress, gradual change as God's way of working out His will in human life and institutions. They thought of human history as a series of ages succeeding one another with abrupt suddenness. The Graeco-Roman world gave the names of metals to the ages— gold, silver, bronze, iron. The Hebrews had their ages, too— the original Paradise in which man began, the cursed world in which man now lives, the blessed Messianic kingdom someday suddenly to appear on the clouds of heaven. It was the Hebrew way of expressing hope for the victory of God and righteousness. When the Christians came they took over that phrasing of expectancy and the New Testament is aglow with it. The preaching of the apostles thrills with the glad announcement, "Christ is coming!"
In the evangelical churches today there are differing views of this matter. One view is that Christ is literally coming, externally, on the clouds of heaven, to set up His kingdom here. I never heard that teaching in my youth at all. It has always had a new resurrection when desperate circumstances came and man's only hope seemed to lie in divine intervention. It is not strange, then, that during these chaotic, catastrophic years there has been a fresh rebirth of this old phrasing of expectancy. "Christ is coming!" seems to many Christians the central message of the Gospel. In the strength of it some of them are doing great service for the world. But, unhappily, many so overemphasize it that they outdo anything the ancient Hebrews or the ancient Christians ever did. They sit still and do nothing and expect the world to grow worse and worse until He comes.
Side by side with these to whom the second coming is a literal expectation, another group exists in the evangelical churches. They, too, say, "Christ is coming!" They say it with all their hearts; but they are not thinking of an external arrival on the clouds. They have assimilated as part of the divine revelation the exhilarating insight which these recent generations have given to us, that development is God's way of working out His will...
And these Christians, when they say that Christ is coming, mean that, slowly it may be, but surely, His will and principles will be worked out by God's grace in human life and institutions, until "He shall see of the travail of His soul and shall be satisfied."
These two groups exist in the Christian churches and the question raised by the Fundamentalists is— Shall one of them drive the other out? Will that get us anywhere? Multitudes of young men and women at this season of the year are graduating from our schools of learning, thousands of them Christians who may make us older ones ashamed by the sincerity of their devotion to God's will on earth. They are not thinking in ancient terms that leave ideas of progress out. They cannot think in those terms. There could be no greater tragedy than that the Fundamentalists should shut the door of the Christian fellowship against such.
I do not believe for one moment that the Fundamentalists are going to succeed. Nobody's intolerance can contribute anything to the solution of the situation which we have described. If, then, the Fundamentalists have no solution of the problem, where may we expect to find it? In two concluding comments let us consider our reply to that inquiry.
The first element that is necessary is a spirit of tolerance and Christian liberty. When will the world learn that intolerance solves no problems? This is not a lesson which the Fundamentalists alone need to learn; the liberals also need to learn it. Speaking, as I do, from the viewpoint of liberal opinions, let me say that if some young, fresh mind here this morning is holding new ideas, has fought his way through, it may be by intellectual and spiritual struggle, to novel positions, and is tempted to be intolerant about old opinions, offensively to condescend to those who hold them and to be harsh in judgment on them, he may well remember that people who held those old opinions have given the world some of the noblest character and the most rememberable service that it ever has been blessed with, and that we of the younger generation will prove our case best, not by controversial intolerance, but by producing, with our new opinions, something of the depth and strength, nobility and beauty of character that in other times were associated with other thoughts. It was a wise liberal, the most adventurous man of his day— Paul the Apostle— who said, "Knowledge puffeth up, but love buildeth up."
Nevertheless, it is true that just now the Fundamentalists are giving us one of the worst exhibitions of bitter intolerance that the churches of this country have ever seen. As one watches them and listens to them he remembers the remark of General Armstrong of Hampton Institute, "Cantankerousness is worse than heterodoxy." There are many opinions in the field of modern controversy concerning which I am not sure whether they are right or wrong, but there is one thing I am sure of: courtesy and kindliness and tolerance and humility and fairness are right. Opinions may be mistaken; love never is.
As I plead thus for an intellectually hospitable, tolerant, liberty-loving church, I am, of course, thinking primarily about this new generation. We have boys and girls growing up in our homes and schools, and because we love them we may well wonder about the church which will be waiting to receive them. Now, the worst kind of church that can possibly be offered to the allegiance of the new generation is an intolerant church. Ministers often bewail the fact that young people turn from religion to science for the regulative ideas of their lives. But this is easily explicable.
Science treats a young man's mind as though it were really important. A scientist says to a young man, "Here is the universe challenging our investigation. Here are the truths which we have seen, so far. Come, study with us! See what we already have seen and then look further to see more, for science is an intellectual adventure for the truth." Can you imagine any man who is worthwhile turning from that call to the church if the church seems to him to say, "Come, and we will feed you opinions from a spoon. No thinking is allowed here except such as brings you to certain specified, predetermined conclusions. These prescribed opinions we will give you in advance of your thinking; now think, but only so as to reach these results."
My friends, nothing in all the world is so much worth thinking of as God, Christ, the Bible, sin and salvation, the divine purposes for humankind, life everlasting. But you cannot challenge the dedicated thinking of this generation to these sublime themes upon any such terms as are laid down by an intolerant church.
The second element which is needed if we are to reach a happy solution of this problem is a clear insight into the main issues of modern Christianity and a sense of penitent shame that the Christian Church should be quarreling over little matters when the world is dying of great needs. If, during the war, when the nations were wrestling upon the very brink of hell and at times all seemed lost, you chanced to hear two men in an altercation about some minor matter of sectarian denominationalism, could you restrain your indignation? You said, "What can you do with folks like this who, in the face of colossal issues, play with the tiddledywinks and peccadillos of religion?" So, now, when from the terrific questions of this generation one is called away by the noise of this Fundamentalist controversy, he thinks it almost unforgivable that men should tithe mint and anise and cummin, and quarrel over them, when the world is perishing for the lack of the weightier matters of the law, justice, and mercy, and faith...
The present world situation smells to heaven! And now, in the presence of colossal problems, which must be solved in Christ's name and for Christ's sake, the Fundamentalists propose to drive out from the Christian churches all the consecrated souls who do not agree with their theory of inspiration. What immeasurable folly!
Well, they are not going to do it; certainly not in this vicinity. I do not even know in this congregation whether anybody has been tempted to be a Fundamentalist. Never in this church have I caught one accent of intolerance. God keep us always so and ever increasing areas of the Christian fellowship; intellectually hospitable, open-minded, liberty-loving, fair, tolerant, not with the tolerance of indifference, as though we did not care about the faith, but because always our major emphasis is upon the weightier matters of the law.
Source: Harry Emerson Fosdick, "Shall the Fundamentalists Win?" Christian Work 102 (June 10, 1922): 716–722.
(From History Matters)
Categories: Harry Emerson Fosdick, Religion
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(Or, if you prefer, today is the birthday of J.M. Barrie, author of "Peter Pan." See a collection of his quotes here.)
A dead atheist is someone who's all dressed up with no place to go.
-James
Duffecy
A little philosophy makes a man an Atheist: a great deal converts him to
religion.
-David Hume
All thinking men are atheists.
-Ernest Hemingway
America is a place where Jewish merchants sell Zen love beads to
agnostics for Christmas.
-John Burton Brimer
An atheist is one who hopes the Lord will do nothing to disturb his
disbelief.
-Franklin P. Jones
Atheism is a necessary condition for emancipation of the mind, but it's
not a sufficient one.
-Christopher Hitchens
Atheism is a non-prophet organization.
-Unattributed
Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make when in
the presence of religious dogma.
-Sam Harris
Atheism is often merely a variety of Christianity.
-T.S. Eliot
Atheism is really a term we do not need, in the same way that we don't
have a word for someone who is not an astrologer.
-Sam Harris
Atheism, like agnosticism and skepticism, can be a dignified posture
when it is based on careful reflection and civilly expressed. It should
not be mean-spirited. Many of us prefer a kinder and gentler form of
secular humanism.
-Paul Kurtz
Calling Atheism a religion is like calling bald a hair color.
-Don
Hirschberg
Don't be an agnostic. Be something.
-Robert Frost
Faith is the surrender of the mind; it's the surrender of reason, it's
the surrender of the only thing that makes us different from other
mammals. It's our need to believe, and to surrender our skepticism and
our reason, our yearning to discard that and put all our trust or faith
in someone or something, that is the sinister thing to me. Of all the
supposed virtues, faith must be the most overrated.
-Christopher
Hitchens
God made me an atheist. Who am I to argue with Him?
-Unattributed
He was permitted, without restriction, to speak of himself as immoral,
agnostic and socialistic, so long as it was universally known that he
remained pure, Presbyterian, and Republican.
-Sinclair Lewis
Hypocrite: a guy who writes a book on atheism and prays that it sells.
-Woody
Allen
I am an Agnostic because I am not afraid to think. I am not afraid of
any god in the universe who would send me or any other man or woman to
hell. If there were such a being, he would not be a god; he would be a
devil.
-Clarence Darrow
I am an atheist for moral reasons. I am of the opinion that you would
recognize a creator by his creation, and the world appears to me to be
put together in such a painful way that I prefer to believe that it was
not created by anyone than to think that somebody created this
intentionally.
-Stanislaw Lem
I considered atheism but there weren't enough holidays.
-Unattributed
I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god
than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible
gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.
-Stephen Roberts
I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an
agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure-
that is all that agnosticism means.
-Clarence Darrow
I have heard an atheist defined as a man who had no invisible means of
support.
-John Buchan
I think [the Bible] reads as if it were written by men and women, and
men and women, as we know, are one-half chromosome away from chimpanzees.
-Christopher
Hitchens
I'm a polyatheist- there are many gods I don't believe in.
-Dan
Fouts
I'm an atheist and I thank God for it.
-George Bernard Shaw
I`am a very hard-line, angry atheist. Yet I am fascinated by the concept
of devotion.
-Joss Whedon
If atheism is a religion, then bald is a hair color.
-
If God saw the way some Republicans invoked his name, he'd turn atheist.
-Dennis
Miller
If I have been wrong in my agnosticism, when I die I'll walk up to God
in a manly way and say, Sir, I made an honest mistake.
-H.L.
Mencken
If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to
save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the
pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous
atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose
every deed is foul, foul, foul.
-Isaac Asimov
If the American Atheists Society or Saddam Hussein himself ever sent an
unrestricted gift to any of my ministries, be assured I will operate on
Billy Sunday's philosophy: The Devil's had it long enough, and quickly
cash the check.
-Jerry Falwell
If there is a God, why did He make me an atheist?
-Ricky Gervais
In some awful, strange, paradoxical way, atheists tend to take religion
more seriously than the practitioners.
-Jonathan Miller
Maybe the atheist cannot find God for the same reason a thief cannot
find a policeman.
-Unattributed
Nah, there's no bigger atheist than me. Well, I take that back. I'm a
cancer screening away from going agnostic and a biopsy away from
full-fledged Christian.
-Adam Corrola
No one is more dangerous than someone who thinks he has the Truth. To be
an atheist is almost as arrogant as to be a fundamentalist. But then
again, I can get pretty arrogant.
-Tom Lehrer
Not one man in a thousand has the strength of mind or the goodness of
heart to be an atheist.
-Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Properly read, it [the Bible] is the most potent force for atheism ever
conceived.
-Isaac Asimov
Religion ends and philosophy begins, just as alchemy ends and chemistry
begins and astrology ends, and astronomy begins.
-Christopher
Hitchens
Scientists are a friendly, atheistic, hard-working, beer-drinking lot
whose minds are preoccupied with sex, chess and baseball when they are
not preoccupied with science. (Life of Pi)
-Yann Martel
She was an atheist and I was an agnostic. We didn't know what religion
not to bring our children up in.
-Woody Allen
The atheist staring from his attic window is often nearer to God than
the believer caught up in his own false image of God.
-Martin Buber
The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but
the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not.
-Eric
Hoffer
The two most evangelical groups in the world are atheists and
vegetarians, especially the least knowledgeable and least intelligent
individuals within those groups.
-Clark Coleman
The worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has
nobody to thank.
-Dante Rossetti
"There are no atheists in foxholes" isn't an argument against atheism,
it's an argument against foxholes.
-James Morrow
There are no atheists in foxholes.
-William J. Clear
There seem to be only two kinds of people: Those who think that
metaphors are facts, and those who know that they are not facts. Those
who know they are not facts are what we call atheists, and those who
think they are facts are religious. Which group really gets the message?
-Joseph
Campbell
To you I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition.
-Woody
Allen
We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever
believed in. Some of us just go one god further.
-Richard Dawkins
What do you get when you cross a Jehovah's Witness and an Atheist?
Someone who knocks at your door for no apparent reason.
-Stan
Kelly-Bootle
When agnostics die, do they go to the Great Maybe?
-Unattributed
When life is so harsh that a man loses all hope in himself, then he
raises his eyes to a shining rock, worshipping it, just to find hope
again, rather than looking to his own acts for hope and salvation. Yes,
atheism is a redemptive belief. It is theism that denies man's own
redemptive nature.
-Isaac Asimov
Whenever a reporter is assigned to cover a Methodist conference, he
comes home an atheist.
-H.L. Mencken
Categories: Atheism, Quotes on a topic, Religion
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I didn't even know he was Catholic. Oh, wait...
So, a 76 year old Pope with one lung. This will end well.
-Patrick
Hyland @uberfiend
You know who should totally be the final arbiter of sexual morality? A
76-year-old man who's never had an orgasm.
-God @TheTweetOfGod
Google Reader died for your pope jokes.
-LOLGOP @LOLGOP
Both Paul Ryan and Pope Francis have a commitment to the poor. But
Ryan's commitment is to make more of them.
-LOLGOP @LOLGOP
I think Elvis would have been a good Pope. He was popular and already
had the wardrobe...
-John Hoskins @BigJohnHoskins
If white smoke means they picked a new Pope, Uncle Rick's Bonneville has
been picking Popes for years.
-Pittsburgh Dad @Pittsburgh_Dad
"New Pope Called Gay Marriage 'Destructive Attack on God's Plan.'" Meet
the new boss. Same as the old boss.
-God @TheTweetOfGod
Somewhere Lou Dobbs is screaming about this Latino who crossed a border
to take someone else's Pope job.
-John Fugelsang @JohnFugelsang
I guess I'll see you all guys in the Pope Jokes section of hell.
-LOLGOP
@LOLGOP
Now that we have a Pope, we get that hour of sleep back, right?
-LOLGOP
@LOLGOP
Pope being showed his new office. "This is your computer, Holy Father.
Pick a password, don't make it Jesus. Everyone picks Jesus."
-pourmecoffee
@pourmecoffee
The new Pope came out on the balcony, saw his shadow, and realized there
was six more centuries of scandals.
-Albert Brooks @AlbertBrooks
Most awkward part of conclave is now when Cardinals check out and have
to authorize in-room entertainment charges.
-pourmecoffee
@pourmecoffee
The Pope finished his speech. So refreshing he didn't thank his agent.
-Elayne
Boosler @ElayneBoosler
I’m not even Catholic, and I can solidly get behind a Pope Frank.
-Jacque
Jo Bland @jacquebland
I was led to understand that Jack Nicholson & Mrs. Obama would be
announcing #newpope
-John Fugelsang @JohnFugelsang
It looks like there's a new pope but they're still in line waiting to
vote in Florida.
-Elayne Boosler
Categories: Facebook, Pope Francis, Religion, Twitter
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I imagine our Shelties all would have Scottish accents if they could speak, and Lucy, the oldest, would sound just like Deborah Kerr in the original Casino Royale.
They should just create a "Best Quentin Tarantino Film" category and be done with it.
How can you not like an Oscars show with two Captain Kirks?
I wish Spielberg had won best director. How great would it have been for him to talk too long and to have the Jaws music start..
The Pope's tweets come from an Apple device, which is kind of funny when you think about it...
Since I'm not a fan, I was a bit apprehensive about Seth McFarland hosting the Oscars. His performance reminded me of Calvin Trillin's suggested state motto for New Jersey: "Not as bad as you might have expected."
"Why Seth MacFarlane's Oscars were mean spirited and misogynistic, coming up next after our
review of the worst dressed women."
-@Crutnacker
Totally unrelated: It turns out Person of Interest is more of a documentary...
Categories: Apple, Calvin Trillin, Dogs, Jaws, Nova (PBS), Observations, Oscars, Person of Interest, Quentin Tarantino, Religion, Seth McFarlane, Star Trek, Steven Spielberg, Video, YouTube
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When Jesus told us to love one another, He never said we had to like it.
-The Covert Comic
Categories: Covert Comic, Jesus, Quotes of the day, Religion
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Categories: Meme of the day, Observations, Religion, Second Amendment
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Hey, t-shirt person.
If the "loving" god who demands your worship isn't bright enough to correctly interpret the establishment clause of the United States Constitution, and is so petty and vindictive as to turn his back and allow the slaughter of 20 innocent babies, then I have no use for either of you.
If you don't think teachers should be unionized but they should be
armed, cancel basic cable.
-@LOLGOP
If more guns made things safer America would have the lowest murder rate
on Earth.
The NRA reminds you their right to shoot more
clay pigeons without reloading is just a bit more important than your
life.
Welcome to America, where some of you will have an
easier time buying an assault rifle than marrying who you love.
-John
Fugelsang
Once, millions of Americans correctly argued the Constitution gave them
the right to own other human beings, too. We changed.
-Jason
Cochran
If the reason to have a thing is to protect yourself against people with
the same thing, maybe that thing is a bad thing.
-@TheTweetofGod
It took two minutes, between 9:36am to 9:38am to kill 26 children and
their teachers. How many hunters encounter 26 deer in two minutes?
-Roland
Scahill
Too many conservatives refuse to regulate assault rifles, but they're
fine with regulating the female reproductive organs. Because liberty.
-Bob
Cesca
Sorry, but prayers and giving your kids hugs fix nothing; only having
the balls to stand up to our insane selfish gun culture will.
-Bill
Maher
Categories: First Amendment, Mass shootings, Religion, Second Amendment, WTF?
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