Nor have I tried to. I am not talking about individual cases, I am talking
about the overall behavior of humanity as a whole.
>You can't challenge the fact that Raul Ruiz was going to blow his entire
>family away when he, holding the shotgun in his hand, accidentally heard a
>Christian message on TV and INSTANTLY changed. You can't challenge the fact
>that for the last twenty years he has given himself to the good of his
>community.
Good for him. Obviously that's what he needed. But it doesn't prove that
that's what *everybody* needs, or even that the majority of people need
it.
>You can't challenge the fact that millions testify to similar transformations.
>Was Chuck Colson a bastard when he worked for Nixon? He doesn't deny it.
I have read a number of Chuck Colson's columns. IMO, he's still a bastard.
He's just replaced criminal behavior with an arrogant, bigoted attitude.
>So you can't say that Christianity does not change a person for good,
Nor did I intend to. Perhaps you misunderstood what I was saying; I admit
that it may not have been entirely clear. I was not implying that Christianity
can't help *anyone*. I was just talking about human nature *in general*.
>and has
>for 2,000 years. Oh sure, you can question the objective validity of their
>religion, as you've been doing. But you CANNOT question their changed lives
>DUE to that religion. Even if Christianity is a gigantic fiction, it has
>changed more lives for the good than any other system, ever.
This is a bold claim. Can you back it up with some figures?
>How many stories out there do we have of the transforming power of atheism?
Why don't you ask some people on alt.atheism and find out?
>Materialism? Where are the great books describing the beauty of turning away
>from God?
Atheism is about more than just "turning away from God". By describing it
in this negative light, you automatically bias your argument in favor of
your desired conclusion. And there are certainly plenty of books about the
beauty of understanding the universe from a naturalistic perspective. One
I can think of off the top of my head is "At Home in the Universe", by
Stuart Kauffman.
>Bertrand Russell, H. G. Wells, Voltaire, all of the notable atheists
>I have found wrote about the dark despair of their world views--and most left
>tattered personal lives in their wake.
That's funny; most of the atheists I have known have had perfectly healthy
personal lives. Once again, you are providing a handful of examples and
assuming that they constitute a statistical sample. They do not.
_____________________________________________________________
| Russell Stewart |
| http://www.rt66.com/diamond/ |
|_____________________________________________________________|
| Albuquerque, New Mexico | diamond@rt66.com |
|_____________________________|_______________________________|
2 + 2 = 5, for very large values of 2.