Comments on: Do we need God to defend civilisation? https://freethinker.co.uk/2024/01/do-we-need-god-to-defend-civilisation/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=do-we-need-god-to-defend-civilisation The magazine of freethought, open enquiry and irreverence Mon, 05 Feb 2024 13:39:17 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 By: Christopher Kelly https://freethinker.co.uk/2024/01/do-we-need-god-to-defend-civilisation/#comment-241 Mon, 05 Feb 2024 13:39:17 +0000 https://freethinker.co.uk/?p=11847#comment-241 I agree with your concluding paragraph but when referring to the “Christian God and the values of the Bible” I think you need to distinguish OT from the NT. As Prof Stavrakopoulou put it, the ancient God of the OT (supersized, muscle-bound, human-shaped “with a penchant for the fantastic and monstrous”) has long been theorised away and replaced by a lifeless, abstract deity worshipped by Christians and Jews today. In contrast, the God of the NT as represented by Jesus is a completely different being and his values (Sermon on the Mount etc) are what the West has essentially absorbed and built on in varying ways. As an atheist I haven’t got a problem with that, nor with Holland’s central premise in Dominion.

As for Peterson, the man has completely lost the plot. Once upon a time he had some interesting things to say (and I liked his mantra to confront chaos, get on with it and “quit whining!”), but now he sounds like a second-rate, soapbox preacher. His muddled and condescending ‘Message to the Christians Churches’ is just awful.

]]> By: CarlW https://freethinker.co.uk/2024/01/do-we-need-god-to-defend-civilisation/#comment-240 Wed, 31 Jan 2024 18:52:38 +0000 https://freethinker.co.uk/?p=11847#comment-240 “Morally, killing someone for their religious beliefs strikes us as murder.”

How about handing your own child over to the village elders to be stoned to death for the crime of backtalking? See Deuteronomy 21:18.

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