Science is cosmic - Dr. Tyson (video)

Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly; "Beyond Belief" (TSN); P76 (video)

Prof. Neil deGrasse Tyson, PBS.org's Defender of the Status Quo, closes out a three-day lecture series with a moving final "sermon" on the New Agey cosmic perspective and the impact science is having on everything. Notice, too, that the famous atheist Richard Dawkins is in the audience.

Atheist Dawkins rages back at [Nazi] Pope

Atheist Dr. Richard Dawkins (left) and the Pope in feud over ironic Nazi comments. 
Why Atheists Fight

Faith & Reason (USA Today)

Britain's best known atheist, scientist, and author Richard Dawkins, is enraged at [former Hitler Youth] Pope Benedict XVI's attacks on godlessness. He is sputtering mad over Pope Benedict's equating the godless to potential Nazis. More

• Pope attacks secular Britain as being like Nazi Germany 
• Gay child molestation scandals drive down Pope Benedict's U.S. approval ratings 
• Pope again apologizes for sex abuse failures 
• Pope officially attacks atheism (Reuters)

Dawkins writes:
"Even if Hitler had been an atheist, his political philosophy was not based upon atheism and had no connection with atheism. Hitler was arguably (and by his own account) a Roman Catholic. In any case he enjoyed the open support of many of the most senior catholic clergy in Germany and the less demonstrative support of Pope Pius XII. Even if Hitler had been an atheist (he certainly was not), the rank and file Germans who carried out the attempted extermination of the Jews were Christians, almost to a man: either Catholic or Lutheran, primed to their antisemitism by centuries of Catholic propaganda about 'Christ-killers' and by Martin Luther's own seething hatred of the Jews. To mention Ratzinger's membership of the Hitler Youth might be thought to be fighting dirty, but my feeling is that the gloves are off after this disgraceful paragraph by the pope."

  

Future pope's Nazi salute was a blessing to Nazis (sanfranciscosentinel.com)*

 

*By his own admission (in his book, Salt of the Earth), in spite of denials by the Vatican, the current head of the Catholic Church, the greatest corporation the world has ever known, was as a young Nazi automatically enrolled in the "Hitler Youth." Israelis are angry at the Pope's failure to denounce the Holocaust, which after all the Catholic Church originally supported.

• [Thank you to Wisdom Quarterly reader Jim Mitchell who confirms that Pope Benedict was not a Nazi. His proof is that the photograph above was cropped from the original as the young former Hitler Youth cleric was photographed in a gesture of blessing. Thank you, Jim. The Pope's own written admission of his membership must have been a misprint.]

Was this Pope Really a Nazi?
[Pope] "Ratzinger [who renamed himself Benedict XVI] has several times gone on record on his supposedly 'problematic' past. In the 1997 book Salt of the Earth, Ratzinger is asked whether he was ever in the Hitler Youth.
 
"'At first we weren't,' he said, speaking of himself and his older brother, 'but when the compulsory Hitler Youth was introduced in 1941, my brother was obliged to join. I was still too young, but later as a seminarian, I was registered in the Hitler Youth' " (Source).

  

WISDOM QUARTERLY OPINION
It is ironic that the pope was a member of the Hitler Youth. And we sympathize with and understand Dr. Dawkins' position and that of any atheists who feel offended. But there is no use in mudslinging at mudslingers. In fact, it is said, "The one who slings back is worse than the original slinger" (according to The Dhammapada). It might just be that the pope is trying to divert attention from so many gay child molestation scandals by the clergy under his command by striking at an easy target, those "godless atheists."

• Laying Down the Rod (Bhikkhu Bodhi)
• Why is there no death penalty in Buddhist countries?

On GOD and other Sacred Cows (video)

From the genius series by Douglas Adams, envisioning a conversation with "God," the ruler of the universe and solopsist (solipsism). It is the last scene in the first BBC radio series of the science fiction comedy, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The principal characters pay a visit to the ruler of the universe. The original 12 episode radio series, the trilogy of books, subsequent books, and even the low-budget British TV series are all far superior to the poorly done movie most people are familiar with. Here are three very short videos on the notion of questioning even sacred and sacrosanct topics such as God and religious beliefs.

Invited by Richard Dawkins, a satirical reading by Douglas Adams on the topic of future cows, bred to want to be eaten and capable of clearly saying so (Korean subtitles): God, the universe, and everything is brought into question in a spirit of free inquiry as the Buddha invited in the Kalama Sutra.

Douglas Adams on the anachronistic role of novels and the new use of science books. The world is a thing of utter and extraordinary complexity and mystery. It is wonderful to explore, to investigate, to question, and admire it. Writing satirical science fiction comedy allows him to do that, making perhaps the most significant author of the 20th Century. Now deceased, his influence remains -- as an author, skeptic, environmentalist, and above all a genius and wit.

Free thinker, atheist, and author Richard Dawkins speaking at UC Berkeley on the topic of religion and questioning the sacrosanct, quoting Douglas Adams in the process: "Religion...has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. What it means is, 'Here is an idea or notion that you're not allowed to say anything bad about; you're just not. Why not? - because you're not!' "

Atheists: No God, no reason, just whining

Charlotte Allen (LA Times, May 17, 2009)
Superstar atheists are motivated by anger -- and boohoo victimhood.

I can't stand atheists -- but it's not because they don't believe in God. It's because they're crashing bores.

Other people, most recently the British cultural critic Terry Eagleton in his new book, Faith, Reason, and Revolution, take to task such superstar nonbelievers as Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion) and political journalist Christopher Hitchens (God Is Not Great) for indulging in a philosophically primitive opposition of faith and reason that assumes that if science can't prove something, it doesn't exist.

My problem with atheists is their tiresome -- and way old -- insistence that they are being oppressed and their fixation with the fine points of Christianity. What -- did their Sunday school teachers flog their behinds with a Bible when they were kids?

Read Dawkins, or Hitchens, or the works of fellow atheists Sam Harris (The End of Faith) and Daniel Dennett (Breaking the Spell), or visit an atheist website or blog (there are zillions of them, bearing such titles as "God Is for Suckers," "God Is Imaginary," and "God Is Pretend"), and your eyes will glaze over as you peruse -- again and again -- the obsessively tiny range of topics around which atheists circle like water in a drain.

First off, there's atheist victimology: Boohoo, everybody hates us 'cuz we don't believe in God. Although a recent Pew Forum survey on religion found that 16% of Americans describe themselves as religiously unaffiliated, only 1.6% call themselves atheists, with another 2.4% weighing in as agnostics (a group despised as wishy-washy by atheists).

You or I might attribute the low numbers to atheists' failure to win converts to their unbelief, but atheists say the problem is persecution so relentless that it drives tens of millions of God-deniers into a closet of feigned faith, like gays before Stonewall.

In his online "Atheist Manifesto," Harris writes that "no person, whatever his or her qualifications, can seek public office in the United States without pretending to be certain that ... God exists." The evidence? Antique clauses in the constitutions of six -- count 'em -- states barring atheists from office. More>>