1. Comment #429769 by Sally Luxmoore on November 5, 2009 at 7:58 pm

Paula! Is there anything you can't do?

Edit: This is precisely the same argument that I have seen used to describe atheism as marxist. It seems to be a case of first, pick your bogeyman, second, ascribe anything that you don't like to that same bogeyman.

It is unintelligent and a version of the 'strawman' ploy.

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2. Comment #429771 by Stafford Gordon on November 5, 2009 at 8:02 pm

What will it take for religious people to realize that our rapport with one another is innate?

It's part of our evolutionary success.

I resent being constantly told that because I don't believe in a sky fairy I'm incapable of distinguishing between good and bad bevaviour,

We have eighteen year old twin daughters, and I'm riddled with guilt about some of my words and actions towards over the years; I'm told I shouldn't feel this way but I can't help it, it's part of my natural make-up.

To a greater or lesser extent we all feel the same; unless we're deranged in some way.

Love hurts! It's meant to.

Incidentally - I can't stop boasting - one daughter is at Trinity College Cambridge reading Life Sciences, and one is at Imperial College reading Biochemistry; so perhaps I haven't done too bad a job; although my wife did most of the heavy lifting.

Anyway, two more women working in the sciences; important.

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3. Comment #429774 by Paula Kirby on November 5, 2009 at 8:05 pm

Sally: Paula! Is there anything you can't do?

Oh yes - no shortage of those things at all. Anything requiring more manual dexterity than changing a lightbulb would be numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 ..... 17216, 17217 on the list.

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4. Comment #429782 by ridelo on November 5, 2009 at 8:18 pm

How sad that a beautiful evolved mind can be used like this. For clarity: not yours, Paula.

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5. Comment #429784 by Sally Luxmoore on November 5, 2009 at 8:22 pm

Man needs eternity. For every other hope is too short for us.

What an extraordinary statement. What on earth does he think he's going to do with eternity?
He sounds like a frightened man, afraid that his life's work is being wasted - which, of course, it is.

He thinks in catholic cliches; his world appears to be entirely black and white. He talks of atheists' 'denial' of his god, as if we were just wilfully refusing to look at something right in front of us.

Still, once again, it is at least an achievement to have got to the point where even someone as convinced of his own rightness as this incredibly smug cardinal considers us a threat.

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6. Comment #429786 by Stonyground on November 5, 2009 at 8:22 pm

The best weapon that they have against us is telling lies. The best weapon that we have against them is telling the truth.

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7. Comment #429788 by Sally Luxmoore on November 5, 2009 at 8:24 pm

Comment #429774 by Paula Kirby

Anything requiring more manual dexterity than changing a lightbulb

Ah, the old joke:

How many atheists does it take to change a lightbulb?
None - they can't see the light.

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8. Comment #429789 by Lucas on November 5, 2009 at 8:28 pm

Just as the National Socialists saw the individual primarily as the carrier of his racial inheritance, so too the leader of the new atheists, the Englishman Richard Dawkins, defines the human as ‘packaging for the only thing that matters: genes’, whose preservation is the primary purpose of our existence. To his Australian ally Peter Singer a pig or a monkey has more value than a helpless baby or an infirm old person, either of whom could in principle be killed or used for research if the interests of their relatives did not stand in the way. This is not some horror story that is being told here: this is the spine-chilling reality which the so- called atheist scientists have conjured up.

So we've jumped from comparing Darwin to Hitler straight to comparing Richard to Hitler? Sigh... They must be getting desperate. Thanks for the translation, Paula.

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9. Comment #429791 by Cartomancer on November 5, 2009 at 8:28 pm

One wonders whether our blithering scarlet-robed friend has actually read any of Richard's books, or the works of Peter Singer. Either he has, and is deliberately misrepresenting their sophisticated, nuanced, humane arguments, or he hasn't and is simply working on outrageous straw-man parodies. Given that he is a high-ranking member of the world's largest paedophile ring, either could be possible.

Moreover, the implicit tone of this sermon is actually highly racist. The line that morality can only come from a monotheistic god is one of the most nauseating pieces of stealth racism. He is, in no uncertain terms, implying that cultures without monotheistic religions (or, more likely, without his monotheistic religion) cannot have moral values. He is condemning, at a stroke, everyone in China, Japan, India and much of Africa as intrinsically immoral. Not just atheists, but buddhists, taoists, hindus, followers of shinto, wiccans and the like are all branded as irretrievably immoral monsters.

So why did Nazism emerge in a Germany awash with catholic and protestant sensibilities, rather than in Tibet or Mongolia? Why did Stalinism emerge in the credulous religious society of post-Tzarist Russia, rather than in Japan or the Congo? Surely if morality only comes from monotheism then the history of China should be one long and unblemished catalogue of barbaric atrocities, rather than a majestic tapestry of highly civilized cultural achievement?

And to think that I've just applied to the British Academy for a postdoctoral fellowship to study medieval sermons. I could just hang around Cologne cathedral and save myself the palaeography.

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10. Comment #429792 by paul fauvet on November 5, 2009 at 8:31 pm

How dare a senior figure in a church led by a former member of the Hitler Youth compare Richard Dawkins to Nazis!

Ratzinger was also a member of a German anti-aircraft unit, and so was presumably taking potshots at the allied aircraft trying to liberate Europe from Nazi tyranny.

In what other international organisation could a former Nazi rise to the top position with so little questioning? (Yes, Waldheim became UN Secretary-General, but at the time the details of his war record were not fully known).

Ratzinger's excuse is that every German got conscripted into the Hitler Youth and into the army. In fact, a small minority of Germans resisted such conscription and refused to fight for Hitler - Ratzinger was not one of them.

Ratzinger only deserted when his unit had disintegrated, and the Third Reich was in a state of terminal collapse. Not much heroism or principle there.

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11. Comment #429793 by aquilacane on November 5, 2009 at 8:32 pm

Scared man.

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12. Comment #429797 by Stafford Gordon on November 5, 2009 at 8:42 pm

Their down on their uppers; let's press on!

Just keep them away from children.

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13. Comment #429802 by Jos Gibbons on November 5, 2009 at 8:53 pm

scientific atheism

Who said that?

no truth

Not even the truth that there's no truth, or the truth from which you deduced that? It should be obvious he's invented a straw man. I won't list every other misrepresentation of atheists' opinions, but some other comments are worth highlighting.

supposedly scientific reason loses the corrective for its thoughts and deeds

When did religion ever correct science?

The man created by man ... can be selected in accordance with requirements of our own choosing.

If not being a product of God removes a person's rights in your eyes, it is you who is evil.

the systems of National Socialism and Communism showed us where this leads

What did they do that was analogous to cloning?

ultimately to the extermination od mankind

Why would you kill people because you like cloning them? Plus, extermination of HUmankind (there, fixed!) implies killing the clones you made too. Is he really stupid enough to think his opponents are that stupid?

it is the belief in God...that lifts the worry and the burden from us and gives us joy in life and great resilience in the face of life's troubles.

Not for all of us. BTW why did God create a life with troubles? So we'd have to believe in him? That's mean.

[Our being in God's household] gives us a dignity and meaning which cannot come from man

The poor non-Jews were condemned by Ephesians, then? How unkind.

now this so-called scientific atheism is celebrating a joyful resurrection

AFAIK it's only so-called by you.

[Atheism] can literally cost many people their lives.

What costs people their lives is letting someone tell them what to do. After communism made us tired of permitting this of governments, the only authorities for whom this right is still defended are people like the Archbishop.

The positivistic materialism and evolutionism of the new atheists does not only seek to eradicate belief in God, but also the Christian view of man as made in the image of God and as a moral entity with the gift of reason.

(1) Who still supports positivism? (2) Are you denying evolution? I thought the Catholic Church had (sort of) stopped doing that. (3) The made in the image bit may be denied, but the moral bit isn't. If you couldn't view us that way without God having made us, that's appalling.

we must also renounce a substantial basis for human rights and human dignity.

What human right did Christianity pioneer? Mass?

Just as the National Socialists saw the individual primarily as the carrier of his racial inheritance, so too the leader of the new atheists, the Englishman Richard Dawkins, defines the human as 'packaging for the only thing that matters: genes', whose preservation is the primary purpose of our existence.

(1) "Just as" suggests a good comparison, but racial purity is not advocated by RD, a man who has said he wishes he could tick "human" on ethnicity censuses. (2) Atheists have no leader. You are the one with a pope. Maybe that is why you couldn't rise to calling RD that, as many have. Too bad you are guilty of other hypocrisies. (3) When did RD say that? (4) By purpose, he means why it happened, not what was intended (nothing was before us) or what is good (many other things are).

[Singer thinks] a pig or a monkey has more value than a helpless baby or an infirm old person, either of whom could in principle be killed or used for research

How dare you make that accusation. Singer thinks nothing of the kind.

this is the spine-chilling reality which the so-called atheist scientists have conjued up

(1) Liar. (2) Many scientists are atheists, whether atheism is scientific, "so-called scientific" or otherwise.

[The denial of God making us] has led some such researchers to authorise themselves not only to decide whether human beings are truly human but also to genetically improve the human or even to create a new human from scratch.

(1) Authorise themselves to decide? Who does that, with anything? I don't authorise myself to decide what I shall eat for lunch; I just decide. Again, I'm amazed he's stupid enough to think others would be stupid enough to do or think something. (2) What's wrong with improving or creating humans? I for one want to see an end to chronic back pain, vitamin C deficiency etc.

we see heaven standing open.

If only we had such evidence it's real.

Man needs eternity.

How greedy.

If it is true - and it is true - that death is not the end

Prove it.

if the death of man has no dignity, then life has no dignity

(1) Things can have different properties during and after a process. (2) Why do keep saying man, and not something like human? It is understandable only in your patriarchal church's context.

Where man ... [becomes] garbage, then he ... can be discarded - even before his death.

(1) If we become garbage at our deaths, then we can't be thrown away before then. (2) "his"? There you go again. Do you plan on defending women's rights at all? (3) You keep fearing we'll be able to do something horrid - but we wouldn't want to anyway. People never kill others, unless they also feel they ought to, or can benefit from it; indifference doesn't do it. Nihilism, when it is really nihilism, is not sad, but neutral (or perhaps not even that).

if eternity is what he is worth, then this worth holds always and everywhere and determines our whole life.

Again, he doesn't get the idea of change. I'm not surprised he wants to determine our lives either. I bet I know what it will involve.

The misappropriated heaven is the definitive human disease

I thought you people thought non-human animals had nothing to do with heaven either. Anything definitive of humans (glad to see you including the hu- prefix at last), it is when we get in on religion. As Mark Twain observed, we are the only religious animal, having several one true religions.

the church has no more humane gift to offer than the Feast of All Saints' Day

It won't feed the poor for long, will it? If only you had billions of dollars' worth of gold ingots to help others ... oh wait, the Vatican does, and in total is worth $750,000,000,000.00 (look at those digits).

[The day is Catholics'] assurance of victory.

2,000 later, the Catholics have only a fraction of the population. How many more will you persecute before you're satisfied you are victors? Presumably that will require all to convert.

Most religious arguments are just (laughably) wrong, but this is positively sickening. THIS is why I hate religion.

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14. Comment #429803 by galaieva on November 5, 2009 at 8:55 pm

the catholics are easy prey for us :) Let us not even notice them, their numbers are getting so small, I wonder who else is at the mass except old ladies in their eigthies..

let us leave them alone in their delusion :)

( i tend to leave my grandma alone with this, I think i shall not annoy my great grandma who is 95 years old, and this gives her comfort. Her friends have all died and when she has no visitor, she spends her time praying for her grandchildren...) what to do....

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15. Comment #429804 by flying goose on November 5, 2009 at 8:56 pm

Cartomancer

I am intrigued by your interest in medieval thought.

I just get the sense of a sympathy you have for these medieval thinkers. You do not let your atheism ride rough shod over them. You are always very fair minded about medieval thinkers where there are others who are just dismissive.

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16. Comment #429809 by galaieva on November 5, 2009 at 9:06 pm

this man gets his pay check from the catholic sect, so obviously he is scared of any challenges... they will preach more and more like that, because the church industry is in danger.... :)

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17. Comment #429812 by MUNRO1 on November 5, 2009 at 9:11 pm

Deluded, as a word, just does not do this man justice.

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18. Comment #429815 by Cartomancer on November 5, 2009 at 9:22 pm

I just get the sense of a sympathy you have for these medieval thinkers. You do not let your atheism ride rough shod over them. You are always very fair minded about medieval thinkers where there are others who are just dismissive.

If, as an historian, I were to condemn the thinkers of the past for simply being wrong, then I would end up having to condemn pretty much all of them without exception. I don't believe in Aristotelian physics or Galenic medicine or Ptolemaic cosmology, but that does not stop me from studying those who did, and trying to understand how their minds worked.

The difference between the Middle Ages and now, I think, is that back then a theistic stance on scientific and ethical matters was entirely understandable and entirely forgivable. It is not the case that the church actively suppressed non-religious paradigms, it's that nobody really knew any better. If one goes through the reasons one might believe in gods (as outlined in the earlier chapters of The God Delusion as well as anywhere), and the modern rebuttals we have of those reasons, it becomes apparent that hardly any of them could have been made in the Middle Ages.

Darwin had not yet alerted the world to the explanatory power of cranes - it was skyhooks all the way down. In the Middle Ages, they could see the Greatest Show on Earth, but the Only Game which properly explains it had not yet come to town. All the alternative cosmological systems available - Plato's, Aristotle's, the classical folkloric tradition - were just as scientifically unsatisfactory as the christian one, and rather less well understood. Forensic biblical scholarship had not yet arrived, and there was no serious challenge to the fantastical authorship claims of scriptural texts (for example, people quite seriously believed in the miraculous congruence of the seventy translators of the septuagint). Also, many modern atheists achieve their atheism through noticing the wide diversity of religions and cultures in the world. Medieval Europeans generally only had christianity, judaism and islam on their radars, as well as poorly understood accounts of classical and dark-age paganism. When hardly anybody traveled further than the next village, and everything was Abrahamic monotheisms, the comparative approach could not get a foothold.

But perhaps the main reason I find medieval theism entirely unproblematic, but get highly infuriated at modern theism, is that modern theism actually matters. The past is the past, and we cannot change it. Making judgements as to how wrong or cruel or stupid our ancestors were is not going to get us anywhere, save by direct comparison to what we know now so that it doesn't happen again. The past must be studied for what it was, but the future can be changed. And we DO know better now - we no longer have the circumstances of medieval society to contend with, which might excuse a theistic viewpoint.

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19. Comment #429818 by MrPickwick on November 5, 2009 at 9:24 pm

Yes! It is disgusting what these filthy atheists are doing: talking, writing books and, and... mmm well... talking, writing books...

...the Englishman Richard Dawkins, defines the human as ‘packaging for the only thing that matters: genes’, whose preservation is the primary purpose of our existence.

How to answer this? Oh yes, I know (In Dara Obrians words): "Get in the fooking sack!"

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20. Comment #429820 by Paula Kirby on November 5, 2009 at 9:30 pm

What fascinated me most about this sermon - leaving aside the nonsense about National Socialism and Communism, and his apparent rejection of evolution - was the extent to which it was all just blatant wishful thinking. It reminded me very strongly of John Lennox when he gave a lecture in Inverness a year or so ago. This is from the notes I wrote up about it afterwards:

But how, thundered Lennox, could we “enjoy life”, as enjoined by the atheist bus adverts, if there was no absolute morality? If most people won’t ever get justice? If there is no god, no final judgement, and morality is just an illusion? This would damage the whole fabric of society’s fundamental morality and create a totally pitiless world. It would be very serious, said Lennox, if there were no fundamental justice, because it would mean we’d all been deceived.

And that was it: there must be fundamental justice because if there weren’t it would mean we’d all been deceived; and, according to the ludicrous Cardinal, we must live forever because a human lifetime isn’t enough for us.

I simply cannot understand how supposedly intelligent people can fail to see how inadequate these positions are. What, I would love to know, are the mechanisms by which religion blinds its followers to its absurdities?

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21. Comment #429822 by MrPickwick on November 5, 2009 at 9:37 pm

Comment#20

I simply cannot understand how supposedly intelligent people can fail to see how inadequate these positions are. What, I would love to know, are the mechanisms by which religion blinds its followers to its absurdities?

The last 10 seconds of this video (Dawkins interviews Coyne) sheds some light upon this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwDTBW8oxug

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22. Comment #429824 by GalacticAtom on November 5, 2009 at 9:39 pm

If I were Richard Dawkins or Peter Singer, I might consider investigating German libel law.

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23. Comment #429826 by Bonzai on November 5, 2009 at 9:50 pm

The Catholic Church is one of the most vile criminal organization there is on earth. These fools should spare us their piety. A really intriquing question is how can seemingly intelligent people be Cathoics? I can sort of understand why some intelligent people would believe in some kind of God, or even the Christian God based on some kind of revisionist intepretations. But Catholicism? It is nothing but a Mafia's version of Christianity, I just don't get it.

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24. Comment #429827 by galaieva on November 5, 2009 at 9:54 pm

This man : wasn't he also a high ranking priest in the GDR. I fear that as so many who were high ranking priests here in Hungary, then he too had to report to not just to rome or to god but...... i do not want to write that because it is an insult even if it was so.....


how sad.

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25. Comment #429829 by Bonzai on November 5, 2009 at 10:01 pm

Cartomancer

If one goes through the reasons one might believe in gods (as outlined in the earlier chapters of The God Delusion as well as anywhere), and the modern rebuttals we have of those reasons, it becomes apparent that hardly any of them could have been made in the Middle Ages.

It is actually not true, as many pre-Chrsitian pegan civilizations didn't believe in a personal creator God, including the Greeks. Even if these cultures had gods, they were secondary creatures created by some impersonal primal order. The notion of God as an all encompassing sky dictator is rather recent. It was not the natural way of thinking for many pre-Judeo Christian civilizations. We tend to forget that because Christianity has become so deeply anchored in Western civilization.

But even forgetting about all that, there were certainly good reasons even in the Middle Ages for not believing in the particular version of God taught by Catholic dogmas and many did just that. They were ruthelessly persecuted and cruelly killed.

So forgive me for being a lot less charitable to official theologians who were, in my opinion, at best half scholars and half thugs.

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26. Comment #429831 by flying goose on November 5, 2009 at 10:05 pm

Cartomancer

Thank you.

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27. Comment #429835 by RichardofYork on November 5, 2009 at 10:13 pm

The Church and its lengthy period of Cheyne Stokes syndrome

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28. Comment #429837 by Bonzai on November 5, 2009 at 10:17 pm

The invocation of National Socialism while mentioning Dawkins shows how desperate some of these fools are getting. Even though I don't always agree with Dawkins but I applaude him just for making these popmpous religious clowns squirm.

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29. Comment #429838 by Sally Luxmoore on November 5, 2009 at 10:18 pm

Comment #429820 by Paula Kirby

What, I would love to know, are the mechanisms by which religion blinds its followers to its absurdities?

To me it panders to and encourages a monumental form of egoism. This cardinal is the tantrum prone toddler demanding that the world be the way he wants it to be. His is the reaction of someone horrified that he might not actually be as important as he feels he is.
The heliocentric solar system was the first major blow, but for each of us to be a mere carrier of genes really is the final insult to the ego. I don't think it's an accident that he singled Richard out.
In this mind set, Richard (he of the Selfish Gene) is as dangerous a heretic as Copernicus or Galileo. As far as the Cardinal is concerned, Richard has personally threatened him with the removal of his immortality. In a way, that's worse than either Marxism or Fascism. Even the devil does not remove your soul.
In an odd way, I think the cardinal has actually understood the Selfish Gene properly, unlike those who concentrate on the word selfish. He just rejects in horror the conclusion that inevitably results. The poor man has been so brainwashed himself that he cannot go beyond this reaction; the lack of any ultimate personal significance is too horrifying to him.
Religion as sycophancy to the ego - that's what this piece communicates to me.

Other Comments by Sally Luxmoore

30. Comment #429839 by Muetze on November 5, 2009 at 10:21 pm

[…] the church would still be singing the Easter Hallelujah when scientific atheism was consigned to the history books as a relic of human folly.

I love quoting Richard, and this nugget from his interview with Ted Haggard seems fitting:

“You want to bet?”

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31. Comment #429842 by Misc on November 5, 2009 at 10:29 pm

Goodness, there really goes by no year without this brain-dead imbecile Meisner vomiting from the pulpit. Worse still, he about always receives the attention and so gets to continue his schtick.

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32. Comment #429844 by EvidenceOnly on November 5, 2009 at 10:32 pm

Nonsense like this uttered by the delusional followers of any superstition (and that includes all religions) is further evidence to me that evolution has no purpose, is a gradual refinement of what already exists, and can never start all over from scratch.

How else can a large proportion of the world population be so dumb to use their evolved brains in order to enslave themselves to an imaginary sky daddy who in the so called holy books that most have never read is portrayed as an egomaniac and celestial dictator?

Ah! It's all about a few pretenders to hold all the power over the masses.

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33. Comment #429847 by Sally Luxmoore on November 5, 2009 at 10:41 pm

An interesting article on the cardinal. Title:

The isolated Cologne archbishop, Cardinal Joachim Meisner: imposed on Cologne, rejected by priests, another John Paul II bishop radically divides the faithful

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0MKY/is_13_29/ai_n15627705/

the most feared prince of the church in Germany, "the spokesperson of Germany's fundamentalists." ...
Ulrich Harbecke, former leading religious reporter for Cologne public television, wrote a book on the Cardinal and called him "extremely unchristian and heartless"

And:

A great number of law suits have been filed against Meisner for discriminating against homosexuals, but they have been subsequently dropped.

Why dropped, I wonder?

Nice man. The more he speaks, the more people must sympathise with those he attacks.
Edit: Yes.

The number of Catholics have dropped by 250, 000 since he has been in charge of the diocese, faster than anywhere else.

Other Comments by Sally Luxmoore

34. Comment #429848 by Cartomancer on November 5, 2009 at 10:45 pm

It is actually not true, as many pre-Chrsitian pegan civilizations didn't believe in a personal creator God, including the Greeks. Even if these cultures had gods, they were secondary creatures created by some impersonal primal order. The notion of God as an all encompassing sky dictator is rather recent. It was not the natural way of thinking for many pre-Judeo Christian civilizations. We tend to forget that because Christianity has become so deeply anchored in Western civilization.

But the social, cultural and historical circumstances of pre-christian societies such as the Greeks simply did not apply to medieval Europe. That was my point. The culture of the European Middle Ages WAS saturated with monotheistic ideas, to the point where it was very difficult to vocalise an entirely atheistic philosophy at all. Non-theistic classical philosophy was very poorly disseminated indeed between 500 and 1500 AD. There was no mechanism by which it might spread through Europe, since scriptoria were run by monks and university stationers for the most part, and had no pressing reason to make copies of obscure classical texts. The full works of Lucretius remained extant until the Renaissance only in a few monastic libraries in the Low Countries, and the presocratics were barely known at all, and even then mostly through Aristotle or late Hellenic or Arabic intermediaries. And even if you did manage to come up with a sensible atheistic philosophy, you simply did not have the intellectual tools to defend it from the theistic alternative. We discovered just how inadequate theism was as an explanation for anything by coming up with better explanations, but before the scientific work had been done to find these explanations, what COULD a budding atheist deploy to answer the well-formulated ideas of the theists? Perhaps some sort of Humean argument, but without any kind of substantial alternative it is highly unlikely. Under such intellectual conditions atheism could not seriously emerge. Unless you understand natural selection, and nobody did back then, how WOULD you argue that the appearance of design in nature is not actual design at all?

Which is not, of course, to say that the doctrinal orthodoxies of the catholic church were the only game in town. As you point out, there were large numbers of heretics, schismatics and unorthodox believers, and indeed the beliefs of individual "catholic" christians varied widely too. But my point was a narrower one about theism itself, rather than varying shades of theism. The evidence we have from medieval documents is telling. There is not a single instance, as far as I know, of any medieval individual standing up and saying that they were an atheist, or that they had serious doubts about the existence of some kind of god. People were, very occasionally, accused of something like atheism, particularly medics who were said to pay the body too much heed and ignore the soul, but this was always in a highly critical and somewhat unsupported vein - it was a condemnatory rhetorical trope. There was also speculation on atheists in biblical commentary, specifically on the famous line in the psalms "the fool hath said in his heart that there is no god", but again this was speculation in the abstract, and from the other side rather than from genuine real medieval atheists themselves. If anyone actually HAD stood up, openly declared their atheism, and tried to argue forcefully for it, this would almost certainly have been recorded somewhere, and action taken. That it was not surely tells us something about the culture we are dealing with.

We must ask the question why. Why did nobody formulate an atheistic philosophy during the Latin Middle Ages in the west? Did the church ruthlessly suppress all atheists, burn their works and pretend they never happened? No, it didn't. If it had then we would have evidence that it had. Medieval scholars wrote a lot about heretics - their trials were documented, their beliefs subjected to some kind of scrutiny, and their philosophical positions loudly denounced in learned theological tracts. Surely, if there were more than a handful of atheists in Medieval Europe, they would have got the same treatment? Since there is no evidence, it behoves us to come up with a more realistic explanation, and one in line with what we know of the history of ideas in general.

One might as well ask why there were no denunciations of the class system and of slavery in the classical world, or why there is nobody arguing seriously for gay marriage in modern Japan. The culture simply did not give rise to these notions - the intellectual tools were not there to do it. The same is true for medieval Europe - it had lost the tools, the inclination, and any good reason to argue atheism in any sensible way. It is not a question of whether people possessed minds capable of formulating the arguments against theism, but whether their cultures provided any opportunity or reason for them to do so.

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35. Comment #429851 by Ivan The Not So Bad on November 5, 2009 at 10:46 pm

"In the last century the systems of National Socialism and Communism showed us where this leads: not to greater human happiness and freedom, but to the edge of the abyss, and ultimately to the extermination of mankind."

So that would be why the RC church stood by (at best) and collaborated (at worst) in respect of both National Socialism and Communism.

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36. Comment #429853 by F_A_F on November 5, 2009 at 10:48 pm

Ranting, contradictory, irrelevant nonsense. What a pity this dinosaur hasn't been hit by a meteorite.

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37. Comment #429860 by Cartomancer on November 5, 2009 at 11:07 pm

Actually, it doesn't take much digging to find further articles that link Meisner with Nazi ideology...

http://archiv.mut-gegen-rechte-gewalt.de/artikel.php?id=91&kat=91&artikelid=3891

He actually used the term degenerate art to refer to a modern art museum. The man's hypocrisy reaches apocalyptic proportions. No wonder he's a catholic...

Other Comments by Cartomancer

38. Comment #429861 by RightWingAtheist on November 5, 2009 at 11:08 pm

Paula:


Please tell Meisner that we thanked him for speaking out against Nazism. Better late than never, eh?

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39. Comment #429870 by Quine on November 5, 2009 at 11:32 pm

Just as the National Socialists saw the individual primarily as the carrier of his racial inheritance, so too the leader of the new atheists, the Englishman Richard Dawkins, defines the human as 'packaging for the only thing that matters: genes', whose preservation is the primary purpose of our existence.

Again and again we need to stress that knowing the facts about where we came from does not enslave us to the same for our future. We must get this message out there, or we will have this erroneous conclusion continually used to try to tie us to some kind of monstrous ideology.

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40. Comment #429872 by Rodger T on November 5, 2009 at 11:32 pm

I suspect this,

Be good without God!

may just be the single most terrifying thought that the senile clergy hold.

This sermon smacks of the desperation of a dying religion.

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41. Comment #429875 by Opisthokont on November 5, 2009 at 11:46 pm

I cannot help but wonder from where the Cardinal gets these ideas about atheism. They cannot have come from talking to any actual atheists.

Seriously, theists and accommodationists keep harping about how the "New Atheists" criticise the supernatural without referring to irrelevant theological details (and still have yet to explain to my satisfaction why that should be necessary), and yet they support this man? Motes and beams, I say....

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42. Comment #429877 by kaiserkriss on November 5, 2009 at 11:56 pm

Any German writers/ speakers/ readers can send the hypocrite Meisner a message here: http://www.erzbistum-koeln.de/erzbistum/erzbischof/jcm_mailformular

You will have to register, but this guy and his henchmen deserve a kick where the sun don't shine...jcw

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43. Comment #429878 by Kmita on November 6, 2009 at 12:05 am

"Thou shalt make an image of thyself and name it God! "

Anyone else notice that he's directing this at the wrong group? Sometimes I feel like all their crap is to retarded for it to really be there. Maybe it's just a terrible dream. People can't reeeeally be this stupid can they? Do they just not realize it, when their insults could be better used to describe themselves?

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44. Comment #429886 by carlitoernesto on November 6, 2009 at 12:43 am

@Stafford Gordon
2. Comment #429771

"I resent being constantly told that because I don't believe in a sky fairy I'm incapable of distinguishing between good and bad bevaviour..."

That's what they learned at a very young age. Personally established worldviews are extremely difficult to change. Often presentation of evidence won't do any good the first time around. Some even learn to ignore the evidence, trusting gut instincts from their ingrained worldviews despite truth staring glaringly at their faces.

There is student friend (psychology grad school)of mine who said to me that she doesn't care what the evidence for evolution is... she'd rather stick with her faith because that is what gives meaning to her life. I had no intention of 'traumatizing' her any further with the most 'basic' evidence so I eventually stopped my pursuit of the subject.

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45. Comment #429889 by mjwemdee on November 6, 2009 at 1:16 am

I'm afraid I just couldn't follow this diatribe at all.

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46. Comment #429897 by SaintStephen on November 6, 2009 at 1:44 am

13. Comment #429802 by Jos Gibbons on November 5, 2009 at 8:53 pm

Great work, Jos!

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47. Comment #429900 by crusader234 on November 6, 2009 at 2:33 am

Another pile of intellectually flabby callow piffle....

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48. Comment #429913 by InYourFaceNewYorker on November 6, 2009 at 5:49 am

Man, the stupidity has made its way to Europe...

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49. Comment #429916 by SaintStephen on November 6, 2009 at 6:10 am

48. Comment #429913 by InYourFaceNewYorker on November 6, 2009 at 5:49 am

Hey Julie... do you want the word Iris in your title? Otherwise I might have to plead no lo contendre...

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50. Comment #429924 by Roland_F on November 6, 2009 at 7:08 am

This part of the sermon from Colognes Aidsbishop Meisner who states that evil godless Richard Dawkins is propagating Nazi ideology, I was posting already earlier this week on the M. Ruse tread. Which is also shedding new insights on the demand from M. Ruse for ‘new atheist to shut up’ and show more dignity to the holy man of god.
Reading now what the holy cardinal one of the leaders of the biggest transnational pedophile organization on the planet is hurtling at all non-Catholics, this demand from M. Ruse shows only how far removed from reality this armchair philosopher is.

And it is scary that religious leaders like cardinal Meisner “all art that has not god as his focal theme is entartete Kunst” (Nazi term for degenerated art) and Bishop Mixa “women are birth machines” have still enormous political influence and are sitting together with the Evangelical church in Germany on 60 Billion Euro of stock holdings, beside undisclosed assets in form of bonds and much higher real estate property. Of course they are tax exempt, the state is collecting church tax for them (collection effort paid form the state) and beside the church tax, the 2 state churches in Germany are receiving state benefits of around 14 Billion Euros (calculation of the Bund der Steuerzahler).

So now reading the sermon of the Catholic hate preacher of Cologne, I know for what payrolls all these money is used. Must be a miserable life here and now, living celibate, and being only surrounded by old men in funny hats and young altar boys. So boring that the Catholic clergy is so desperate hoping for the only enjoyment in the imagined afterlife.

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