He backs this statement up with numerous facts and hypothetical situations that could’ve happen if the US government had not invaded Iraq. Being an anti-theist, Dr. Hitchens is very much against the use of God in politics. The Tea Party, on the other hand, is trying to “put God back into the United States of America.” He sees Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky both as great men and he no longer considers himself a socialist but rather a Marxist. Marx states that: “Man created God, God did not create Man.” Dr. Hitchens gets his conclusion, “God did not create man, we created God,” from Karl Marx’s statement: “Man makes religion, religion does not make man…” Many members of the Tea Party focus on just the “fiscal” issues facing the government, however, they do not believe in the beliefs of Marx, Lenin or Trotsky. Dr. Hitchens was also recently diagnosed esophageal cancer.
“This book was highly critical of the Evangelical church in America for abandoning its historical and theological roots, and instead embracing the philosophies and pragmatism of the world.” In his 1994 book, God in the Wasteland: The Reality of Truth in a World of Fading Dreams, Dr. David Falconer Wells presents suggestions to remedy the present problem of modernism in our churches by calling for reform in the evangelical churches. He is the author of several books in which his evangelical theology engages with the modern church and world, and presents the present failings of pastors and churches that pursue a modernistic approach to theology. This is the second of a four-series book. BRIEF SUMMARY In God in the Waste, Dr. Wells presents solutions, or suggestions to resolve the issues described in his book, No Place for Truth, Or, Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology (Eerdmans, 1993). Wells states; “This book [No Place for Truth] produced only half the picture I wanted to present, however.
In 2 Corinthians 10:3-5, Paul specified that “believers are engaged in a spiritual battle against forces which stand against the knowledge of God (Anderson, 2000). Anderson also believed that before people received Christ into their lives, they were slaves to their sin, and because Christ hung on the cross and paid the price for our sin, sin no longer have dominion over them. He also believed that maturity and freedom are essential to a Christian’s life. Anderson stated that Satan has no right or ownership or authority over God’s children (Anderson, 2000, p. 11). Anderson also stated that “the Western world has experienced a massive paradigm shift in its worldview and voiced his concern about the influence of the “kingdom of darkness” (pp.
All Christians must be able to give a defense for the hope that is in them, so that the truth will be upheld in every circumstance. The New Apostolic Reformation The teachings of the NAR (New Apostolic Reformation) are nothing new they have been around before the 1950’s, which scholars believe connect to the “Latter Rain Movement”. Many of the leaders in NAR were involved with the “Latter Rain” movement such as, C. Peter Wagner, Bob Jones, and Rick Joyner, just to name a few. The Assemblies of God actually refuted this movement in 1949. “Satan sold them the lie that "unity" is the principal thing and thus they dethroned and eventually jettisoned purity and truth.
This is why I believe he started this piece talking about an Irish priest who wrote a pamphlet on religious tolerance. The priest talked about how it took too long for us to stand up to tolerance, in this case religious tolerance since he was a religious leader. Voltaire believed that to understand our present and mould our future we must look at our past. In the past the church had supreme power over the society and any other religion was frowned upon. As the piece goes on, you can see thoughts of other philosophers as well.
The Sandinistas were so sure that he would facilitate peace and denounce America’s support of the Contras, they encouraged and provided transportation for about 800,000 persons to see the Pope (Hoyt, 1983). However, their dreams would not be realized. The Pope told the people not to promote violence and even though he acknowledged Archbishop Romero as a martyr, he basically said do not follow in his footsteps and do not allow his memory to be a politically oriented one. He also chastised some other priests for holding political positions and telling them that is not their path. He further stressed unity of the Church as the way to promote peace and asked the people to abandon their “…unacceptable ideological commitments…”for the faith (Hoyt, 1983).
He basically degrades the entire Bible by saying that there is no fact in the world and everything is an interpretation. He claims the truth is unnecessary to be spoken because it is only necessary to speak the truth when the untruth is so false that it can be detected. Nietzsche shares his belief that a human’s life is 100% controlled by the individual and all success should be credited to that individual. Then he disrespects all Christians by claiming they are a species of weak failures looking for pity that shall parish to the strong-willed all-powerful being. I strongly disagree with almost everything Fredrick Nietzsche writes about in this section of the reading.
Kant and Counterfeit Service Immanuel Kant puts forth the argument in his Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason that he is accepting the following proposition as a principle requiring no proof, and it says “apart from a good life-conduct, anything which the human being supposes that he can do to become well-pleasing to God is mere religious delusion and counterfeit service to God” (p. 166). This quote immediately provokes questions of what does this mean to the Roman Catholic monks of Saint Martins Abbey who devote their life’s to God, and how does my faith Mormonism fit into the ideas of Kant? He establishes that there is three kinds of religious delusions that we should try to avert. These three delusions known as delusory faith include faith in miracles, faith in mysteries and faith in means of grace which overstep the boundaries of our reason with respect to the supernatural (p. 185). Kant proclaims “the belief that we have cognition of something through experience which we in fact cannot accept as happening according to objective laws of experience (faith in miracles)”(p.185).
Roman society worked by everyone submitting to the emperor and sacrificing to the gods. That these Christians would not accept societal norms must have been infuriating for many romans, and is the starting point of their hatred towards the Christians. The roman religion which saw seeing forgiveness as performing a set of rituals had no interest in some morality or a set of dos and don’ts, which the Christians lived by. This was considered to be the realm of philosophy. There was no great concern for the afterlife here, and Polytheism with its acceptance of an unlimited number of gods meant that the society that practiced it was adaptable to change.
Elizabeth Perricone 397 Dan Churchwell-Introduction to Philosophy Research Paper 1 2/22/2013 Anti-Intellectualism among Evangelicals Philosophers have been opposing, contemplating, and defending the idea of God for centuries. The majority of philosophers in today’s day and age take the arrogant view of pushing the concept of “God” out of their philosophy. They do this by their prideful standing against submission or conceiving a being higher than themselves and seeing those who believe in such a being as, leaning on a mere crutch that humanity has surpassed long ago. The poor opinion America’s culture has on the Christian Church’s intelligence is not surprising. Movies and TV shows have been portraying Christians as judgmental, mindless, know-it-alls for years.