Christianity's Valuable Contributions to Humanity: An Examination of Militant Atheism
June 19, 2023 at 3:38 am
"By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” (Lord Jesus Christ, John 13:35)
"It is a shame to us [Pagans] that these "Galileans" [Christians] care not only for their Poor but for our own" ~ Julian the Apostate.
Wiki: "In modern times, the Catholic Church is the largest non-government provider of health care in the world. Catholic religious have been responsible for founding and running networks of hospitals across the world where medical research continues to be advanced. In 2013, Robert Calderisi wrote that the Catholic Church has around 18,000 clinics, 16,000 homes for the elderly and those with special needs, and 5,500 hospitals – with 65 per cent of them located in developing countries."
Most of the so-called New Atheists (Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens etc) believe not just in Mere Atheism but in something called Militant Atheism.
Militant Atheism is not just the claim that there is no God. Militant Atheism is the claim that Religion (esp. Christianity) is allegedly positively evil.
Like any claim, this needs to be demonstrated.
1. Prof. Alvin Schmidt wrote a book some decades back showing that, in fact, the opposite is True. It's titled, "How Christianity changed the world" (for the better).
You can find the book on Amazon. I've read it and it's excellent and nigh irrefutable. A sample review: "I bought this book because a speaker at the college ministry I attended read a blurb from it about the early church martyrs. It was really interesting because I never realized that so many things; such as hospitals, working a daily job, and orphanages, came out of the Christian ethic!"
From Charities, Orphanages, Hospitals, the Abolition of Infanticide in the old world (which Greco-Roman Pagans were ok with, but Emperor St. Constantine the Great Abolished in the Roman Empire), Christianity's contribution to abolishing slavery (Lincoln, Wilberforce etc), then Racism (Billy Graham, Reinhard Bonnke, Dr. Martin Luther King etc), and so much more, Christianity's impact on the world has been very positive on the whole. Have Christians made some mistakes here and there? Sure, every conscientious and knowledgeable Christian acknowledges that. But Christians also corrected them. Yes, some Christians wrongly believed Racism is ok, in direct contravention of Christ's Commandment to love one's neighbor as oneself, which He clearly explained by the Good Samaritan Parable, should include every neighbor beyond racial and religious boundaries. But Christians also very effectively corrected that. Don't have to mention it again, but the historical record clearly shows Marx, Nietzche, Sanger et al were, at best, very poor and behind the times on the subject, while Christians were truly "progressive" in the best sense.
As for Religious Freedom, another thing Atheists love to talk about, again, agreed Christians made some mistakes on that. But Christians were also among the very first to correct it, for e.g. in America, at the same time when Agnostics and Atheists were persecuting Christians in France.
Wiki: "Under threat of death, imprisonment, military conscription or loss of income, about 20,000 constitutional priests were forced to abdicate or hand over their letters of ordination and 6,000 – 9,000 were coerced to marry, many ceasing their ministerial duties. Some of those who abdicated covertly ministered to the people. By the end of the decade, approximately 30,000 priests were forced to leave France, and thousands who did not leave were executed. Most of France was left without the services of a priest, deprived of the sacraments and any nonjuring priest faced the or deportation to French Guinea".
And that's to say nothing of Atheistic Persecution of Christians under Communism and in the Soviet Union, under Stalin etc, at a time, when all Christian Countries gave Full Freedom to everyone including Atheists. Yes, long ago, wrongs happened, but Christians corrected them first.
2. And in 2012, Prof. Thomas Woods wrote an even better book, covering but improving on some of the same historical material, "How the Catholic Church built Western Civilization".
Book Intro "Ask someone today where Western Civilization originated, and he or she might say Greece or Rome. But what is the ultimate source of Western Civilization? Bestselling author and professor Thomas E. Woods, Jr. provides the long neglected answer: the Catholic Church. In the new paperback edition of his critically-acclaimed book, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, Woods goes far beyond the familiar tale of monks copying manuscripts and preserving the wisdom of classical antiquity. Gifts such as modern science, free-market economics, art, music, and the idea of human rights come from the Catholic Church, explains Woods. In How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, you’ll learn:
Again, these are highly qualified Professors. They're not making any of this up, and you can read the historical facts in historical sources for yourself if you think they are. For e.g. Prof Woods: "I hold my master's, M.Phil., and Ph.D. in history from Columbia University and my bachelor's from Harvard."
3. What really happened is, after French Revolution times, Agnostics and Atheists engaged not only in Physical Persecution of Christians (which they also did), but also in a Propaganda War against Christendom, mainly Western Civilization at the time (though not any more). For that purpose, they spread all kinds of myths and lies, including absolutely false things like that Medieval Christians supposedly believed the Earth was Flat. I commend the secular scholars whose historical research refuted that Militant Atheist Myth, Wiki: "Historians of science David Lindberg and Ronald Numbers point out that "there was scarcely a Christian scholar of the Middle Ages who did not acknowledge [Earth's] sphericity and even know its approximate circumference"..
James Hannam wrote: "The myth that people in the Middle Ages thought the Earth is flat appears to date from the 17th century as part of the campaign by Protestants against Catholic teaching. But it gained currency in the 19th century, thanks to inaccurate histories such as John William Draper's History of the conflict between Religion and Science (1874) and Andrew Dickson White's A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896). Atheists and agnostics championed the conflict thesis for their own purposes, but historical research gradually demonstrated that Draper and White had propagated more fantasy than fact in their efforts to prove that science and religion are locked in eternal conflict."
Let's Debate.
God Bless.
"It is a shame to us [Pagans] that these "Galileans" [Christians] care not only for their Poor but for our own" ~ Julian the Apostate.
Wiki: "In modern times, the Catholic Church is the largest non-government provider of health care in the world. Catholic religious have been responsible for founding and running networks of hospitals across the world where medical research continues to be advanced. In 2013, Robert Calderisi wrote that the Catholic Church has around 18,000 clinics, 16,000 homes for the elderly and those with special needs, and 5,500 hospitals – with 65 per cent of them located in developing countries."
Most of the so-called New Atheists (Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens etc) believe not just in Mere Atheism but in something called Militant Atheism.
Militant Atheism is not just the claim that there is no God. Militant Atheism is the claim that Religion (esp. Christianity) is allegedly positively evil.
Like any claim, this needs to be demonstrated.
1. Prof. Alvin Schmidt wrote a book some decades back showing that, in fact, the opposite is True. It's titled, "How Christianity changed the world" (for the better).
You can find the book on Amazon. I've read it and it's excellent and nigh irrefutable. A sample review: "I bought this book because a speaker at the college ministry I attended read a blurb from it about the early church martyrs. It was really interesting because I never realized that so many things; such as hospitals, working a daily job, and orphanages, came out of the Christian ethic!"
From Charities, Orphanages, Hospitals, the Abolition of Infanticide in the old world (which Greco-Roman Pagans were ok with, but Emperor St. Constantine the Great Abolished in the Roman Empire), Christianity's contribution to abolishing slavery (Lincoln, Wilberforce etc), then Racism (Billy Graham, Reinhard Bonnke, Dr. Martin Luther King etc), and so much more, Christianity's impact on the world has been very positive on the whole. Have Christians made some mistakes here and there? Sure, every conscientious and knowledgeable Christian acknowledges that. But Christians also corrected them. Yes, some Christians wrongly believed Racism is ok, in direct contravention of Christ's Commandment to love one's neighbor as oneself, which He clearly explained by the Good Samaritan Parable, should include every neighbor beyond racial and religious boundaries. But Christians also very effectively corrected that. Don't have to mention it again, but the historical record clearly shows Marx, Nietzche, Sanger et al were, at best, very poor and behind the times on the subject, while Christians were truly "progressive" in the best sense.
As for Religious Freedom, another thing Atheists love to talk about, again, agreed Christians made some mistakes on that. But Christians were also among the very first to correct it, for e.g. in America, at the same time when Agnostics and Atheists were persecuting Christians in France.
Wiki: "Under threat of death, imprisonment, military conscription or loss of income, about 20,000 constitutional priests were forced to abdicate or hand over their letters of ordination and 6,000 – 9,000 were coerced to marry, many ceasing their ministerial duties. Some of those who abdicated covertly ministered to the people. By the end of the decade, approximately 30,000 priests were forced to leave France, and thousands who did not leave were executed. Most of France was left without the services of a priest, deprived of the sacraments and any nonjuring priest faced the or deportation to French Guinea".
And that's to say nothing of Atheistic Persecution of Christians under Communism and in the Soviet Union, under Stalin etc, at a time, when all Christian Countries gave Full Freedom to everyone including Atheists. Yes, long ago, wrongs happened, but Christians corrected them first.
2. And in 2012, Prof. Thomas Woods wrote an even better book, covering but improving on some of the same historical material, "How the Catholic Church built Western Civilization".
Book Intro "Ask someone today where Western Civilization originated, and he or she might say Greece or Rome. But what is the ultimate source of Western Civilization? Bestselling author and professor Thomas E. Woods, Jr. provides the long neglected answer: the Catholic Church. In the new paperback edition of his critically-acclaimed book, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, Woods goes far beyond the familiar tale of monks copying manuscripts and preserving the wisdom of classical antiquity. Gifts such as modern science, free-market economics, art, music, and the idea of human rights come from the Catholic Church, explains Woods. In How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, you’ll learn:
- Why modern science was born in the Catholic Church
- How Catholic priests developed the idea of free-market economics five hundred years before Adam Smith
- How the Catholic Church invented the university" etc
Again, these are highly qualified Professors. They're not making any of this up, and you can read the historical facts in historical sources for yourself if you think they are. For e.g. Prof Woods: "I hold my master's, M.Phil., and Ph.D. in history from Columbia University and my bachelor's from Harvard."
3. What really happened is, after French Revolution times, Agnostics and Atheists engaged not only in Physical Persecution of Christians (which they also did), but also in a Propaganda War against Christendom, mainly Western Civilization at the time (though not any more). For that purpose, they spread all kinds of myths and lies, including absolutely false things like that Medieval Christians supposedly believed the Earth was Flat. I commend the secular scholars whose historical research refuted that Militant Atheist Myth, Wiki: "Historians of science David Lindberg and Ronald Numbers point out that "there was scarcely a Christian scholar of the Middle Ages who did not acknowledge [Earth's] sphericity and even know its approximate circumference"..
James Hannam wrote: "The myth that people in the Middle Ages thought the Earth is flat appears to date from the 17th century as part of the campaign by Protestants against Catholic teaching. But it gained currency in the 19th century, thanks to inaccurate histories such as John William Draper's History of the conflict between Religion and Science (1874) and Andrew Dickson White's A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896). Atheists and agnostics championed the conflict thesis for their own purposes, but historical research gradually demonstrated that Draper and White had propagated more fantasy than fact in their efforts to prove that science and religion are locked in eternal conflict."
Let's Debate.
God Bless.
