{"id":2318,"date":"2007-12-01T12:20:07","date_gmt":"2007-12-01T18:20:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/the-atheists-pulpit\/o-m-g\/"},"modified":"2007-12-01T12:21:26","modified_gmt":"2007-12-01T18:21:26","slug":"o-m-g","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/the-atheists-pulpit\/o-m-g\/","title":{"rendered":"O-M-G!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Atheists behind the greatest cruelty, says Pope<\/a> – Telegraph, By Jonathan Petre, Religion Correspondent<\/p>\n

Pope Benedict XVI has launched a powerful attack on atheism, saying that it was responsible for some of the “greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice” in history.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the second encyclical of his papacy, the Pope urged Christians to put their hope for the future in God and not in technology, wealth or political ideologies.<\/p>\n

His 76-page document, Spe Salvi, comes in the context of rising secularism in Europe and a spate of books attacking belief in God, including the “The God Delusion” by the Oxford academic Richard Dawkins.<\/p>\n

In the document, the highest form of papal writing addressed to the whole Church, Benedict XVI said that many people rejected religious faith because they no longer found the prospect of an eternal after-life attractive.<\/p>\n

Instead, they had put their faith in human reason and freedom in the hope that the “kingdom of man” would emerge.<\/p>\n

In a scholarly analysis, he said that these ideas had originated during two periods of political upheaval, the French and Communist revolutions.<\/p>\n

He said that Karl Marx and the 19th and 20th century atheism spawned by his revolution could be seen by some as a “type of moralism” responding to the injustices of the time.<\/p>\n

Atheists argued that “a world marked by so much injustice, innocent suffering and cynicism of power cannot be the work of a good God,” the Pope wrote.<\/p>\n

Whether the error is the headline writer’s or the pope’s, the quarrel is with Marxist Communism or the biggest practitioners thereof. People are capable of astonishing cruelty, whether they are believers in god or not.<\/p>\n

Please notice, though I despise this particular line of “reasoning”<\/span> and have no use for a pope whatsoever, I do not call for his death, as so many devote believers in god would seek for those they disagree with. I don’t claim to be a better person because I’m an atheist. My point is there are good atheists and evil worshippers. We are all human beings and need each other more than god. peace, mjh<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Atheists behind the greatest cruelty, says Pope – Telegraph, By Jonathan Petre, Religion Correspondent Pope Benedict XVI has launched a powerful attack on atheism, saying that it was responsible for some of the “greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice” in history. In the second encyclical of his papacy, the Pope urged Christians to … Continue reading O-M-G!<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-atheists-pulpit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2318\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}